Fishing the Pipe!

Tuesday I got to go out fishing on Jack's Whaler again. The Tuesday Kayak Fishing group (including Tim and Wayne) were heading out to fish the Pipeline. We decided to make bait at the headlands before joining them.

Saddleback Mountain in the background.

When we first metered the bait, we stopped the boat to fish for them. The bait would just swim on through and not bite. Jack suggested we troll for them and that did the trick. Jack caught several before I got one to the boat. Then we had a couple times we both had 3 at time on our line. It only took us an hour to make over two dozen green backed mackerel.  Much easier than last week when it took three of us two hours to get the job done.

We motored out to the pipeline and dropped a couple baits in Tim's bait tank. Wayne had made his own mackerel.  Tim and Wayne wanted to fish for the threshers. Jack and I were fishing for those elusive white seabass.

Jack moved the boat out to the 70 foot depth just south of the southern most barber pole and put us in a drift. I threw out the chum bucket and pinned a mackerel on my 40 pound outfit with a 2 ounce slider.

The weather was beautiful - sunny skies with a slight breeze. The water had warmed up to 68 degrees and was cleaner than last week but it was still a murky green. Our tides were minimal - a 3.23 foot high tide at 8:03 am and a 2.50 foot low tide at 12:12 pm.

I wish I could say we caught something but we didn't unless you count the bait. I had two baits scarred indicating some kind of activity but no real bites. Jack didn’t have any better luck either.  Around 1 pm, the bait showed up out on the pipeline. Jack called Tim to see if he had his receiver ready for some bait. The response was "yes" so I spent another 10 minutes making more bait - mostly mackerel but some sardines as well. We called it a day and delivered the bait into Tim's receiver.  Jack’s bait tank is great as all the bait looked better than they did when we caught them.

At days end, Wayne had been the lucky one as he caught a beautiful 14 inch calico plus he had hooked and lost a thresher. Apparently the thresher conveniently tangled Tim's line with Wayne's line before busting off.

It was still a fun day on the water and I did enjoy making bait.  Now I'm looking forward to next Tuesday's Kayak Fishing as the tides look better plus we already made bait!