Sum Fun Fishing

My sister, Carol, wanted to try her hand at saltwater fishing so when Groupon offered a deal out of Dana Wharf, she asked me to join her.  We chose 9/11/17 for our adventure.

We checked into the landing, parked, got our tickets and got in line by 5:15 am.  There were 15 people ahead of us already.  We started boarding at 5:45 am. 

Jake checked our licenses and collected our tickets.  I noticed the passengers ahead of us were lining their rods along the back of the boat so I asked Jake if there were assigned spots.  Jake said you select a number on the rail and that is your fishing spot. Whoa!  Now that was a new one to me.  That makes for difficult fishing especially since they put 45 people on a 65 foot boat.

Everyone stacked their tackle boxes/bags on top of the life preserver box.  We had a small spot inside a ring of tackle bags.  We had to put our backpack (with our lunch and purses) on the deck.  The galley was small and only had 12 seats inside.  Of course there were no seats available by the time we boarded.

Our first stop was the bait receiver where we loaded giant sardines and anchovies that looked like two eyeballs on a string.  The Captain Brian gave the safety speech and said we were making a two hour run north where the yellowtail bit on Saturday.  He also said Shane would handle the Galley and was the other Captain on board.  Jake would handle the activities on deck.

The weather was wonderful.  Flat calm seas and very little wind.  It did get quite warm in the afternoon.  Shane spent the travel time making breakfast sandwiches early then hamburgers and hot dogs later.

I got our rods set up for yellowtail and tried to sit/lean on the tackle rack such as it was.  We got up to the Long Beach area and I noticed many large black buoys.  Jake said they were a mussel farm.

A couple other sportboats were in the area but quickly bailed as the yellowtail didn't cooperate.  We ended up working our way south back towards Dana Point.  The Captain tried very hard to find fish.  I tried baiting and casting then handing the rod to Carol but nothing worked.  Finally, the captain decided to anchor and try bottom fishing.  Shane came over to help me get Carol set up.  He had some great suggestions for Carol.  She learned how to handle a conventional reel and bait her own hook.  She felt some small bottom grabbers take her bait but no hook-ups.

I tried everything too.  I fished the bottom and flylined.  I tried squid, anchovies and sardines.  I tried small hooks with 15# line on up to 30# line.  There were perhaps 3 small calicos, 2 small sheepshead and a couple legal whitefish for the day.  The Captain gave us an extra hour to fish and when that didn't help, he gave us all a 50% off coupon for another trip.

I really enjoyed spending time with my sister even though we didn't catch any fish.