Santa Cruz fishing next week

All,

I'm looking for partners to hit the Santa Cruz west side next week.

Kelp fishing.

Post up if you want to go.

MolBasser

I know there are flatties due south of capitola in 50 -70ft of water. I would be up for a drift out there next weekend if I can get the time off work.


-Brian

Stay in touch.

MolBasser

I am up for halibut hunting on Wednesday.  Would this work into your plan, Molbasser?
Pat

windswell on tuesday; dying into the weekend. using brendan's
advice on calm after the swell, the closer you get to the weekend
perhaps the better?  www.blakestah.com.  I will probably try halibut
somewhere on saturday. don't know where yet.

I got questions for molbasser and pat should they have the time and/or
inclination to answer them:

I'm interested in this whole kelp thing. Molbasser, I assume weedless is
only needed if one is not keeping vertical lines? Which only occurs
on a fast drift, drift with light weight or if one is casting to cover water?
I got a couple bass jigs, the spidery looking brown things
with weedguards. Also some offset hooks and power eels. Even rigged
one into a fishtrap (had to put a vertical slice through it). Already have
the bass pole and braid. Want to try casting around in the pockets. So far, limited success with that. Which leads me to the next thing I'm wondering:

Pat, when you fish in the kelp, you stick to jigging vertically? How often
do you change spots? I saw you say you anchor to the kelp. what if
you picked a spot with no fish? Do you change lures or just move to
another spot? What kind of lures/bait do you use?

thanks.

Heh jmairey,
I am a fidgety fisher.  Two drops with no interest and I move.  I generally do vertical drops and gently tease a bit.  At home, Monterey Bay, the kelp is thick and I am more likely than not to grab a hank of kelp.  But, in Elk, there was only bull kelp and I seemed to be able to make sensible drops in the light swell/breeze and had no entanglement problems.
When the rockfish are boiling, (we've had it with blacks and olives) casting swim baits (and probably anything else as well) can be fun.
Fishing open areas, not in kelp, I have gotten loads of surprise rockies of all types, when all I wanted was a few sand dabs........
Randy has tried a variety of bass type weedless jigs with modest success.
As we have become more experienced, we are catching in the kelp less.  Switching out the treble for a single hook won't reduce your hits but seems to nearly eliminate terminal kelp sticks.
Good luck this weekend.
Pat

seabreeze, what lures are you dropping in the kelp? sounds like iron jigs
if you are swapping out trebles for singles?

pardon all my nosy questions, I have a lot to learn.

This weekend we went mostly iron, diamonds as well as sardine patterns.  Diamonds worked best.  But, generally we use squid, or plastics (mainly scampi's) with a squid teaser.  Got the Treefish on a reworked diamond with a small top hook to which the gopher attached itself.
It sounds like Bill has lots of success with his personal plastics.
Pat

I have never had luck with green swimbaits in the kelp. Took me a year to figure that one out!

Go ahead, laugh at the color blind guy.

-Brian

We had given up on our green scampis until Elk, when Randy misplaced his tackle and only had the green one.  The kelp was light but he got his 6th? place ling on it.
Go figure...........
I've generally used red and rootbeer.  White doesn't seem to work too well for me, either.
Pat

It's weird what tackle works for different people.
Because they were all I could find cheap, I got into using scampi knockoffs. The only color choices at Outdoor World were white, glowing, and green metallic. I've caught nice fish on all of them. Last year the green metallic was the hands down overall producer, according to my journal, catching some big (5lb) reds and my only 31" ling last year.
This year I anted up & went down to a real tackle shop for some big  root beer scampis, along with traditional white. So far I've gotten nice fish each time I've used the root beer color, and it's become my first choice this season.
I haven't been regularly using iron jigs, but i have collected some heavier megabaits and some big diamond jigs with single hooks, so I think I'll start working those into my lure lineup.
Sean
 "from the doon"