Central Coast 8/10/14

[sasquatch]

 Packed up the family and headed up north on a little road trip. Combination of my birthday and Mom's 75th birthday. Made for some fine dinners cooked by my sister.

We drove up Saturday so I didn't have a chance to fish, just dinner beer and pool in the evening. Not bad.

Sunday morning I decided to try some perching at Oceano. Surf was small and the tide was pretty low. Lots of sand crabs of all sizes available. No obvious structure so I just started tossing crabs. Long bomb to short lob, nothing produced. Not even switching to the crack did the trick. Maybe the parade of baby sea lions passing by, one every few minutes, had something to do with it.

I decided to try another beach where I had some success in the past and had also seen locals pull out some nice fish.

I nearly stayed in my car. The beach was covered in seaweed and the tide was so low that there was almost no sand under water. Only weed covered rocks. I saw a possible area from the car and decided to at least try.

Glad I did.

There was a shallow trough below a gravel bed right at the shore break line. I remembered this kind of structure being pointed out to me in the past as a good one.

I grabbed a couple crabs ad tossed them about 6 feet into the trough.

Tap tap tap. Not the way I was used to though.



Nice Calico Surf Perch.

Then the more familiar stronger pull of the Barred Surf Perch.


I got a couple of each of these in between the floating kelp, then got slammed by a harder fighting fish than the others.

Black Perch.

The whole time I was fishing, birds were crashing outside the break and farther. As I left, the moved in close.


Headed back to Mom's after that for lunch, beer, pool, fix the electric fence, steak n lobster dinner for Mom's birthday. Mmmm.

This morning, I hoped to get a quick session in before driving home so I went back to my spot from yesterday. Tide was even lower and there was more weeds. Outta there to the sandy beach at Pismo.

Nothing but weeds brought in by the super moon high tides.

I did get to see the beach equivalent of a crop circle.


Pretty cool.

Might get in a local evening session tonight, otherwise tomorrow.

[Limulus]

Nice way to capitalize on a family vacation!