Dana Point 7/21

[AnachroniD]

Hi all, first post but I've been lurking for years. On the water by 6am and made my way down to the headlands. Landed a 13" sand bass right outside the harbor. The water was a bit choppy but smoothed out as the day went on. On the trip down I see lots of bird activity at my destination and as I arrive, my fish finder lights up! I haven't seen this kind of activity ever at dana (admittedly I'm kind of a noob there lol). So I drop down a Gulp copper penny jerk shad and I hook up with a barracuda almost immediately. For the next hour or so it was wide open and I landed 3 barracuda, about 15 calicos and too many mackerel to count.

Then it happens...my rod goes full bendo and I hook up something big!! I was using my light weight setup (daiwa coastal tws on a shimano 12-20lb medium action rod) so conditions were less than ideal for the fight. After 5 minutes of fighting, that dang fish spit the hook! Bummer!!

Frustrated, I immediately switch to a heavier setup (20-50lb tiger ugly stick with a shimano torium 16) and hook on a Gulp copper penny 8" worm and send it down. First cast and bendo again! Sadly I lost this one even quicker....

The bite slows down so I decided to head out to deeper water to find some rock piles I had marked on my GPS but there were too many power boats in that area and I didn't want to crowd them. I was able to get about 5 more calicos in that area before heading back over to the first area. On my way over I see another kayak heading my way so we chat for a bit but I see birds crashing into the water nearby so I start going that way when I hear the other yakker yelling for help! Poor guy flipped his yak and lost 4 or 5 rods to the murky depths... I help him flip and re-board his yak and gather up any thing I can. Fortunately we did find his wallet and cell phone!

After that, I head over to see if I could locate the pipe. I have a couple coordinates for it and my chart plotter shows the location of the pipe, but those don't exactly line up. Not sure if I ever actually found it but I did find some structure and managed 6 or 7 calicos there. Funny thing tho, two of them weren't even hooked! They were biting so hard on the Gulp that I was able to land them before they let go!

The wind started picking up so I headed back in and was off the water by 2pm. I will try to post some pics in the next post from my phone if I can figure out how to do it lol