Non yak reports just for the info

Hi all. God bless you and may you arrive home safely from every trip.

Capitola was busy today. It was nice to get out after many months of winter/covid fishing hiatus while I work on some personal goals and conditions I’ve put on a yak purchase. Anyhooo

There are no secrets in Cappy, and I hit a well-known reef close to SC3 buoy early. Despite the hella fleet out there, nobody was on this particular reef. Some yaks were nearby, but nobody was on the same spot (which is a separate contemplation about whether different GPSs might vary). I drifted it several times for a half dozen rockfish. Couple decent vermillion, an olive, and some blues. Then I hit spongebob for nada. So I did random drifts between mile buoy and the wharf hoping for halibuts, as this has worked before and often yields some brown rockfish. Ended up with a keeper ling this way and some short ling using bycatch kingfish on a trap rig. My hope is to pick up a big halibut on a kingfish in that stretch since I’ve gotten big butts and lings in that vicinity on kingfish before.

This was a typical Capitola day. What I’m finding interesting is the small but long-interval Southern swell, since I think reports are about what we can learn or reinforce. I’m a believer that when the swell goes south, the fish shut their mouth. Yeah, I caught some rockfish. But the real target in Capitola is halibuts, and it was a slow halibut day from what I heard with the exception of a pacific halibut on one of the rentals, go figure.

This is my segue to a couple weeks ago with a more vigorous long-period southern swell. I went out in Monterey bay on a day I figured would be slow because of the southern swell. It makes the water cold, as I understand it, and cold fish aren’t as active. Because it was my first opportunity to compliantly go fishing this year, I ignored the conditions in favor of just being happy to get out. It turned out to be the slowest rockfish day of its kind in my life. I’m keeping details to a minimum on this part. A lot of posts on NCKA have been met with hostility lately, and I get enough of that at home thank you very much. Not laying extra bait out for any of the self-badged virtue cops to take down.

Hope some people on NCKA had great trips this weekend.

Good stuff. thnx for the water time synopsis