My Fishing Reports: February 2007

Report from Fishingnetwork.net:

Rode the City of Redondo with a few buddies this morning--my first cattle boat experience. Overall, it was a good experience with the exception of one thing which I'll explain at the end. We basically stuck around Rocky Point and action was slow with spurts here and there. Lots of boats in the area. I was using the ol' coffee grinder with 25# test. Live squid was available, but afer an hour of nothing but nibbles I decided to steal a page from JapanRon's playbook and used a 5" swimbait paired with a 1.5oz leadhead (with squid strips). Between the four of us, we hooked into:

* 4 calico bass
* 3 sculpin
* 1 barred sand bass
* 2 sheepshead (released)
* 2 perch (released)
* 2 red snapper (released)
* 1 lingcod (released)
* 1 black sea bass (released)

The only bad thing was this crusty ol' guy who just couldn't stop criticizing the newbs. When I rigged up my dropper loops, he basically said it was the wrong rig and asked if I was there to catch rockfish. I said no, but it was obviously a rhetorical question because he went on to say I was probably gonna fish the middle column for mackerel. Jokingly I said I could use some mackerel for lobster bait, to which he pointed to the bow and told me I should go fish there. Well, I'm the inexperienced one here so I brushed it off and figured he must be right about the rig--I switched to a leadhead.

We get to our spot and I start using the live squid. In the meantime, he's off giving someone else a hard time... After an hour of nothing but nibbles, I switched to a swimbait to maybe get rid of some of the false positives. Not much later I go bendo and pull up the 18" calico. It's not the first catch on the boat but the biggest so far (and as it turned out, it was the biggest legal of the trip, as well). This guy comes over and condescendingly announces that I caught it on plastics. I'm annoyed with him and tell him that at least it worked. He shrugs and says it's beginner's luck. Next calico, same thing. 3rd calico, he's telling guys he just can't believe my luck. At this point we're about 3/4 through the trip and he's still got the stripe on him while a couple others are also trying swimbaits.

Anyway, to end this long rant, he eventually caught one red snapper while still going on about me and my plastics... My buddies and I were kinda amused that this guy could be so hateful. I'm not even sure what I did to provoke him--didn't cross his line or anything.

18 in. calico bass that would've won the jackpot had I entered--doh