Embarcadero Marina Park Pier

Report from Pierfishing.com:

Had the opportunity to fish for a couple hours while I was down in San Diego. Arrived at 3pm and tried drop shotting Berkeley Gulp shrimp with a half-ounce sinker for nada. I witnessed several macs caught, a short spotted bay bass (on a bucktail, I think), and a lobster inadvertently snagged (it dropped off as the guy was pulling him up). I've yet to catch the latter two... The wind really kicked up around 5 and with just shorts and a t-shirt on I was obliged to call it a day. Also stopped by the Ferry Landing Pier (Coronado) the next day just for a look.

No fish... so here are a bunch of pics just for the sake of showing pics.

Recycling bin looking fine at Embarcadero


I think this party boat was fishing they bay--they stuck around for about an hour.


My mode of transportation (took the train from LA to SD)


Day...

(Note: The "leaning tower" is just an artifact of the wide angle setting I used for this shot.)

...and night view from the hotel


San Diego morning skyline


Ferry Landing Pier


The Ferry Landing bin is kicked in and has some trash in it


I saw a new dock/pier being built in front of the restaurants


8 hours later it was already finished

Marina Del Rey

Report from Pierfishing.com:

Fished the MDR bait docks with a friend from around 10:30 to 2 today. We arrived to find Buddhists there releasing bait fish for their monthly ceremony. It was certainly awkward to start hooking fish right in front of them, but we just did our thing and they did theirs--no problems. One of the Buddhists came by and started up a conversation with us where he revealed that they paid $3200 for today's ceremony. Nice guaranteed money for the bait guys and a king's meal for the marina's underwater inhabitants.

But onto the fishing... We had a good number of short bites whether using carolina rigged live sardines or swimbaits. The rake marks were familiar. Sure enough, switched over to krocs and came up with barracudas. Most were of the "scooter" variety, but one actually gave me a good hustle.

Beautiful weather, fun fishing.

Buddhist group chanting... Ohm...






My own release party... Ohm...

Fred Hall Show: UPSAC Booth

We had a good number of folks stop by the booth tonight with maybe around 20 or so signups/raffle entries.









Note: United Pier and Shore Anglers of California (UPSAC) is a non-profit group to raise awareness and support shore-based anglers and communities. It's founder is Ken Jones who's written a terrific book that covers the history and fishing of all of California's piers called Pier Fishing in California.

Spitfire, Redondo Beach Sportfishing

Rode the Spitfire with Thomas and Tim for the rockfish opener (excluding lingcod and various protected species). After loading up with medium-sized sardines from the bait receiver and armed with plenty of frozen squid, we headed up north.

I fished the ol' Jigmaster with 65# Spectra/30# Yozuri fluoro and my 7' Tallus rod. The captain recommended the standard dropper loops with 8-10 oz. sinkers. For bait I used squid strips all day long.

The first drop was disastrous because of all the tangled lines. I believe it was my fault for not casting out from the boat and not using a heavier weight with the braid. :/ The good news is that those who were tangled came away with a fish on the end of their line. My braid was eventually cut but I was able to salvage my leader and terminal tackle. From there on, I switched to a 12 oz. weight and it was pretty much smooth sailing with just a few minor tangles here and there (although the guy next to us was causing some major problems with others--his spinner setup looked like a freshwater outfit with something like 8 or 10# mono.)

Thomas brought along his new rockfish outfit which consisted of Shimano's Lucanus jigs and Tescata rod (he didn't have the new Calcutta reel that would've completed the system and made him the absolute tackle whore, LOL!) The rockfish weren't biting on it and probably because of the competition versus squid, but he was very successful when we targeted sculpin.

We ended up with 20 fish between the 3 of us in a combination of vermillion rockfish (aka red snapper), starry rockfish, bocaccio, and sculpin. Thomas and Tim probably came away with 5 or 6 lingcod between them which were all released.

This is my second time aboard the Spitfire. I have to say I wasn't so impressed my first time around, but today the crew was outstanding. I'm looking forward to my next ride with them.

Starting the morning off right


Nice sized red


Many lingcod were caught (and released)


Our bounty


A delicious meal!