Dana Point, Saturday, 02-04

[PapaDave]

What a magnificent day on the water!!! You could have oredered better weather. You could see the cliffs on Catalina, you could see Long Beach, heck, I think I saw a couple of kayaks off Newport. Okay, maybe a slight exaggeration.

Headed north out of the harbor, trolled a small mac but no love from anything. Fishing was a tad slow, got a couple of small calicos on the plastics, released. Started doing some exploring and fished a couple of areas I hadn't fished before.

Okay, I think I may smell like Black Sea Bass musk or something, seems I am catching a bunch of these lately. Caught my PB for the species on a sardine, first drop in a new location, about 50' deep.


Took about 30 minutes to get it that 50 feet to the yak. Granted, I was not using the heaviest of gear at the time. It was a whole lot of fun. I went to released it and discovered the necessity of gloves, it shredded the skin on my hands. That's going to hurt for a few days.

I am attaching some pics, have a video, but will cut out 25 minutes of tug of war. I would like some help though, I am not real good at estimating the weight of these fish, so I would like those who are to look at the pics and give me rough idea of it's weight. For reference, the leader in the one pic is 16" long.


Oh yeah, caught a 13.5lb halibut, sardine, shortly there after, well, once I peddled back to where I had started.