Dana Pt, 8-18-14

[Amish Ed]

Landwhale and I launched about 6am from the ramp and headed straight to the Pipe. There was some morning sickness and lots of cloud cover. Almost chilly air temp and the water was 67º and very clear.

The wind was all over the place direction wise. I think it hit every compass point over the course of the morning. For fishing the Pipe the only thing worse than variable wind direction is strong variable winds. Thankfully we didn't have the strong part. But, with the variable winds it makes it really hard to stay on the Pipe and know exactly where it is. Every drift seemed to be different. Made me rather grumpy actually. Then just to make things a bit more difficult, the chop, wakes, and waves were coming from everywhere too. Add this all together and my yak was spinning like a top on every drift. I'm glad I don't get sea sick on my yak, it was not a day for light stomachs.

As far as the catching went... There wasn't much of it. I had 3 short bass, a small lizard and 2 macks. Also had one bite in the middle of the water column. That ended after I set the hook and about 40' of line was stripped off. Then the fish just popped off. Steve had the same thing happen to him. I'm thinking either thresher or bat ray. What ever it was though, my 10lb wasn't slowing it down at all.

I tried a lot of different colors today, but only 2 stood out. Root beer/gold flake 5" Paddlerz and the olive brown bait 4" Flurry. Hot Sauce for flavor of course.


So, between the slow catching and terrible conditions I got kinda grumpy. But, I'm still glad I went and I look forward to another day on the water next week. In fact we already know we're fishing Mission Bay next Monday. So, if you want to join us post up.

[kobra]

Grumpy? You? Come on Ed! Now Steve, yeah, I can see that.

[alanw]

Well I did warn you about the chop I don't get seasick either but Sunday had me feeling some alien queeziness in my stomach for a few minutes. I did have a strong steady wind though so the drifts were at least predictable, but I could only make a bit over 1mph headway back to the harbor from 1.5 miles out in 110' at the twin barber poles (picked a bad day to go exploring ). Glad you felt something tugging at your line.

[YakDout]

You should look into getting a drift chute. I have mine hooked up to my anchor trolley and I can stay in the direction I want for the duration of the drift. It also slows you down. It seems complicated but it takes 2 seconds to deploy.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[rossman]

Ed, you guys were out on the 18th? That means today right? I was out today but didn't experience hardly any of those issues. It was definitely choppy out there but it was flat calm until nearly 11:00. I was hoping for a little wind to get a drift going but if I wasn't paddling I wasn't going anywhere. I launched real early. On the water at 4:40 and headed up the line and was almost to Laguna beach before daylight. Had a good pick on bass on the plastics but spent most of the time dragging bait around for nada. Water temp had dropped 4 degrees from last Wed but it was clean and blue up that direction.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

[Amish Ed]

Yeah, the issue was that there was just enough wind to cause a drift, but it never blew from the same direction twice. I think the chop/wave action was the biggest factor though. It seemed like every time I set myself up for a drift within minutes I was pointed a different direction than when I started. Annoying. But, if the fish had been biting I'm sure I never would've noticed

I usually don't fish the Pipe in the summer. Sure was a lot of traffic out there. I'm also sure that the epic pelagic bite had nothing to do with the amount of boats zipping by.