Abundance in a post! Everything looks delicious!

Looks like a beautiful day. Good quality!

Birthday is today (29th) so I booked a night with my lady at the Catamaran Hotel on the northwest shore of Mission Bay. One night in a hotel makes for some awkward time slots to fish, as I learned, but I wanted to see the bay from a different angle with Alicia instead of duck in and back out around the east side like I normally do.

Got into town around 1230. We wanted to try this Italian street food place that's on the strand so we went straight there. Its associated parking lot is very large, but not large enough for the Sunday beach crowd. After 20 minutes of figure 8s through the parking lot, I was ready to drive into the ocean, so we bailed and checked in early at the hotel up the street, if just to get parking.

Leaving home a little later, having to bail on the original food plan, and going through the process of checking in early, ate up a lot of the time I wanted to fish in the early afternoon. I originally wanted to tube, but the wind was obviously not going to comply during the time window. We got lunch at the Flamingo-somethingruther brunch place across the street and still enjoyed an all-too-large italian sandwich.

Alicia wanted to try casting a line for maybe the second time, so I obliged and brought a couple pieces of squid. I showed her the basics and she made a little progress. We hadn't gotten any bites before we were notified that our room was ready 15 minutes into fishing, so we had to scoot from there.

Amazing view of the bay! Thought I would have to pay some kind of premium for the ocean view so it was a nice surprise.



I wanted an early-ish dinner to try for corvina after sunset with ample time, so we went down to the hotel restaurant at 1800. Let them know it was my birthday and we were seated to a 1/3 capacity restaurant. 20 minutes later we still hadn't seen a waiter so much as ask us for a drink order. I went over to the hostess to let them know and they went into the kitchen and straightened things out. We got a bit of a deal on our food, which was nice of them, but I ended up losing about an hour of fishing time to the whole ordeal.

Ended up throwing an LCFM 110 along the shoreline looking for corvina or whatever was hungry from about 2030 to 2200. Not a sniff! But, I did see SeaWorld's drone display across the bay which was very cool. I wish I could be down there for the whole 4th of July display.


Woke up at 0430. Maybe 4 hours of mediocre sleep but I was locked in on the mission.



I hurried over to launch at Ski Beach Park to fish Fiesta Bay. On the water at 0500. Kinda cold, east wind blowing, which I fought to get out. A few bumps early on until I finally connected with the quintessential California Rolling Turder.



Shortly after, I finally got something other than a pee pee poo poo bass to eat an underspin.



Lot of short bites until I found a hole that started getting me more committal fish.



~20" halibut came to play.



I was up to 5 with a couple farmed fish. The other day I told myself 6 would be a nice number for this session. The spot was still biting but I kept farming one after another, despite the wide gap hook, tight lines, and fast reeling.

I lost at least 4 more fish. By 0900 the wind had come up quite a bit from the west now, it became apparent that I was going to have to now fight pretty hard all the way back to my launch spot. Very poor planning on my part to not launch from the east and let the wind do all the work all morning.

I trolled an underspin at .5mph as I hammered through chop for an hour, getting soaked, and farmed another on the way in, right next to the boat for good measure.

I had a good time despite a few challenges! Glad the fish cooperated at least a little bit and I was able to fish a decent amount of new water and shoreline. Looking forward to getting back down there again. And thanks Tom for steering me in the right direction!

That was some good catching. Great conditions.

Also heard Carp. I'll be hitting Big Bear Lake for some this holiday weekend.

- Keith

I'm working on finding an online place that will send the letters to our reps and the DFW.  I'll hopefully get that out this week,

The pickles are on the way out but the tomatoes have gone wild!  Time to work those top tomatoes!

Caprese


Snacks


Mexican Shrimp c*cktail


Also made a ton of Salsa Fresca and plenty of homemade pasta sauce.  (We used a bunch already just from this pot so there wasn't much to can)







Cucumbers have been small during the late harvests, so plenty of pickle chips still to be made.



Well, at least it's a start.

I haven't been able to hit Santee Lakes in quite a bit.  I was going to head down to the bay to bass fish, but the traffic and people last week scared me off.  Also, my shoulder is shot so I wouldn't have to cast as much freshwater fishing.

It was nice to just run down the street and I brought my trusty Ninja Rod.  Conditions were nice with a little breeze by 8:00am, but schools of baitfish were everywhere!  There must have been a shad spawn or something.



I saw a few bass smashing the bait balls, but also saw some JUMBO carp jumping out of the water!  Holy smokes were they big!

In any case, the next few hours were fun.  All of the bass were legit which was pretty exciting to say the least.

First on the board.



They were definitely in the "That's a lot of fun" category.  I used a subtle technique for a few of them, but they were smashing it on the surface also!  The sound of "PLOOSH!" is a really exciting sound and maybe even better than a screaming reel!



All the fish were within a +/- pound of each other.



I lost one that sounded like it would have been a 5 pounder, but it was probably just an aggressive 3# model.

It wasn't wide open by any means, but in 2 hours I went 4 for 5 on bass and that was alright.
It was by no means Lake Barrett fishing, but damn good for the puddles.



I worked 5 of the 7 lakes (pretty quickly) and will definitely be back again soon if I could get out of work at a decent hour.



Thanks for reading and until the next Puddle Excursion!

Quote from: Latimeria on June 25, 2026, 06:55:13 PMYou just guilted over impose. Lol

Still wanted some sauce. Feeling guilty was your choice. 🙂

I wrote them an email last Thursday diplomatically begging for a compromise for short and light 7 strand wire leaders, which I believe whites have cut through on several occasions. They didn't acknowledge it. Sucks that they went through with it, this is the first update I've heard.

You just guilted over impose. Lol