santa cruz area (4-mile halibut?) 9/9.

A bit late notice, but I will be driving over 17 from mountain view tomorrow morning.  rare weekday window.

my mobile digits are six-five-oh two-two-four twenty-two-ninety.  no vhf.
blue scrambler, big white truck, black wetsuit.

fishing alone, company welcome. call me before 10 tonight, or
tomorrow morning, after 5:30 am.  can meet los gatos park and ride and carpool over.  must be out of water by noon.

hoping to try 4-mile beach. never fished it, surfed it 2000 times. backup is santa cruz, westside would be good, but I don't know launches.  halibut or rockcod.

-john m. airey

Good Luck!

thanks!

There were a lot of boats on the sand just beyond the kelp, I guess word has travelled fast.  Somebody was nice enough to confirm that I was on sand, and yep, everybody was drifting for halibut.

All I could catch for bait were two juvenile rockfish and two smelt. for some reason the anchovies looked at my sabiki, even kind of massed, but did not bite,  . My sabiki worked before, but it does have pretty big hooks. hmmm. maybe I need one with tiny hooks too.

the juvie rockfish were perfect 5" fish tho, looked very halibiteable.

I think those halibut will eat any live 5" fish, so I pinned them on.

No hits on the sand outside the kelp, for me or any of the two other boats that drifted near me, but I got two good hits on a lane into the kelp above 3 mile.  I was sure I had a halibut, but my 1/0 circle hook came unbuttoned, I think it came right out of the stomach and did not catch.

Same with the second, good fish down there, could not keep it hooked.

More bait would have been good, that lane had something big in it.



maybe I should go back to a regular live bait hook, or try a single treble.
the circle hooks hold the bait well. They have caught one halibut. But I think they have released about 3 now.

I cut the smelt in half, for a dropper weight I used a 4 oz diamond jig with no treble, just a nose hook. Nobody wanted the smelt half, but I got a gopher and a vermillion on my dropper,   . released the gopher, but the vermillion is filetted and awaiting tempura.

good luck this weekend people!

Did you end up launching from 4 mile? Heard yesterday that its been going off still from the lane up to 4mile. I don't think there going to dig all of the turbulence from this current swell though

I did launch from 4-mile that day. cake, but it was flat.