Cabrillo Tuesday -SoCal - (9-9-14)

Hey, that's not a halibut! -- But I'll eat it for dinner anyway.     

I made it out for a little mid-week time OTW here in in SoCal at Cabrillo Beach on the "inside" of the harbor this morning.   I was targeting CA halibut but I came home with a legal barred sand bass and a legal California Scorpionfish. (aka sculpin).

I was OTW by about 0700 and fished until about noon.  It was hot!  and still! -- but waves were still breaking over the sea wall.  One of my SoCal buddies beat me out by about 15 minutes, but I never heard from him after we launched.  He may have had a better day than I did, but I can't complain.  I didn't get any halibut but the two legal fish for dinner tonight makes up for that. 

I had trouble making lizardfish for bait.  That's unusual.  I only got one bait-sized lizardfish, but this sand bass gobbled it! 



That was my only piece of bait so I switched to a plastic swim bait and in short order got this decent 12" Scorpionfish. (We call them sculpin down here.)



They have a nasty venom in their spines -- so you have to handle them carefully.  You have to clip the fins if you plan to keep the fish, but they are quite tasty.




Oddly -- with my sabiki instead of catching lizards by the bucket, I caught lots of short little sand bass and one short calico bass. (All released, of course.)  They were all mostly clones of this one.  I tried moving around but I either got large lizards or tiny sand bass.



Here's the final measurements on the keepers before filleting -- The sand bass was full of crabs.  The sculpin was full of small anchovies and other baitfish.





Now I know these aren't huge fish.  There are guys catching yellow tail from their kayaks down in La Jolla. (3 hours south). But the goal here is a quick trip out, right near the house, trying for halibut but taking what you get.  And that's dinner tonight!     That's good enough.

With my teaching schedule this term this is the 2nd week in a row I've been able to get out mid-week. That doesn't mean there is no work on those days but it does mean I can move the work around to facilitate a little time OTW.  I intend to take advantage of that as often as possible.   

dave   

DINNER was good -

I have always enjoyed fishing close to home.  Trophy fish are great, but nothing beats being on the water, and fishing local means more days OTW