Lover's Point 7/5 - Rockfish love

bink and I launched about 7am from Lover's Point beach, paddled around the point to the area where fishing is allowed, and worked the kelp for about 4 hours. This was my most successful rockfish outing to date: caught 7 fish, kept 5, including my first legal cabezon. (Much better than Saturday from MBK - 4 sanddabs total.) The rockies were of modest size, but Mrs. Finaegelin credits my WAF account if I bring home fish-flesh! I owe my catching success to the great advice dished out in the fishing tips section of this great site. Caught most of them on a diamond bar jig or a butter knife jig, plus a couple on the shrimp fly teaser just above. Squid or anchovy hunks on the hooks. A very satisfying morning.

Thanks, bink, for a good time fishing. I hope to see you again some time on the water.

Here are a few pics. It was very flat most of the morning, with occasional 3 foot swells. Gentle breezes. Easy-peasy (thanks to Scopace).

hey nice job! and way to make the wifey happy while you're at it!

rough seas.     Glad you guys fared well 

Great job on getting the Mrs out there.Try launching from coral st next time.Shorter paddle.

Congrats on a great day out there - and thx for the fine report.  OTW shots and dinnerplate shot - very nice.   

Glad you scored some WAF points.  Thanks for the report and pictures Andy.

WTG on the rockys Andy. Wished all ocean conditions were always that way.

Jedmo

Looks good! WTG

I'm with you. Have always found Lover's Point very productive. Glad you had a swell time OTW. Planning to go there in the next weekend or two.
Danny

Happy to hear that you were able to meet up with Michael and do some fishing outta LP. I've met Michael, and he's a real cool guy

I'm just as happy to hear that this was the best success you've had so far with the RF. I have to agree that launching outta Coral is ideal. My buddy and I both launched from LP and ended up fishing a lil further south of Coral. Man, that was quite a paddle trip for us with some winds and decents swells. Next time I'm launching outta Coral lol!!

Thank you for sharing your report, and if you're ever in the area again I hope to be otw with you!!

 - Daniel

Sorry, for the late addition, but I was pooped after Monday and I ended up falling asleep at 9:00 PM not long after I finished unpacking and spraying down everything.  So here is my addition:

I woke up late, at about 3:50 instead of 3:00 AM like I was planning.  Fortunately, I had done most of my packing the night before so I didn't have much to pack.  I ended up leaving at about 4:15 AM and made it to lovers point at about 6:05 AM.  Looking out at the ocean, there appeared to be very little swell, just a hint of a breeze and no one out on the water.  Pretty soon finaegelin arrived and we got unpacked and were ready to launch at 7:00 AM.  We thought about coral street, but the launch at lovers point looked pretty easy with the ramp all the way to the beach, and just a short jaunt around the corner to fishable water.

Once we got on the water, there was small dinghy and a small inflatable out there but that's it.   finaegelin struck blood first with a nice pan-sized rockfish.  I was using my usual 5" gulp pearl white jerk shad fished carolina style with a 2 oz egg sinker.  I was getting hit pretty consistently, except I kept missing the hookset left and right.  I finally hooked up to a decent 14" kelp rockfish which was gut hooked so it ended up on my stringer.  The rest of my day ended up being a mix of missing a bunch of bites and then hooking up to either a kelp rockfish or black & yellow (all released).  Even with the number of missed bites, I had caught and released at least 7 or 8 fish including a short cabezon. 

At around 11:00 finaegelin needed to take off.  Since the wind had picked up a bit I started tying up to the kelp.  While tied up I noticed a few 1" baby calico bass.  I am wondering if anyone targets calicos explicitly up here.  My guess is that the bottom fishing we do here is not conducive to catching calicos.  When I used to fish down south we used to catch them with fly lined anchovies or with scampis tossed into the kelp beds and reeled back through the kelp beds but off the bottom.

I kept fishing for a couple of hours after that with more of the same as before, I caught and released an additional 3 or 4 rockfish and a nice fat 15' cabbie.  Pretty soon the wind picked up enough to make my drifts way too fast.  At this point I decided to call it a day and paddle back in. 

All in all it was a great day.  It was a little cold since the day was overcast and the marine layer never burnt off.  But the big swell predicted everywhere else was not present and, until noon, there was only a light breeze to help with the drift.  I had a good time fishing with finaegelin and I look forward to fishing with him again some time in the near future.

Michael