My first trip of the season was on Jeff Chuang's charter
on the Rail Time May 14 & 15, 2019.
Jim and Tom Carlisle, Rick Uribe and Randy Sharon were the other anglers
on the trip.
Captain Gary Adams said we would stop at Catalina to make
squid then head to San Clemente to fish yellowtail on the 9. We settled in for the night and when we awoke
the next morning we were set up to fish.
Andy made some delicious breakfast sandwiches to get us started. Jake was already on deck with rods set up in
the holders fishing.
The yellowtail bite had been around 7:30 am. The fish waited until 8:30 to show. Several 20 plus pounders were caught by Jim,
Tom, Jeff, Randy and Rick. I managed to
catch the only baby in the batch - a 10 pounder. Three nice halibut were caught
as well, two by Jeff. One of Jeff's
halibuts headed to the surface and went flying out of the water. None of us had seen a halibut do that before.
The bite fizzled by 10:30 so Gary moved us to some other
spots known for seabass. Randy managed
to catch a small seabass and I managed to hook one that the seal stole from me. We had lots of biting calicos, sheepshead,
whitefish, and a wide open bite on big leopard sharks. It was actually fun even though we kept
losing expensive Ahi Twist hooks and glow in the dark egg sinkers.
At the end of the day, Gary took us to a nice calm cove
where Andy made us a wonderful tri-tip dinner.
We hit the bunks and sometime during the night, we made a move to
Catalina Island.
I got up at 5:30 am (late for me) and the rods were already
in place. Calicos started biting. Conditions were right for seabass but they
didn't show right away. I hooked a black
seabass that we had to break off. My
setup was a 6/0 Ahi Twist hook with a half ounce glow slider with two squid fished
on a long soak. I was using my Penn
Fathom 25 two speed on a Penn Carnage rod backed with 50 pound Berkley spectra
and topped with 40 pound Berkley fluorocarbon.
I thought I hooked another calico as it was shaking like the calicos had
been doing. After bringing the fish half
way back to the boat, the fish got heavy then started pulling and shaking its
head. I still didn't think it was a
seabass until it came to color. We all
were thrilled when the gaff went in. It
was a nice 30 pounder and that meant the fish were around.
It was only a few minutes until the bow dropper loops
went off so everyone switched from sliders to droppers. It was pretty much a hook up as soon as you
dropped down. In less than an hour we
had full two day limits on 30 to 37 pound white seabass. Our trip was made!
Gary checked out several other spots for future reference
but they all turned up dry. Around 11:30
am Gary suggested we call it a trip. We
all agreed as we had more fish than we needed.
It ended up taking 3 hours for Jake and Andy to filet our catch.
We got in at 2:30 pm, unloaded our gear and split up the
catch. Everyone took home a big
yellowtail, two white seabass and half a halibut. Most of us took some yellowtail collars and
seabass ribs. Jeff and I took a couple
seabass heads for soup.
What a great trip!
Thursday we all had the joy of eating fresh fish. Halibut sandwich for Jim, seabass with dill
beurre blanc for me and Jeff had halibut with scallions and ponzu. Needless to
say, we all ate well.
Much thanks goes to Jeff for organizing the charter (and
inviting me to join) and to Gary, Jake and Andy for making it an outstanding
trip.
