Northwest Fishing Reports

Screw daylight savings, it didn’t save dam for me. Got up at 3am and arrived over at Newport Landing in Newport Beach, Ca around 5am with a fine breakfast of Hot Chocolate and Cheeze-its, donuts belong to the cops. Captain Zig from Deadliest Catch (aka YELLOWFIN400- Danny from work) joined me in the quest to hunt ugly yet cute liddle-widdle poisonous buggers of the deep, Sculin. Weather was just right with a mild overcast, no winds and 65-70 degree feel and calm waters. Launched line to the bottom with instant bites on shredded squid, sardines worked but not as well. While many lures and baits led to bites, the secret weapon for sculpins were Opaque RED and CHARTRUESE grubs with single or duel tails on rock cod rigs and 2-4 oz sinkers. Folks would double on their catches with fat legals of 1-2lbs. Other fish were caught such as Sheeps head, Tom Cods, Lizard fish, (what looked like) small Rockfish and California Halibut. Captain Zig got bored with sculpin bites so he took out his trout setup and went for the macs 15 ft below and was on fire. With one last round, he got a hard bite but missed it, bummed,
depressed, suicidal he was done for the day. I insisted he jump off the end so the water would be well-chummed
but he refused. At the end, the fish count was high, perhaps because the crew kept 3 or 4 dozen smallies and
insisted that we toss over ours. Hypocrisy and Illegal, Illegal, mother fricken Illegal! The laws the law, NL Nautilus live by it! Anyways, a successful ½ dayer of fishing couldn’t be complete without a great slice a pizza so we stopped off at Original Pizza by the Newport Beach pier. Boy was it good and at $12.95 for a small size supreme pizza which matched up to any large and a cutie w/ bubble bottom, it was well worth it.

Slice count- 10+Sculin, 2 tom cods, 1 dink, 1 mac, 1 phone number to Sexy Martin’s party line
Capt. Zig count- 10+sculin, 5+ macs, 1 bad case of heartburn

Captain Zig say cheese

What's surfacing there in that second picture?

Sam Kafelafish wrote:What's surfacing there in that second picture?

a Pacific Sanddab, like a halibut but is not.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanddab

No I know what the fish is, what's that swirling the water in the background?

Sam Kafelafish wrote:No I know what the fish is, what's that swirling the water in the background?

don't know, perhaps wake from the boats movement.

homeslice wrote:

Sam Kafelafish wrote:No I know what the fish is, what's that swirling the water in the background?

don't know, perhaps wake from the boats movement.

Look again homeslice.. that was your lunker that got away, no wake.

That's what I thought. Some sort of shark or lingcod or halibut that came up after your smaller sculpin?

Sam Kafelafish wrote:No I know what the fish is, what's that swirling the water in the background?

Maybe a Caifornia Sea Lion?

Homeslice, your report and pics brought back a lot of memories. Before I moved to Seattle I lived in OC and the LBC. We used to do local 3/4 day and also overnighters out to San Clemente Island and hook up Yellowtail, White Sea Bass, and on a good year Mahi. Used to rent skiffs out of Davey's Locker. You can catch some surprisingly big fish out of the bay, and in the jetty area too...caught lots of big halibut there. I was just getting into tuna fishing when I moved up here. I miss those warm summer days, 30 miles out at sea, fishing near the islands. Seattle was a hard adjustment (still is) to get myself fishing out in the rain. Thanks for the walk down memory lane

Sam, I think I read you were in CA right now? Where abouts?

hookemdanno wrote:


Sam, I think I read you were in CA right now? Where abouts?

San Jose area....

hookemdanno wrote:

Sam Kafelafish wrote:No I know what the fish is, what's that swirling the water in the background?

Maybe a Caifornia Sea Lion?

Homeslice, your report and pics brought back a lot of memories. Before I moved to Seattle I lived in OC and the LBC. We used to do local 3/4 day and also overnighters out to San Clemente Island and hook up Yellowtail, White Sea Bass, and on a good year Mahi. Used to rent skiffs out of Davey's Locker. You can catch some surprisingly big fish out of the bay, and in the jetty area too...caught lots of big halibut there. I was just getting into tuna fishing when I moved up here. I miss those warm summer days, 30 miles out at sea, fishing near the islands. Seattle was a hard adjustment (still is) to get myself fishing out in the rain. Thanks for the walk down memory lane

Sam, I think I read you were in CA right now? Where abouts?

Glad I'm able to bring back good memmories. I'm a regular float tube angler in Newport Beach Harbor so I'm sure you're familier with the local bites down here. Indeed there are plenty of great fish to be caught in the harbors including huge rays. As I fish the area, I'll keep posting reports w/ pics and bringing more memmories to the plate. Feel free to post your experiences about your time down in socal.

As for the chaotic water, I don't know what it was. There were other anglers alongside me who would have seen it and mentioned something.