Flight of the Bumblebee (3/1)

[Latimeria]

It's been a week since I've been able to get out fishing.  Phone interviews, Honey-Do's, Picking up and dropping off kid, problems with unemployment (still have not been paid)... I'm working harder for $0/hour than ever before!

Rockfish opener and I see a weather window.  I have to be off the water by noon, so plan A is to look for yellows.  Plan B is to get limits of Rockfish.  Plan C is to get a big halibut.

Morning started out perfect!



Last time out and there was bait everywhere!  this time I couldn't find any birds or macks.  Got intel that it's an afternoon bite, but still ran the area looking for yellows.  Lots of "Cloud Bait" down there and even had some yellows pop up a few hundred yards away.  It figures they pulled a Houdini by the time I got over there.



There were plenty of rockfish, but i was amazed at the number of Treefish I was catching.  I ended up with catching 7 and released two since most of my rockfishing was pretty shallow.



And a big one!  2.01# on the scale.



I also got small whitefish, Rosy, Gopher, Brown, Calico, and even sculpin.  Most fish were caught so shallow and I was reeling up super slow that no gas was expanded in them, so they swam right down.  I was trying to cherry pick my top 10.

I had one more fish to catch and headed out deeper to a mud flat that has historically had some big Vermilion on it.  First drop and BAM!  4.19# Red!  I caught it on my bass gear, so it was a blast of a fight the whole way up! 



I tried dropper looping macks to the bottom and had two nice hits.  i knew they weren't yellows, but turned out to be just barely 22" lingcod both times.  Too close to even keep, especially on the Rockfish opener.

That was it.  I was only getting smaller bites after that and decided to try and find some bass and Halibut.  It was tough fishing as the wind was against the tide, but I walloped the bass on whole fresh frozen squid from Ranch99.  I went through an entire box almost and got 14+ bass, all 12-13.9" long.  LOL, not a single legal!  No Halibut and nothing to add to the 10 fish rock limit.  I kept a lively treefish in the livewell in case I needed to switch him out for a bigger.  I also caught some bigger shark bait sized macks.  There wasn't many, but I did get a dozen and used 4 as bait.



My ex-co worker saw this pic and said... "It looks like a bunch of Bumblebees!"

So good day out there and saw a couple of yellows caught by another boat.  It just wasn't in the cards for me.

Well, things are starting to look up in the job hunt.  I've interviewed a bunch of times and have two solid possibilities so I'm starting to relax a bit.  It also helped to finally get out fishing too.

Thanks for reading...

[xjchad]

Sounds like a blast, and good eats!  I'm more than a little jealous!
Glad to hear about the job possibilities too!

[1morecast]

Sweet, if you need a fishing partner next week. I'm off the entire week.

[vdisney]

Looks good to me Tom, sucks about unemployment.  I ended up with about 26 lbs of fillets (lings,reds & sheephead) yesterday myself.  Good luck on the job search my friend.................Verne

[Pinoyfisher]

Good eats for sure!! I be hungry! Are you not a liberty to share where you interviewed? Just curious is all. Small world biotech is.

[BenCantrell]

EEEEEEEEeeee!  Look at all those treefish!  I'm going to kayak out and get one for my lifelist, just you wait and see. 

Nice haul Tom!