Rusty Mc Rust Rust (10/29)

[Latimeria]

It's been since June that I fished inshore.

Steve caught a bad bug, so I made the solo trip to try and get my therapy in.  Beautiful morning and it was nice not having to show up at any particular time, but I had to call it by noon no matter what.



Water was quite cold and the wind was already out first thing.  3' @7seconds wasn't bad, but with the winds, it was a little bit spoty.



I caught a mix of bass, rockfish, whitefish, and assorted oobly gooblies.  I was only keeping the ones that weren't going to make the return trip.







I had 2+ dozen fish through the morning but stopped at 9 in case I got a big one.





i was dropping the small iron and bucktail which caught most of the fish, but I dropped a big 4oz bucktail with a whole squid pinned on.  I should have tied it up to a bigger rod, but I stuck with the bass gear.

Of course, it got inhaled, and felt like a nice lingcod.  I got it off the reef by about 15 feet, when it went ripping down and found something to wrap on or hole to go in.  I tried opening the bail, but it kept bouncing and was not getting loose.  I tried for a bit with no luck and the line eventually snapped.  Losing a $12 bucktail was the hardest part of the whole thing.

I had a few nice fish on which really seemed to be sheepshead, but they dogged me also.  That's what I get for using the smaller gear to have a little more fun.  Oh well.

I felt a little tap and was sure I hooked it, but felt nothing.  I reeled in to what I thought was a kelpfish at first and realized that I had a painted greenling (Oxylebius pictus) instead!  Holy crap!  I didn't think these things got anywhere near Southern Cal!



Well, I never got the big one to get my limit, but it was a fun shot at them and fun actually staying inshore.  I actually ran to the deeper rockfish spots to look around, but only saw nothing... not even a pixel on the sonar.

As I was pulling the fish out of the water hold, I saw this nasty critter.







Nasty...

Anyway, my booty for the morning.  The title to the post had to do with all the fish I missed.  It's been a while since I bottom fished and used line for something other than pelagics.



Thanks for reading!

[sasquatch]

Wish I could have made it. I'm still coughing up half a lung.

[jrodda]

The painted greenling!!! I unhooked one on the sport boat today! Greenling was on my tongue but assumed kelpfish in the moment since that's a NorCal thing. So funny we both saw them this week. Good haul on the meat. Sounds like a nice fun day!

[Tim524]

That hitch hiker looks cool whatever it is. Nice variety, the bigger Whitefish actually fight pretty good and taste great too. Hope Steve gets to feeling better

[vdisney]

Looks good to me, except the nasty looking critter crawling out of the gills   

[BenCantrell]

Super cool on the painted greenling! I saw one once snorkeling in La Jolla, and it always bugged me that I couldn't catch one. There's a lot of photos of them perched on the wrecks outside Mission Bay (Ruby E, Yukon, etc).