Busting Bass at the Bay (8/12)

[Latimeria]

My daughter's birthday party is today and I had the urge to fish prior to the festivities.  It's been a while since I've stalked the bay and it felt like a good morning as any to do so.

I tried hunting some corvina for my first 4 stops with only a needlefish to show for it.  It looked like it may be the needlefish curse.  On my last stop, I switched up to some plastics doused in Calico c*cktail and finally got on the board!



Not big, but it was a skunk buster.  Then it all went wide open!  About a 50 yard stretch of beach was chock full of spotties!  I preceded to catch them on every other cast for the next couple of hours. 
Most were typical sized bass at 8-10 inches, but I did manage some better grade fish in the mix!



The needlefish were a bear also.  I found the mother-load of them and they did some damage on my swimmies.  If I got through them, then I usually got some bass.





In between bass, I had a few really good hits and though I had a corvina, but nope!  The Calico c*cktail works with croaker too!





I get some more bass with a few better grade ones as the tide started coming in.

Fat and Stumpy



Getting bigger!



Then I thought I had another corvina on again!  Nope, YFC #2!



Ended up with 24 bass, 2 YFC and a needle fish.  I had a corvina chase and swipe at my swimmy 5' from shore, but it didn't get all of it and only had it hooked for a second.
Things started to get busy, so I walked back to the truck and found a poor King that got squashed on the road!  It wasn't there when I walked down, so it must have just happened.  Such a bummer.



Well, a great morning indeed.  I sometimes forget how fun some shoreline stalking can be!

[Eric H]

Nice spotties.

I went one for two on them last night.

[xjchad]

Nice bass Tom!
Too bad about that nice cali king

[1morecast]

Sweet bay session...Tom.

[Tim524]

Nice to have Bass Thumb every once in a while   Bummer for Mr. King Snake