Slayin' it in Newport

[socal_matt]

Well, after a couple months of no fishing I figured I should get out there. When I saw Arvil's post I thought I should give the ol' faithful rockfish spot a try out of Newport.

Checked the weather and tides, and they said it was supposed to be pretty windy with the Santa Ana's. I decided to ignore this and went anyways. I'm glad I did. It was a beautiful day, flat seas and only a slight breeze.

I got to the general area of the RF spot at around 8:15 am. It took some time just to locate a school but when I did, it was game on. Found this one school that was just savage. Huge hits right when I would hit the bottom. Pulled up 2 reds on the 2nd drop (since I was caught off guard on the first drop, which I lost my bait).

Then on my next drop, I get slammed. I end up pulling up this chunky copper.



At this point the spot was going WFO. Caught a big red that looked like it had been attacked by something bigger, but it wasn't recent. Was cool how it survived by healing the way it did. Just shows that nature always finds a way to keep going.



Later, I catch my first Boccaccio off of a kayak. The variety at that spot was pretty awesome.



In the background of the picture above was Blitzburgh, met him for the first time today. Was a very nice guy. We were both surprised how we were the only ones out there, especially on such an amazing day.

Then, the last fish of the day for me came with quite a fight. This thing felt big. When it was getting close to the boat, I got my gaff ready only to find that its just a sandbass. However this was one bully of a sandbass, it was 18''. RJ was able to take a picture of me with it, sorry for the poor quality, I think there was a smudge on the lens.

Overall, this was probably one of my best days out of Newport because of both the weather and the fishing.

Thanks for reading.

Here are the rest of the pictures.






The cooler shot.



Ready for tacos now.