976-KayakJan June 6th & 9th

June 6th - I picked up a nice load of sardines at 8 a.m. and headed towards the beach. The water was dirty, green and filled with floating trash everywhere. The weather was sunny and the waters were glassy smooth which made for a nice day of kayaking. Fishing on the other hand, was more than slow. I can’t blame the fish for leaving the dirty water for cleaner areas.

No bites along the beach and only a small calico and sandbass in the harbor.

Spots fished along the beach.

June 9th – We launched at 6 a.m. and waited for bait while the Dana Pride loaded theirs. Jeff handed me a nice scoop of bait and apologized for only having anchovies. Mondays are poor bait days since the receiver gets cleaned out of good bait over the weekend. As we left the harbor, Tim commented that we need to make bait.

As we were traveling towards the headlands, I noticed some porpoise with birds working an area offshore. I told Tim there must be bait with them and he raced off saying “let’s catch them.” We made it to the area just after the birds and porpoise left. We dropped our Sabiki rigs down and quickly were on our way with fresh mackerel in our bait tanks. Tim was using the new Ahi Sabiki rod that keeps the bait hooks inside the rod when not in use. I had to have one. Much safer on a kayak. I picked mine up on at Hogan’s Tackle on the way home.

We stopped just past the headlands in the kelp bed and fished close to the Western Pride out of Newport Landing. The wonderful smells from the Galley almost made us order breakfast burritos from the boat. They left quickly having failed to chum up the fish. We left shortly after.

We fished along our way to Salt Creek Beach. We trolled live mackerel or a Rapala. The water was 66.9 degrees, a little green but clean and calm. I found an area just off from the Ritz Carlton in the middle of a kelp bed with some jumping bait. I tied my kayak off to a kelp strand and dropped my one and only sardine down. It got nailed but I missed the hook set. Darn. The mackerel were troublesome as they were great at wrapping themselves in the kelp. Fortunately I was fishing with spectra with a foot of mono so I could pull them out. I switched to anchovies for a while and landed a nice keeper sandbass, a short white seabass and a small sandbass.

I noticed a school of fish fry had gathered in the bottom of my kayak. I assume they were looking for a safe haven.

Fry in my kayak.

A couple of times, I also saw something large working the kelp edge. At first I thought it was a porpoise but it was just one animal. Then I thought it might be a marlin with its large dorsal fin sticking out and as it dove its big tail surfaced on the way down but a marlin seemed unlikely that close to the kelp. I suppose it could have been one of the small white sharks recently spotted along our coast but I’ll never know for sure. The ocean is an amazing place.

Around noon Jack joined us in the area. He had picked up a couple of nice calicos along the way on the Berkley Jerk Shad. He had fished around the red buoy off the headlands. Tim switched to Jerk Shad after he ran out of bait and both Jack and Tim had better fishing than I did fishing live bait. About 1:45 p.m. we began fishing our way back. The wind picked up and the sea surface ruffled as big swells rolled through. I caught a big mackerel (plus many kelp strands) on the way back trolling a small Rapala.

Spots fished 6-9-08.

The sun never broke through during our 9 plus hours on the water. When I reached the harbor my fish finder had logged 13 miles of travel for the day with a total of 60 miles on my kayak since getting the fish finder. Sure is great having a kayak for fishing. Plus the convenience of storage and launching from Tim's Dana Point Jet Ski and Kayaks place is awesome.