Muir beach Recon

My buddy Mike and I dragged our wives to the beach on sunday for a picnic/fishing mission. Conditions were decent with a bit of confused chop outside the cove and a strong wind at times but still fishable. Fishing on the other hand was quite tough.

Bait was easy to come by with half a dozen sea lions and numerous pelicans feasting on the scattered schools of mackerel, sardines and smelt. At one point I hooked up on 6 macks at once and they rendered the sabiki useless. It was tied in the most tangled confused clusterf*#% you've ever seen   . After that I switched to a cut down version with only three hooks and was fine.

We drifted the length of the cove several times and even tried in close to the breakers with sardines for nada. Later we fished the rocks to the south and the north for more of the same. Finally at the end of the day Mike talked me into paddling up wind to the north about a mile in a last ditch effort to catch some dinner. I'm glad he did because that was were I hooked up on a tanker of a ling on a green swimbait. He taped out at 38" and 19 pounds. I usually release the bigger lings because they are the breeders but today this one became supper. Mike pulled a hail mary and caught a fat grass cod as well.

All in all we had a great day at the beach with the girls. The fishing was slow but the bait was plentiful and the picnic was awesome.


p.s. the sardine and food pics are from another day and for reference only  

Yummy!! Nice thanks for the Report and pics looks like you had fun OTW...

 Nice job!  Sounds like one of those days on the golf course where you play poorly all day but do well on the last hole, so you feel great about it and ready to go back at it again!  Thanks for the detail accounting of the cluster F!  We have all been there before!  

nice fish otter, glad you got out and had a good time

I have hiked and mountain biked Tennessee Valley to Muir Beach many a time--with a stop at the Pelican Inn for a Guinness (makes it harder on the way back but you don't notice as much). Never tried fishing from there.

Good report and nice catchin'.

Nice ling!

Thanks for the report.

Sweet lingzilla! That looks delicious.

dam that surf looks hella doable!

Looks just like the one I got at Timber Cove on the 4th (yours is 2" bigger).  Lots of nice big teeth huh!  I just got done smoking mine and it tastes gooooooddd.

Congrat on the nice Ling!  Thank you for the report and pictures Eliot.

Thanks for the kind words guys. I can't wait to do it again!


-Eliot

damn. nice pics . make me hungry sheesh

Nice save, and with a fat ling, good fishing

Sweet ling! I would have been there with you on Sunday had I not had my mishap down here last Thursday (see my thread in "this happened to me"). Muir is a beautiful spot for everything outdoors. Thanks for the report.

great job on the photos/report Otter!
the fish kind of goes without saying but enjoy the permagrin.