Waterpup  

Short story, fishing was TOUGH!

Long story

Met up with Dave and Jake at the Harbor Island Sheraton in San Diego on Friday. With high expectations we knew that it could only take one fish off a paddy or from the Coronado Islands to win this. We knocked down a few beers and headed into the Captains meeting to register and had a few more beers.

Maybe 7:15 and time to get the boat in the water, get geared up, have a few more beers and ready for lines in at 5:30Am. Eventually we make it to a can in the San Diego Bay, tie off and bed down at 11:30 for the 3:00AM alarm. Dave has a center console so it’s not like waking up would be a problem but I was worried I’d sleep at all with my anticipation for the next day so high. Next thing I know my phone alarm is going off and it seemed as though I had just laid down, sleeping was not a problem.

Off we go to get bait at 3:15AM and out of the harbor at 3:30AM headed for the north island. Got there at 4:30AM and had to wait an hour before we could put a line in the water. That was hard to do!! When the lines in announcement came it was game on and straight business at that point but the plan was to spend only 30 minutes there and if nothing bit we’d head out an look for kelp paddies holding the target species. This being a Yellowtail tourney made any tuna caught a “by-catch” but it was a by-catch I’d be ok with.

The island showed no love, water was dirty and 66 degrees. No good for Yellowtail, offshore we go on the hunt. During this time the water warmed only a little here and there, we saw a lot of kelp paddies but no one was home when we came a knock’n. Radio chatter had only a couple YT reported and catching was mostly slow across the entire fleet. With the temp charts showing cooler water south of us and ALL the other boats there we decided to head a little north where the warmer water had showed.

Hhhhhmmmm water looks green here, no time to waste the decision is quickly made to head further west a little more south. Many more paddies that direction but few held any bait fish and once again no one home. Once again we head a little further south. The water a cleaner color and blue and the temp at 71 degrees it looked promising with many nice sized paddies to stop on. With the hours passing we started making drive bys where we’d pull up slowly to the paddy and look for life. If there were no signes of fish we moved on. The pic below best describes what we were in for.

With the day getting shorter, all the kelp paddies being dry and few with bait fish under them we decided to head back inside and fish the Coronado Islands. At 4 miles from the islands we come across a paddy and low and behold it’s holding YELLOWTAIL! Yeeeehaaaa boys get your bait in the water and start hook’n!! No love Look there they are gain, right under the boat!! Try dropping an iron. No love Dave gets on the wheel and resets the drift. We see more fish that  we thought were Bonito and suddenly Dave gets bit on the Iron. As the fish is at deep color I see the long fin and sound off Albacore!! Not a money fish but there’s a decent sized school of them and we have seen a fish worth catching all day. Dave lands the fish and the decks are bloody.

Sweet!

We worked that paddy for a long time but I guess all the fish we saw were just breezing through. Damnit!

On the way to the island we found one more paddy with a school of Mola and they literally swam toward the boat and looked at us from 5 to 10 feet of water. It was weird!! I felt like we were the ones in an aqaurium and they were visiting us.  Also forgot to mention that we saw all the porpoise you wanted for the whole day along with whales. One whale being probably around 80 feet long.

Anyway so off go to the island. I’ll make an already long story short. Inside the island water was pukey green, no fish. Outside the water was a beautiful blue and the temp had risen 6 degrees from the time we were there in the morning to 72 degrees now. Good temp but when it rises that much in that amount of time the fish won’t bite. Not unless they’ve moved in with the same water I suppose. No love there either, par for the day.

Head out looking for paddies agai and make our way back to the Point Loma Kelp beds for a final shot. The water there looked as if it were in the holding taking of a water treatment plant. Murky green as you can get before it turns brown.

We head in at 5:40PM no money fish but Dave tried like hell. So did Jake, he didn’t stop throwing that Jig until the boat was moving to go home.