Newport 6/29

[socal_matt]

Decided to get out of the house this morning at around 730 and see what felt like biting what I had to offer. The plan was to catch some macks and drift the edge of the kelp with a trap rig with the mack, but I couldn't find any mackerel this morning. Also, what didn't help was my FF deciding not to work this morning which made fishing a bit more difficult. So, my friend and I ended up fishing the kelp off of CDM, he was using squid which only got him a small calico. I was using shrimp which landed me a small calico and two perch, then my friend had to leave early. After that, I continued south to the beginning of Crystal Cove which produced 2 sheephead, both were just short. Then I found a school a smelt at around 1030, caught a couple smelt and used them for bait. Within the first 30 min of dragging the trap rig, I got some action yielding a 13" sandbass but that was it. The rest of my drifts were completely dead. I couldn't go to plan B, which was the all so trustworthy rockfish, since my FF wasn't working. So I called it a day at 1 pm.

Oh ya, forgot to mention it was extremely foggy when I first got out there. The first picture shows my view of the shore, or lack there of. Mind you, I was somewhere between 200-300 yards from shore. Also, sorry about the poor picture quality, there was some moisture on the lense plus its from a crappy phone camera.