capitola with my father in law tuesday 8/7/07

went out from the wharf in a skiff with a bag of frozen anchovies and a box of squid. lots of bait in the water and i already knew the fishing would be hard since the fish all had tons of anchovies to choose from.

saw a seal eating a smoothhound and slapping it around the surface. saw some dolphins and sea otters too.

after an hour we decide to go a little further north and bounce some bait on a rockcod rig and let it drift. we scored some nice vermillions and big gophers on the first pass, actually limited for one on the first pass and did the drift a second time to do it again and the bite turned OFF.

i never held much faith in terms of rf fishing out there in capitola because there seems to be nothing but sand. i was pretty surprised to get rather large rf for the area. we caught 5 octopus this day too. the only good area we found after hitting the usual spots on my gps which includes adams reef, the mile bouy, the north and south reefs was the SLLLLOOOOWWW  drift between these two waypoints:

36.56.308 / 121.57.774

to

36.56.324 / 121.57.861

i think depth was like 80 feet or so and we just bounced rock cod rigs off the bottom with a 8oz weight and anchovies on the hooks. the rods were left in the holders and we just kicked back, ate snacks and talked.

the wind was almost zero and the swell was tiny.

we were out by 1200 having ice cream and falling asleep.

the tank at capitola boat and bait has nice stripers there and some rf as well for viewing.

john

Way to score in crapitola.  That place gets wacked so it is definitely tricky to pull in a quality limit.  Very generous of you to post the numbers too!

i always felt the same about capitola and it has always produced little fish for myself. usually i hold rod in hand and fish actively and also do some jigging with lures but this day i was feeling especially lazy and tired from a bad nights sleep so i used the rf rigs and just let it drift. i felt almost guilty hooking fish and not really working for it but it probably helped to not move the pole so much.

on the north coast i prefer fast jigging when it comes to bigger rf and lings and use a sumo with glow in the dark sides with a gamkatsu 3/0 hook tied to it. those jigs are pretty big and catch fish pretty well up north but i have always had bad luck in capitola with this style of fishing.

those numbers are good for anyone who is heading out there and a ff would be handy, we had nothing but the line counter and a handheld gps that day.

john