Good Bassing 4/5

[jrodda]

Weather is looking great for the next several days for some boating. Tide peaking right about when the wind comes up, so IMO perfect for the 4-6 hour inshore trip. Unfortunately (well it is fortunate but you know me) I'm gonna be training Thursday and Friday to start as a solar consultant and they're taking those mornings. Luckily the weather opened up even more and Wednesday morning went from meh to good.

Launched 0730. Forgot to charge my radio so stayed well within cell range, which eliminated the critter holes I learned about, but plenty to play with on the inside.

The 3 way rig has only caught a ton of bass and a sheephead, no halibut. Not bad results but still no legal to my name. Figured today I'd troll two rods, one with swimbait one with crank, and hit some new ground.

Water was 51º on the first stop! Dropped 5 degrees since last week. Fish didn't mind. Stopped on some familiar stones along the way and instantly got a nice turd roller. Soon as I released it I looked over and the other rod was going off. Released that one as well. Was feeling generous with the rockfish in the house (and a ton of yellowfin from Verne, thanks Verne!) so mostly releasing the legals today.



Quickly popped 2 more legal sandies, then a solid calico. Decided the calico had some tasty looking shoulders on 'em.



Caught another couple legal turds, kept one, then it slowed just enough for me to focus back on trying new spots.

Dark.



Light.



Got over to the new-ish zone and it was continued bass. Grade started to be more mixed with shorts and legals. Saw a few nice marks, one school made me think seabass until I pulled a solid calico out of it.



Hit one more stone on the way back, ultimately deciding I did wanna keep a few more, but all I caught were shorts, so headed in as the wind came up.

Count was something like 10 sand bass, 5 calicos, a little more than half were legal. Good fishing in my book. Missed a number of bites too. Crankbait was not the hot stick this time, swimbait took at least 10.

2 fish gutted and dry aging in the mini fridge now. Ready to mow down on that tuna tonight!

Oh, and the calico I kept was loaded with shrimp! And a little squid head was mixed in there as well.

[skrilla]

Nice! If you got em a few hours earlier you could of had some kabobs. 

[Latimeria]

Great session Jeremy!  That bassin' you've been doing has just been outstanding.

Super glad Verne hooked you up with some tasty tuna also.  I've been eating it for two days straight and I don't see an end in sight.  LOL


Also, as the shrimp go.  I've cut up a ton of bass and inshore rockfish with shrimp in it.  I'm almost thinking of setting out some shrimp traps.  I purchased the crab trap card this year so I can use traps for crabs, but might set it up so I could also look to get some shrimp.  I know we have big bullseye shrimp, but I'm going to look more into it.

[Chris]

What depth are you targeting?

Been seeing some good halibut come out of the surf and also 80-90ft. We targeted 50-80 last time and got a bunch of bass.

I've only bounce balled without bait once and used a 5" white big hammer with an 8/0 Aki twist hook, no lead head, 2ft behind a dodger and 6ft behind the ball. Got 3 halibut if I remember right, no legals but no bycatch. It takes quite a bit of weight to keep straight up and down with a dodger though.

[jrodda]

30-50' for the most part. I'm feeling good about the sub 50' water especially as we get into grunion season.

Gonna have to start using the dodger I guess. Seems like the major difference in presentation. Just hate using more than a pound. I'm thinking a swimbait or fluke under a hoochie would work without question. The crankbaits should also work. I'm either too focused on hard bottom and need to embrace the infinitude of the endless mud flats, or there's just simply more hungry bass than halibut in my zones.