MBK Friday 9/3

Launched from MBK with a friend, and immediately was able to score some live anchovies, smelt and even a sardine for bait right off the beach and into the moorings.  Debated where to go after that, but saw no one out by the red can, and one of the squid boats was coming into the docks to offload.  Decided to head out for halibut again off the hotel.  Got into about 80fow and drifted my first smelt and got a take down with scratched bait right off the bat, but didn't stick.  Kept sending the now dead smelt down and had a bit of brown rockfish eager to take it a few times.  Swapped out to another live smelt and this time got an underling.  Sending out anchovies resulted in more browns, and at one point a nice little octopus. 

Ran out of live bait and started using squid and caught a few more baby blues and blacks and some larger browns. Conditions were very nice even when the wind picked up at noon, we came in close to shore and slow trolled whole squid on the way back in.  Started to catch some nice sized Ocean Whitefish, which I've never caught in Monterey before, but do remember catching them on the Islander trip.  Three nice sized ones were released, and kept one nice sized one to try out for dinner.  Turned out very good with ginger, green onions, rice wine vinegar and hot sesame oil steamed in foil on the BBQ. No butts, no squid, but there are lots of baitfish out there. 

Landed back at MBK around 2:30pm, and after landing noticed that I could barely pull my kayak up the beach.  Probably about 15 gallons of water inside the hull of my X-Factor I had to pump out just to get it up out of the water.    Found the issue while loading up my kayak, the seat scuppers are cracked. More on that in a later post.

Thanks for the report from the secretive side of the bay.

Too bad about the leaky boat, but it’s good that it got you back to shore without any swimming…

Thanks for the report
Sorry about your boat
You can always "release" those whitefish to me, but after hearing you enjoyed it, I think you might keep them for yourself from now on