Lee 15 birthday celebration saltwater fishing bonanza

[rlown]

I guess there are "boy scout" snipe and the real bird.

snipe-pair.jpg

https://cdfgnews.wordpress.com/2015/10/ ... ical-joke/

And yes, Grunion exist as well.

grunion-fb2-650x408.jpg

http://www.californiabeaches.com/grunion-run-schedule/

I'd love to see Lee hook up with a coastal striper. They are very fun.

[Jimr]

Been out many a night pitching Grunion into buckets. I was told that a great way to prepare them is to pop off the head and let the entrails follow. Clean out and stuff the cavity. I guess with whatever stuffing you desire. Then saute'.

Wow, they're running this weekend (out of season for take). Maybe I'll take my kids on a snipe hunt Saturday Night

"I'd love to see Lee hook up with a coastal striper." There ya go GB! Very fun. I've only caught a couple of small stripers. 6 lbs or so, but I caught them on 6lb test. They're landlocked around here. Many of our reservoirs grow them into the low 40lbs. I've made a few attempts to hook one up on my 8 wt and hand tied flatwing flies. No success yet, but haven't tried too many times.

[oldranger]

Ah grunion! Back in college in the late 60's, a couple of buckets, a couple of coeds, a few beers and a grunion grabbing frenzy about midnight. Then to the apartment and while the coeds crashed a buddy and I would drink more beer (safeways Brown Derby at .69 a 6 pack), and clean the fish. About 3 am wake up the ladies for a fish fry. Next day cut classes. Maybe that's why I went to ucsb for 11 years!

[Jimr]

"Maybe that's why I went to ucsb for 11 years!"

That and maybe because the damn war lasted so long.

[giantbrookie]

Thanks everyone for your posts to this thread and your sentiments, including the fun exchanges.

Staying on the fishing theme, yes I do in fact hope to get Lee his first striper soon. I myself have only caught one, which was a barely-keeper one (18") from the same Marin beach featured in the earlier set of surf fishing posts this year. It was sometime in the early 90s and I recall having pretty slow day with one smallish striped surf perch caught. I made an absolutely horrible cast that sailed off to my right instead of going straight ahead. In shanking this cast to the right I put it in the shallow foam zone, so I hurriedly reeled in only to find that I had inexplicably become hung up on what I thought was simply sand. I wondered how in the world I could be snagged on a rock when I saw a bunch of flapping around in the foam. Anyhow, later this year when the stripers start to frequent the coast, I will try to get Lee his first, although one may come earlier than planned (have read some reports, already). That jetty would in fact be a fine place, too, in addition to my favorite Marin haunts (where I've seen others catch some really nice ones in recent years).

Update, Friday April 21. So, the next chapter? Did Lee repeat his amazing day? Did I undo my "4" cabbie skunk" (as Lee described my day)?

Originally we wanted to go out Saturday because the surf forecast was mellower (2-3' vs 3-5'), but schedule conflicts forced us to go Friday, the last day of Dawn's and Lee's spring break. Both kids went. We bought double the amount of live ghost shrimp at our local Castro Valley bait shop (two dozen) and we brought along the usual backup frozen shrimp from the home freezer. Oddly enough we found more folks fishing the jetty on Friday than we did the previous Saturday. Whereas everyone except us had been crabbing on Saturday Apr 15, and nobody crept beyond about halfway out the jetty, this time pretty much everyone was going after fish and they were dispersed all the way out to the end of the jetty. The total number of folks was probably about the same as it had been on Saturday.

In any case we initially had to stop short of Lee's sweet spot because it looked like someone was fishing very close to it. The bigger surf made Lee's strategy of tossing the bait into submerged gaps between rocks much dicier as the waves drove the stuff backward into snags. In fact he had two big strikes that led to snags and could not be budged. After a few minutes the folks fishing near the old sweet spot migrated further down the jetty and Lee relocated over his honey hole. However, the bigger surf forced him to change his game plan after several snags. In the meantime he led off with a number of very small fish that were quickly released: 3 very small (4" ) cabezon and one small (6") kelp greenling. My skunk continued. Then Lee hooked his first keeper, a striped surf perch of around 11". I was getting a lot of taps but no hook ups, similar to the week before. Finally I unskunked with an 11" striped SP. Lee then brought in another striped SP of similar size and then a black SP, the first one any of us had caught (about 11") and he released a silver SP that ran somewhere in the 9-10". I kept getting tapped and having my bait stripped. I am accustomed to having fish self hook, but I figured I should adjust and try to actually set the hook during the 2nd set of taps. By then we had nearly run out of bait. On my upper hook I put on some of the reserve shrimp, and on the lower hook some pieces of discarded ghost shrimp and frozen shrimp parts (partly dried sitting on the rock). I received the usual taps and set the hook hard. This time, it held into something quite heavy. I had a bit of drama when the fish got stuck behind a rock just before hoisting it out, but I soon got the fish on land: it was a 16" rubberlip surf perch, the largest surf perch anyone in the family had ever seen, hooked on the stale cocktail combo on the lower hook.

