Premier Catalina WSB - Printable Version +- Fishing Forum (https://bigfishtackle.com/forum) +-- Forum: California Fishing Information (https://bigfishtackle.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?fid=343) +--- Forum: California Fishing Information (https://bigfishtackle.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?fid=13) +--- Thread: Premier Catalina WSB (/showthread.php?tid=262851)

Premier Catalina WSB - JapanRon - 05-20-2006 Hey guys, Went out on the Premier day before yesterday. Fished Catalina’s frontside. Danny, with Jimmy coming along was running the boat. Deckhand with Manny in the galley made up the crew. We had a light load …. 16 anglers on a wide 75 foot boat. Short Report: 16 anglers got their limit of Calico bass, 5 California Sheephead, 1 Whitefish, and 15 Perch. Oh ya …. 1 very nice 48.5 pound White Sea Bass! It was much, much fatter and heavier than it looks in the picture ! Ed's Nice WSB! Long Report: The original plan was to do some rockfishing but the fish-gods must have been smiling on us and we were able to get our hands on a few scoops of primo live squid. Thanks guys ….. for your generosity … class act …..and your boat shows it! With our candy all comfy, happily swimming and obviously accustomed to the live bait tank and frisky, we headed out of Rainbow Harbor, into the harbor and out of Angel’s Gate into the fog. Seeing all those live squid made the bags of defrosting frozen squid look like ….. well ….. chopped liv ….. er ….. squid. Aside from the fog, the morning was warm, as it usually is during what Californians call June-gloom, and short-sleeves was sported by the younger guys. We old geezers had on breakers, pointy ski as well as an array of misshapen, dirty, and past-their-prime hats for most of the trip to and back from the island. Weather was warm and dry with no chop on the way. On the front-side, water clarity varied from spot to spot …. Maybe 15~20 feet in the overcast. With little wind, and no real swell during the morning, the water must have warmed up pretty nicely (must be around the mid-60’s as the Calicos were biting from the get-go and just got better as the day progressed. As is the usual case, early afternoon saw the wind come up, a slight swell appear and an ever-increasing current develop from about 2pm until it was time to pull the hook. Return was pretty flat as the wind and water laid down pretty good. Yellows seem to be showing now both on the front and backside to which is a tell-tail sign the water is on a warming trend! Setups: I rigged 4 setups. One outfit was rigged for Calico fishing ¼ and 1/2oz leadhead/plastic baits. Another outfit had 30lb test braid and a dropshot rig for the kelp and whatever species. The third rig was spooled with 25lb test Izorline tied to a Carolina rig 1oz sliding egg sinker/4/0 Owner circle hook to fish live or whole squid. Lastly, I had my 15lb setup with a 6 foot flurocarbon leader, and 1/4oz, wide-gap, long shank leadhead . As the anglers on the boat appeared to be pretty experienced, it looked like everyone was doing pretty much what ought … ought to get them bit! On retrospect, I might have been happier Texas rigging those frozen, whole squid like a number of other did for the croaker hits that did occur! Dang! I had the swivel/leader/#6 circle setup ready for any bonito that didn’t like the plastic too. The Fishing: On our first spot we immediately got the usual gang of perch rushing up to the boat. I think it’s a good sign when the perch appear as often the bass will not be far behind …. Not wanting to miss the action. The first stop got us a good number of legal fish but once the bite started to wane and the grade of fish pretty much stayed the same we headed for another bass spot that had seen some WSB taken fairly recently. Again …. It was pretty much a good bite on the checkerboards and all the perch you might want to catch. Still no sign of the croakers as the morning wore on and the fish sacks getting heavier and heavier. With limits on the bass pretty much assured, we made a number of stops to check if the gray ghosts were in residence. Around noon, a club member finally made the hookup solid enough to stick and with a lot of running back and forth by Danny and Jimmy on the gaffs put the monster on the deck. Ya … a 48.5 WSB requires TWO gaffs when considering how the creatures love to make a rush to get up and just under the boat as you are seeing color! I hate that! If you’re not familiar with that … be ready to stick your rod and or rod tip out and downward as far out and away as you can from the boat as you will need to thwart the line from being cut on the bottom of the boat by the wily fish! Our hero got the fish on a leadhead/frozen whole squid rig! Bites seemed to be balanced between the live and the frozen whole squid. After the skippers got the sneaky critter, the guy that had previously landed this huge … minimum 7 or 8 pound grumpy Calico just d. One of our buddies … Oscar (not the fish) had caught the big Calico and then graciously released it for another day! Awesome conservatorship dude! I didn't take the photos so squawk at me! :lol: :lol: Oscar's Nice Calico As well as the Calicos and the WSB, Balcksmiths … smaller variety of perch, a 3-4 pound Whitefish, and some 3-4 pound Sheephead were bagged. Being at Catalina, one poor guy got ‘the fish with wings’. Initially acting like a yellow, it’s always a thrill to then realize you have a Bat Ray! Sad to say, not a single bonehead showed! If you know me, you can guess I had a blast with the plastics on the Calicos. Both the Kalin swimbaits, which caught most of it’s fish on the fall or second vertical drop, and the blams, that were more effective super slow retrieved, did their job. At least half the guys initially were throwing plastic to the bass! Pure heaven! We didn’t even get (usually don’t anyway) any static from Danny or Jimmy as they could see we were suffering mightily from withdrawl symptoms ……or what is commonly know as PTSD. (Plastic Tossing Success Disorder) Aside: What’s with all the nasty kelp flies? Pesky things what to hang on ya for dear life. I thought I had cooties or somethin’ before I realized it wasn’t me! My buddies said the thought it was me too! Another aside: My fellow plastic-nut, rail-buddy broke out a freshwater plastic that kinda resembles a crawdad with about the same coloring w/squid strip and was getting hit 3 times to my 1 for awhile. He fished it like a crawdad and just hopped the bottom structure. Yet another aside: Most guys don't have live bait tanks that are really big but there is a common problem with squid clogging the drain. When this happens, water overflows the top of the tank and flushes the squid or finbait out the top. Beware! It didn't happen to us but to another boat we were able to alert! One more Time: Pierpoint Landing has instituted another parking option for its’ patrons. Spaces 1~21 in the main, large lot can be used by Pierpoint boat patrons IF 1) one of the spaces mentioned is unoccupied and you pull into it and 2) if you go to the office, buy your ticket, which will enable you to buy a yellow parking permit, 3) get the permit …….which you will then immediately take to your vehicle and prominently display. Much more convenient than the token. As is often the case, almost everybody had either a bag of fish or some nicely cut filets to take home. You should have seen the guy with the 48.5 lb WSB take his bag of filets to the car! We got back to Pierpoint at around 6:00pm. Back to Catalina …… Yeah Baby …… JapanRon [signature] Re: [JapanRon] Premier Catalina WSB - tubeN2 - 05-22-2006 Nice report and nice Ronkie. We are still getting some out of the Channel Islands. Not as big but still there. [cool] [signature]