Santa Cruz 12/29 report

Storm is coming so can't miss a good calm day for a while, so went to Santa Cruz from harbor. Water was mirror like without wind. Perfect day for kayak fishing.
I didn't have much time due to coming guest, so headed directly to a mile buoy and reeled one smelt from a small group and used it as bait which brought in 35" ling in 10min.
Picked up a couple more smelt and caught ~22" ling using them. It looked small compared to the first one and let it go.
After first two in 30min, no bite for an hour. Later hooked a couple more lings but all popped.
Water was getting rough around 2:30pm, and headed home.

That's a nice ling! Thanks for the report.

Thank you for the report

35! Damn that must’ve been a fun one to catch. 

35! Damn that must’ve been a fun one to catch.

It was indeed. I lost similarly heavy one yesterday due to line break, so this time I let drag loose but enough to bend rod, so it took minutes to fight. It pulled lines several times and I just let rod and reel drag do the job and finally landed.
Was thinking about using net but the size is too big for my small net, so had to use gaff.