4379rubberlipCR.jpg

By this point, Lee had left with the last of the bait to try his hand at poke poling. Initially he had picked up the longest sticks/branches he could find washed up on the jetty, but Dawn found someone's telescoping poke pole that they had thrown out because the section stops didn't work anymore. Lee set that up and went off to try. On his first attempt he had just put the tip and bait down in a hole when the gusty winds blew sand into his eye. Because of this he gently set down his pole with the bait still in the hole, but the pole propped on some rocks (so it didn't slide in). A fish, however, grabbed at the bait and yanked the entire rig into the hole, where it promptly sank out of sight and out of reach.

In the meantime, I had used my last available piece of frozen shrimp on one hook to catch a small silver SP in the 7" range, then I had to forage and get some limpets. These brought in two more silvers in the 9-10" range. We released all of our silvers, keeping only the three striped SPs the black SP and the big rubberlip. We had placed these on a stringer on the sheltered side of the jetty. The week before I had tried hanging the stringer on the other side but this was clearly a risky proposition with the waves (that threaten to drive the fish it hole that may be impossible to pull out of). The sheltered stringer situation worked well and the fish looked in nice shape until we quit and I went to check it out to clean the fish. Something had chewed off the tail of the black SP and mangled the head and "chin" area of one of the striped SP. Whereas the damage to the striped SP looked like the sort of things crabs might do, based on my experience with crawdads gutting brookies on a stringer at Roosevelt and Lane Lakes, the removal of the tail and its base from the black SP appeared different and inconsistent with crab nibbling. Who knows. The stinger was in the water very close to the spot where Lee had his poke pole yanked, too.

BlackandStripedabusedsmurfs.jpg

Anyhow, as expected neither Lee nor I had success to match Lee's amazing April 15 visit. Lee did, however, set a new family standard for most species caught in one session: 5 (cabezon, kelp greenling, silver, black, and striped SP). I was able to redeem my skunk and I caught our best surf perch to date. For the next visit we will venture further out on the jetty to a place where we can fish all three "settings" (oceanward, 'channel', sheltered) versus focusing exclusively on the oceanward side. I will plan to try out some lures, too, after relying entirely on the high-low bait rigs to date.

I'm not sure when we'll get out next. We have some activities the coming weekend, the next weekend I will be in Fresno, and I only have one day (Saturday) the following weekend before I head to eastern Canada for a week and a half. Then grades are due and my summer will start. I have grad student whom I need to introduce to his field area in the northernmost Sierra (probably at the end of May) and I will try to take my first Sierra casts on the way back from that trip at a spot that may be thawed (except the road may be closed well short of the usual kickoff point; we'll see--if so there may be the option of hiking to what is usually a drive-to spot, too). By then the stripers will probably be getting active along the coast, too...

[rhyang]

Looks like some good times, and hope to hear more of your surf zone adventures !

[giantbrookie]

Here's another update from last Sunday (April 30).

The surf report looked good (2-3' forecast), so we returned to the jetty with several goals. First we wanted to go far enough out so we could fish both the ocean side where we'd exclusively concentrated our efforts, and the harbor side as well as the "channel". Second, Lee really wanted to poke pole after watching folks do so well the week before. Things didn't go quite according to plan owing to (1) the surf wasn't bad but the winds were super high, blowing from the harbor side making the "sheltered" side pretty harsh indeed and not so easy to fish. (2) whereas we had been able to straddle low tide on our last visit (good for poke poling), much of our time was at a rising tide with the low tide long before our arrival. (3) traffic. (4) traffic. (5) traffic.

I was baffled at the combination of heavier than usual traffic driving over the 92 en route, combined with the lower-than-average number of people at the jetty and the nearby beach. Where were the people going? I guess I should do more homework in looking up local events next time... In any case the drive took over 1.5 hours from Castro Valley which was on the high side but not absurdly high. I did remark to Lee, though, on the way there that I was a bit tired of sitting in a traffic jam to go fish and would like to try a place where I could avoid this sort of stop and go the next time. Little did I know that far worse lay in store.

