Pescadero 7-29

Jae and I fished pescadero, launched about 7am in mild surf at low tide and paddled south.  I'd made an extensive map of the area on my GPS so we went to the first reef south of pescadero for our first drift.  I was marking all kinds of bait, and anchovies were even jumping when the kayak startled them.  Right away I caught a huge grass rockfish with a distended belly from pigging out on chovies (It puked up 4 of them).  That got me thinking it would be a great day, but that turned out to be the high point.  The current was worse than I'd ever seen, clocking along at 0.6mph with my drift anchor deployed.  Jae and I each caught decent gophers (as gophers come) and I caught a short ling, but by that point we were spending twice as much time paddling up-current and up-wind for each drift than we actually spent fishing, so we called it at 11.  That was the worst pescadero has ever performed for me, perhaps all the anchovies were making our scampis, tinsels and squid just another morsel in the crowd.

Coming in was kind of scary (see photo background), but pescadero's bark is always worse than it's bite.  After navigating into the little cove and around the big breakers, Jae and I both landed safely, in fact I pulled off a really elegant landing and didn't even get my feet wet - sure showed the tourists how the pro's get things done.  A far cry from last time in big sur, that's for sure.  Pescadero keeps it's no-wipeout record again!

Packing up a guy drove up and asked if I was the guy that shipwrecked on their farm a few years back.  I confirmed that I was and thanked him again for letting us use his service road to get our gear.   I wonder if he asks every kayakangler that, I guess most of the rest of you would say "No, that was probably Josh..."

man, you guys are brave. for some reason that area scares me, maybe because it feels so exposed.

nice to hear you fish there though!

thanks for the report!

john

lots of bait makes it tough for anything but live or fresh dead bait it seems. 

Josh, maybe you just have to bust out the sabiki and get a tube full of 'chovies. use a two hook shrimp fly-like setup but with two bare circle hooks like the 1/0 owner light mutu circle. pin the anchovies up through the jaw and nose and hang them down there, they will get hit. the fish will suck the anchovies down, but the hooks usually catch in the jaw when reeling them in.  I had a pile of anchovies in capitola recently and I landed a  rockfish for about every 4 anchovies (the others were pulled off the hook, shredded, etc). 

J

I didn't have a sabiki on me or I would have done that.  I did tip my jig with anchovies that the grass rockfish coughed up, but they were either picked off or came free on their own.  We had abalone trimmings and squid to tip our jigs with as well.

I definitely would not dive this area, it's close to ano nuevo and 30' deep was about 200 yards offshore.  That current would ensure you never got back to an anchored kayak too.   It's also picked over fairly well by the HMB fleet, I only fish there when I don't have the time or inclination to make a trip to someplace more remote.  Vis looked okay, ~10ft.

THanks for the report Josh, I nearly ended up going there Saturday.  Opted to try for salmon at Pacifica and caught a thresher.  Fair trade I guess.  One of these days I will make it out there, or even pigeon pt.  I know of a sweet launch spot over there as well.  As long as you dont mind gettin wet that is.  JTF..