It's always a gamble but pretty cool when it pays off. I haven't ever hooped for them, only dove with scuba gear to get them. Sometimes they were buried in the rocks and sometimes they were marching across the sand but they always came home with me    Glad you found a few 

I really love picking up new tips and tricks when i fish on someone else's boat.  I don't usually go on other people's boats because generally they scare the crap out of me... but there's a few that are tied into the scene.

I've been dialing in my hooping over the past 10 years and really getting it fine tuned from the older days where I was just chucking out a hoop near the jetty.  I've been looking at tides, moon phases, current speed & direction, swell, bait, time of season...etc.  Really looking at it like fishing and not just dropping on hunches.  I know the " hunches" pan out well too, but it at least keeps my mind active and improving.

Well, the guys I went with tonight are really skilled fishermen and are deeply personally connected with the commercial and sport boat fleets (buddy's and grew up with them all).  I have to say that letting them roll with their way of doing things left me perplexed.  Some of the reasoning did not line up with what I've seen or what I thought was even possible like:  When the swell and current is up, the bugs all move into deeper water.  Personally, I can't imagine the bugs wanting to all walk in ripping current hundreds and hundreds of yards in a strong current just because of the swell? I would think that the lobster would just hunker down in place and maybe the deeper water bugs would be more active because of possibly less current.

In any case, they liked the current for bugs and I was the opposite.  I like the end of a current to bring the scent trail and then at slack, the bugs can follow the trail up to your nets.  It's been a pretty proven thing on my boat but I'm only a passenger on someone else's.

Well, the swell was way bigger than expected.  I definitely was perplexed with their philosophy on dropping nets and even the net configuration, but they have been doing it for 60 years out here so who am I to say?

We netted about a dozen on the first set along with an eel.  No legals, but not looking really good.



The swell was driving the nets in and dragging them along the bottom.  The nets definitely needed to be weighted.  I also saw some serious frays in the line that they weren't too worried about which later proved terminal to two lost hoops.

Besides that, the sea lice were terrible!



We lost two more to the big swells dragging the nets a hundred yads into the surf zone.  Not a good night... then we were running to the barn and licking our wounds when we decided to make a last minute drop in the inlet.  I pressed them that the tide was right for how I like to bug and with the slowing tide that was topping out, it might be good.  We also had some of the freshest BFT bait available he got off his buddy that morning from the processor, so it was time to use it.

Well, the first set and we got 3 legals along with 20 shorts.



Next set and we got 6 legals with 40 shorts!



We wanted to drop again, but it was late as hell and we did end up with 3 bugs a piece along with a real doozy of a bug so it was a bottom of the 9th hit!

I was stoked that my philosophy of bug hunting worked to save the day, but they chalked it up to their persistent style that got them.  Hey, I'm definitely not a lifelong bug hunter, and I won't argue with anyone's style of fishing... but I'm glad to know my data driven science did not fail us tonight.  LOL



until the next bug hunt!

Awesome! Back to back limits.
I need to hit San Clemente pier soon.

- Keith

Solid work! And good on ya being the only boat to pass with flying colors. Representing PSoul properly.

For whatever reason or reasons, the last 2 weeks has been spectacular for bugs (for about everyone) so I needed to get out again.  I took my usual partner in crime out since his lower unit blew up and he's been missing his favorite season of the year.

We hit the spot that I did so well at on Thursday.  It was way ROUGHER out than what the forecast predicted so I'm glad I had a second person to keep an eye out on things.  The sunset was awesome, but the NW winds at 10-15 were not.




I only brought 7 hoops because with the extra person and extra hoops, I leaned more to safety than making sure I had 10 hoops.

The first pull of hoops were strong, but nowhere near what it was last week.



First set and we pulled 60 lobster with only 4 legals.

We had some great strucrure aound so moved the pots around according to what was in the net when we pulled.



The second set was quite a bit better with 70 lobster pulled and 7 legals.



The third set went WAAAAY Low... definitely tide swing/current related.  We only got 24 with 2 legals... one short of limits.

At this point all of the other boats were leaving and the wind kept picking up so we decided to pull the last string right away and take whatever we got and hope we had one more to get our limits.  The tide was getting just about right, but we both had to get back early enough anyway.

First three hoops with a 20-minute soak and a big goose egg.

Next three hoops and we got 18 lobster with 3 legals so two went back and we kept a dandy to finish our limit.



Pulled up the last hoop and WTF???  12 lobster with 7 legals in it.  All of the bugs were roughly the same size so we counted and released before stacking and heading back to the ramp.

As we were heading in, the inlet was lit up like a Christmas tree with all of the hoop lights.  As I was heading back, I noticed bright truck lights in an area that I know usually has tweakers or people getting their high on.  Only issue was these were bright LED lights and not the usual dull yellow headlights of a Hooptie.

We get to the ramp and pull the boat out when a truck comes racing in!  It's the Warden.  We weren't worried since we were legit from head to tail, but the warden seemed a little bit on edge.  He made a THOROUGH inspection of all of the hatches and measure all of the bugs as well as checking that our licenses were filled out and we had our Go ID on all of our buoys...  I mean the full 9 yards.

After he was satisfied that we were on the up and up, he relaxed and thanked us for having everything in order.  He said we were the first boat tonight he didn't have to write a ticket to and there was a lot of "Funny Business" going on tonight to which gave credence to why he was on edge when he rolled up on us.

Well, it was good to know he was out there, and we headed back home 30 minutes later than we expected due to this inspection.

In any case, another limit of bugs!  I barely ever go back-to-back with limits, let alone my first two trips of the year so I am a happy boy!



Attack of the Kaiju pic.



Well, time to take a lobster break.  My body is killing me after having two trips in a week.

Thanks for reading!

Interesting!

You and I have seen those guys a bunch of times while waiting to shark fish.
That was a cool read.

If you've seen these guys on the beach, here's what's going on.
https://today.ucsd.edu/story/california-beach-widths-show-resilience

Quote from: Dark_Knight_9C1 on November 18, 2025, 06:00:51 PMThe Real One... make it so!

I've been trying.  Steve and
I used to hit the lakes pretty hard looking for the "One".  I've seen him in Jennings, but the damn thing sat there like a log and never took the bait.

The job hunt continues and so does the fishing.

I thought I was at least going to limit on Cats if not catch a trout or two.  Turns out that only one small stocker was going to be my only catch in 4 hours of fishing.



The white pelican's and cormorants were on the hunt and making the trout scatter and swim for their lives so getting them to take a lure or bait was near impossible.

I tried 4 different spots and only one had the one bite.  I did hear a few noisy ass ospreys above me and they were so concerned with each other, they didn't care about me.



That was it.  Tomorrow is a new day!