free fishing day in capitola.

twice a year you can fish with no license.

so we got a sitter for my sons, borrowed a friend's kayak for my wife to use and went to capitola.

we slayed the kingfish,  . Since the only other fish my wife has ever caught was a 7" trout in the sierras while backpacking, she was stoked on the action.  a sensitive graphite bass rod makes it pretty fun.

Then we drifted a smaller specimen or two for nada. we didn't drift very long since we spent so much time pulling up kingfish. I admit I was not
expecting to catch much on the drift.

But the weather and water were great. infrequent medium-small south swell. north windswell not making it into capitola. water not so clear, high tide made the kelp less visible, but otters and seals made appearances.

As we ran out of time I saw bait in the water and used my new 6 hook super-small hook sabiki and pulled up 2 3.5" smelt and 4 anchovies.
This was actually the high point of the day for me.
These I put on a hook and promptly lost them as I fished for more bait.
I don't know what was pulling them off the hook, but it was not sticking to a small live bait hook. But I'm really pleased with that bait catching episode, it's the first time I've had a sabiki ready for when I see the flash of bait in the water and then caught anchovies.

Next time I'll skip the kingfish, drift squid, look for bait on the drift and switch to live bait when I catch it.

we kept 4 small croaker, I'm going to try them on a big leadhead for lings if I get another chance to fish north coast santa cruz this season.

hope everybody had a good time at lake mendocino.