Cambria 10/28 Nice Day Fair Fishing

Woke to find pretty calm seas.  In fact it was lake smooth & the surf was next to nonexistent.  High a.m. tide helped even more in flatting out the surf.  Weather was near perfect & marine forcast was for 10k or less windwise.

Since Harvey & Piedras are shut down I was forced to venture into new territory for me.  Launched out of San Simeon Creek & headed NW to kelp beds.  Was able to sit in my boat, wait for whitewater to come in & butt scoot out completely dry on the launch.  Had that thin layer of high clouds to take the edge off the sun & the wind was zero!!!

Used my 5" croc. spoon with great results for the blues.  Had over 25 blues, 1 gopher & 1 yellow.  No big boys to speak of.  Could see tons of blues & some olives battling over my spoon.  At one point switched back to a leadhead & swim bait, it produced absolutely zero.  Threw the spoon back on & it was bite city.  Only got snagged a few times & even when fish were triple hooked on the treble hook it still was pretty easy working the hook out, probably would have been tougher in rough seas.  Kept 6 blues for dinner.

Almost lost my pole at one point, had it laying across my lap with lure on the surface of the water.  A fat blue came out of nowhere & slammed my lure, I barely got my hand on it before it went over the side.

Weather was nice as a summers day, warm glassy.  H20 visibility seems a little off, murky.

We had a 16 ft white shark hanging around down south for a while with 3 confirmed sightings  all from credible sources but I saw nothing out there.  It was on my mind when I tried outside the kelp though.

Hope everyone had a good year, may get out 1 more day before seasons end if conditions permit.

Nice report, PJ.  I wish I still had that opportunity up here...

The battling blues are fun on light tackle.

Thanks for the photos too.

 

PJ, did you troll that kroc around at all, or just jig it or some of each? I have some, just never tried
them off the kayak, or at least not outside santa cruz. maybe I should try it.

you could probably have tried a surface plug with those blues. seems crazy to paddle out with a surface plug tied on, but could be great fun if you find those blues.

J
 

J,

Didn't really troll, i have been jigging it off the bottom.  I've been casting the thing along the kelp 20 ft or so & letting it fall to the bottom, I get a lot of hits on it.

I had a day the best fishing I've ever had with the croc spoon around 6 weeks ago (pics below) where I used it exclusively casting into baitfish around the kelp & I scored 4 fat Lings (32.5, 28, 26, 24) a good Olive & 3 good Verms. (18ish). It was coincidence that there was bait swarming in the kelp but the croc spoon produced heavy.  Even got some good action with it in areas where there was no baitfish.

Abking, I think we're open till end of November but as you know as soon as the swell comes up it's pretty much over.
PJ

Looks like you had a beautiful day on the water. looking at your great pics reminds me how bad I already miss the rock fishing up here off Sonoma County. Oh well next year (hopefully). Thanks for the report.

Matt

Sounds like a great day to me, but I enjoy catching and eating blues. I knew I should have headed up north today. Unfortunately, I couldn't convince my buddy to do so. So we paddled around Port San Luis and out past the breakwater for zero. Nada. Zippo. But the water was dead flat. The fog layer was pretty thick right at the water, but we were able to get around using the horn and the sun.

There's a much bigger crop of sea lions down there now than when I was last living there. No wonder that woman got chomped back in 2003.

Scott

Nice rig, PJ.  Very utiliterian!