In the meantime, going into the weekend, Lee and I had built our own poke poles of our own design and Lee issued a challenge to me as to who would be the first to score with their poke pole. We totally struck out without a nibble, as it turns out. This ended up burning an hour of fishing time, before putting the poke poles away and going with our usual rigs. We did get further out on the jetty as planned but we found the bottom contour not ideal on the ocean side, although I picked up an 11" striped surf perch on my 2nd cast as Lee was dealing with three consecutive snags. I was getting quite a few hits and not hooking up, but I wanted to try the harbor side, so I went there, ended up getting pestered by a lot of hits and stripped bait, but not hooking anything. Lee in the meantime has been frustrated with a ton of snags and no fish or strikes, but he caught a really nice striped SP running a tad over 13", but was pretty tired at the low rate of return so he directed us back to the original sweet spot. Reluctantly I left after having another cast with multiple hits and lost bait. I would not get another nibble the entire day. Lee cashed in almost immediately upon reaching the sweet spot, catching and releasing a 12" cabezon, then catching a 13" kelp greenling, and a 11.5" pile SP. Things slowed down for him (nothing had even remotely happened for me) and we figured we should bail because we had already stayed far longer than planned owing to the slow fishing.

We left our spot at about 430 p, took a few more pokes, then drove from the parking lot at about 5 pm. I'm pretty sure it isn't much more than a mile btw the parking lot and a stoplight at Hwy 1 and we covered the first 1/4 mi or more normally before coming to stopped traffic. It wasn't moving, so I pulled a U-Turn and went to the other way out (which leads to the same place, though) and found it too was stopped dead. It then took a hour to travel less than a mile. Was it an accident completely blocking the road? At the end of the line, who could tell. We'd sit still for several minutes, then advance one car length, usually when someone gave up and parked or attempted (in vain) to find a different way out. Eventually we reached that light and I saw nothing moving southward on Hwy 1, the direction we wanted to go. I figured maybe there was a colossal accident blocking Hwy 1 to the south, so I opted to head north when I finally got to the stoplight. This gave false hope for a short distance, then it slowed. It was a bit better than before. Stop for awhile and then advance 4 to 7 car lengths. All told it took over 3.5 hours to go from Half Moon Bay to Castro Valley. Apparently there was some festival called "Dream Machines 2017" in Half Moon Bay and the attendees were numerous enough so that Hwy 1 and the local roads were pretty hopelessly choked upon conclusion.

Now I suppose if I had been as successful as Lee, this would have been a tad more tolerable, but nursing a near skunk, sitting in traffic for 3 hrs plus on return was no fun. As good as that place has been to Lee, I will opt for a different place the next time out where there will be a lower chance of being stuck in traffic. We'll return again, someday, but I think we'll aim further north next time. N. Marin? S. Sonoma? perhaps. Targets are already picked out.

In the meantime I'm thinking of the northernmost Sierra the first weekend in June when I do some geologic exploring with a grad student. My favorite spots will probably still be frozen over, but I have some oddball contingency plans that should at least be interesting, if not a success. One spot is a brown trout lake at elevation ~5150 that is trailless and something like 0.5 mi (or less) from a paved road. I'm not so sure the paved road will be open to the point where I can get close enough to this lake to be a reasonably quick strike hike (I'm pretty confident the lake will in fact be open). There is another, better known lake at elev ~5850 reached by a good trail from a paved road that will probably be barely thawed that has some exalted family history: it was where Judy took the last cast of our "Season of 100 Lakes" in November 1997 and caught a hefty 19" brown (there are brookies and rainbows in there, too). Again, I'm not sure about the road. We'll see--it's a month away still.

[rlown]

Lee's next project..

Bait Launching with a DIY Spud Gun?

potato-gun_peter-davis_cc1.jpg

Question: Is the use of bait launchers legal in California? I have seen many videos and DIY plans showing how to build fishing bait launchers. They look pretty much like a potato gun but are used only for propelling the bait past the surf for a chance at the larger fish. They are made of PVC pipe and filled with air, probably from a bike pump. Its only purpose is for getting the fishing bait out farther than one can cast. I would imagine that certain areas would be opposed to their use, but in general, are these legal to use? (Daniel N.)

Answer: Potato-style guns like you are referring to are legal under federal law. However, under state law, potato guns that use combustion (instead of compressed air) to launch the projectile are “firearms,” and one with a bore of over 0.5 inches is a destructive device.

Pneumatic potato guns that use compressed air are legal as long as they are not used like a weapon (e.g. shot at a person, etc.), so this line launching device would be legal under state and federal laws. However, you should check for local city and county ordinances because some local governments prohibit use of any devices that propel projectiles. If you intend to use this line launching device on a state beach, you may also want to consult State Parks. And if you plan to use it to fish within a National Marine Sanctuary, I suggest you check in with that Sanctuary office to be sure they do not prohibit these types of devices.

As far as using it to cast a fishing line, nothing in the Fish and Game Code or its implementing regulations prohibit using this compressed air launcher as long as the fishing line remains attached to a rod and reel, or the person is brave enough to hold the other end of line in their hands!

source: https://californiaoutdoorsqas.com/2017/ ... -spud-gun/

[windknot]

Didn't see this thread until now. Nice fish! I've never really caught the saltwater fishing bug but now that I'm in the Puget Sound I think I need to reconsider.