Same 'ol consistent La Jolla - Spring 2016

[blackcloud9]

Red crab, rockfish and more rockfish! Well after being rocked twice by big yellowtail recently, hooking a porpoise which straightened my circle hook, and
bit off by sharks a couple of times on the last few trips, I'll generally revert to my old stand-by later in the mornings - rockfishing! As most of you know I
really enjoy this challenge, love this fishery and have ended up with a nice haul of decent fish most days.












If you're looking for ideas, tips and tricks for chasing deep water "red gold" then please check out my Top Gun article (below), as it spills the beans on just about ALL you'd need to know!

The Down-Low on Kayak Rockfish

[Geno Machino]

Looks like some great eats right there!!!

Thx for sharing!!

Geno

[Harry Hill]

wow, great information, that will help me tons. Now I just have to get out there and put it to use. Thank you very much.

[King Saba]

Tasty eats right there. Thanks for the tips! It's a godsend.

[Darrell]

Nice article. I like the tip of using the larger hooks to avoid the dinky rockfish. My favorite eating fish and a nice option when other stuff is not biting

[summers in kuwait]

Thanks for the report sharing the tips!

[batfish]

Nice haul of Rockfish. And thank you for the info.

[jorluivil]

When the rockfish season is open and I'm going on 4-5 hrs of no bites I start looking for rockfish. These fish are way to tasty to just pass up.

[Danny81]

Loved the article on a rock fishing, definitely a lot of great info there.....shared with all my friends. Thanks for sharing!

[Ggiannig89]

With my fish finder/ depth finder going out on me, not wanting to put money into a new one, there was some great info in that article for me to use.
I've always loved rockfish fishing. Just as fun as getting my ass kicked by line pulling yellows.

[kaya_one]

Thanks for sharing the article...
"Accidentally hooked small rockfish are easy to release with the right technique. I’ll rig an upside-down barbless hook on my line just above the sinker, and then use this extra hook to “pull down” and release the little ones at depth. Once underwater about 60 feet or so, they will be able to swim off of the barbless hook and back to the deep unharmed."

I've used a similar technique to release:
My technique is to clip (think swivel clip) a hook to one of the two torpedo sinker eyes. I cut the barb and sharp end tip of the hook off with wire cutters (needle nose pliers) so it is completely dull. The hook is inverted - facing the opposite way to send the fish down. I put the hook in fish mouth and it is not even piercing the jaw. The weight of the sinker brings the fish down and if you keep the sinker dropping fast and steady the fish will not come off. About 50+ (100+ mo bettah) feet down just stop the line and the fish is released (happy ending...).

Way cheaper than a fish release, no need to pack the fish release in our space-restricted yaks, and something we should all take the time to do.

Tight lines...

[Aaron&Julie]

Good to see you are still nailing that sweet meat-oops, no euphemism intended.

You've been the most consistent rockfish guy off of LJ for years now. Keep it up and congrats.

Rockfish may be the only fish we could eat year round and not get tired of eating it.

We had wanted to use our Garmin GPS to mark traps this last winter to get in on some of that kind of action, but we didn't make it out. Oh well, there's always this winter.