Monday, February 26, 2018

Fishing Partner, Boat, and Saltwater

Fishing Time:  8:00 AM to 4:00 PM
Weather: Cool, breezy, T-60
Moon Phase: 85% Moon
Location: Mission Bay, San Diego
Best Bait:  Drift fishing live sardine near the bottom in 12 ft of water.
Who Went: Bobber John, Dunc
It was a 13-hour drive from Draper, UT to San Diego, CA pulling John’s bass boat.  Not much fun, but worth it as I now have a boat and a fishing partner to tackle these San Diego lakes for the next couple weeks. 

I’ve recently been getting some local intel on bay fishing here in San Diego, so John and I put it to the test for our first outing.  We launched the boat at Dana Landing in Mission Bay and made our way over to the bait barge to pick up some live sardines.  We were greeted by sea lions and an army of birds waiting to snag a few potential scraps.  
We were told it was $35 for one pass of bait.  No idea what that meant, but it sounded expensive.  Little did I know that one pass equaled one net full of approximately 300 live sardines!  We were in business.
We took our bursting live well full of sardines to the area where I was told is good drift fishing for California Halibut.  It was only 12 ft of water where we were drifting, but the sandy bottom gave us a good feeling we were in the right spot.

On our second drift I had the first hit of the day.  I gave the fish some slack allowing him to fully eat the bait and then set the hook.  It was the first halibut of the day, and of my life!  It wasn’t big, but it was my first and got us excited to do it again.
Another few drifts and this time it was Bobber John’s turn.  His reel started screaming and we knew immediately that this was not the same size fish.  The anticipation built as we waited to see what it was.  It turned out to be a very nice keeper halibut at 23-inches long.  They must be 22-inches long to keep.  What a fish! 
With one keeper halibut in the live well we made another 5-6 drifts with no bites, so we made our way over to a bridge that the tackle shop said holds fish.  We began our drift there and were rewarded with some spotted bay bass, barred sand bass, and a sculpin.  No more halibut were landed.  It was a fun day and a new experience fishing saltwater from a boat.
We utilized YouTube to figure out how to filet our halibut and took some nice chunks of fresh white meat home for dinner.  Yummy!

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