Came Back With Some Juice 12/16

[jrodda]

Tough couple months of financial difficulties and stupid mistakes kept me off the water. Changed the oil on the outboard last night and decided to hop around and just recalibrate all my local hard bottom spots, pull a few whitefish for dinner, see if any larger game might be around, and pick off some variety.

Out the harbor 0730. Looked nice for the first few minutes and then the morning onshore breeze blew up some white caps for a couple hours. Pretty flat swell but wind chop coming from 3 directions made the ride out a bit wet.

First drop in 120' resulted in a bass. This spot always seems to put out a bass first, then for the rest of the time spent I'm swimming in whitefish.



That's basically what happened. First one in the bag.



Picked off 2 more dink skrillas. Longfin dab in the mix.



I was more than halfway through my squid rations so I upped and moved. Was gonna stay around HB with the wind but since it died down to grease calm I decided to go forward with my plan of burning as much of my old gas as possible today and headed to Newport.



Pulled up on a spot I'd been working a couple months ago and nothing super fishy, but I was getting pecked by dinks. I was curious and hoping for some weird reef critter, but ended up with a baby rattler.



A few minutes later I nabbed another keeper whitefish and then a decent sized mackerel. Decided on the spot to rig up my 50# rod with a 3 way and 24oz weight and start bounce balling with the mackerel.

I got maybe a mile before the mackerel was undergoing rigor mortis so I switched rods and put out an LCFM on the 3 way in continuing a search for halibut. Spent about 90 minutes in 40-70' in okay looking water before it was almost noon and I decided to beat the wind back to Huntington.

Stopped on some hard bottom on the way in and wasn't seeing much on the FF, when I get a hit and run, taking off behind the boat. I knew immediately what it was, but it wouldn't jump, so I was crossing my fingers to finally see a BSB for myself. Well, 15 minutes of playing it on 30# and I finally got it up to the boat and, yes, it was a thresher, probably in the 6-7' range. Pretty cool considering I only ever catch bass with this rig and in this area. The fish was hooked midway up the tail so it was a real trick trying to secure the tail enough to remove the trebles. I grabbed the tail and leader 3 separate times, each time it exploding away, before on the 3rd time the line finally snapped and I lost the LC. Bummed for the fish and the $20. Definitely could have gaffed it but I really didn't want the mess today, and still have some big game in the freezer.

Retied another crank and scouted the area a bit more for one more bass.



Got back to the dock by 1330 and I had barely burned a gallon of gas in about 30 miles. Somehow the best fuel economy I've ever gotten when I was going out of my way to get rid of old gas. Go figure! Anyway, no halibut, but 6 species and a surprise thresher on a gorgeous day is a solid trip in my book.

[vdisney]

Glad you finally got a chance to get out Jeremy, nice write up and exciting about the thresher.  FWIW, I make my share to stupid mistakes   

[Tim524]

Getting some action with old gas, nice way to kill some time Bummer on losing the LC but you made up for it with fuel economy

[Latimeria]

I'm starting to think you and threshers are like me and BSB.  lol

Great way to burn off gas and great report as always Jeremy!  I swear, I'm not sure where all these whitefish came from, but there are absolute clouds of them on all of the structure.  I have to drop down the 300-gram jigs to keep them off the line.

[jrodda]

I'm starting to think you and threshers are like me and BSB.  lol

Great way to burn off gas and great report as always Jeremy!  I swear, I'm not sure where all these whitefish came from, but there are absolute clouds of them on all of the structure.  I have to drop down the 300-gram jigs to keep them off the line.

I wouldn't mind suddenly becoming a thresher magnet after they neglected me for so long, but I hope they have the etiquette to give my lures back in the future. The BSB should be around my local structure though so it's a little odd I haven't hooked one yet.

I find 80-150' hard bottom from dana to Santa Barbara is loaded with the 8-15"ers. The ability to bring home good food and get bit consistently is nice but I've yet to find a coastal spot that has those bigger models like you have been finding. Those models seem like a real treat.