Oceanside Artificial Reef

[Mr_Fixit]

This is more about interesting things and my own stupidity/learning curve than a fishing report.

I set out Sunday to go fish the artificial reefs outside Oceanside. Friday night, I entered all the coordinates into my GPS and found that it was necessary to convert the coordinates from one format to another. Having worked through all the 20 waypoints, I set to packing and prepping my equipment. The initial plan was to head out Saturday morning, but the work week left me far too exhausted to wake early enough. Sunday was the ticket.

Sunday morning, 6:45am I head out two hours later than planned. Damn how nice it would be to not have to work all damn week. Just head out fishing whenever you want... I hope I can do that in retirement. Arrival in the harbor came not much later and soon I was in my kayak heading to the nearest waypoint.

Not wanting to waste money on buying live bait, I started catching some on the way. This went fairly well as I soon had a dozen small macs in my tank. I was a little disappointed by the size, but I pinned one on just in the off chance of a wandering YT.

By 8ish I arrived where I my GPS said the artificial reefs start but sonar completely disagreed. Examining my GPS, I see that this waypoint was far too isolated, an apparent artifact of me entering the coordinates wrong, so I head to the next point. Same result, but the GPS says there is a cluster of rock piles in this area though Sonar still disagrees. Going from point to point, I find that the water is getting far deeper than the reef should be in. I am now convinced that I totally screwed up the coordinate conversion. (from Deg, Min, Sec to Deg, Min.xxx)

Not wanting to waste the time, effort, or energy required to get out here, I decide to drop a line and drift around. Perhaps some enterprising Halibut is wandering around looking for some squid (Brought along). After about 30 minutes of drifting, I get a hit. A big hit. The fight was initially quite strong, but suddenly became less enthusiastic. I pull up this rather large Kelp Bass and see what went wrong. He was hooked properly, but in his fighting managed to get tangled in the leader. He was a good 18" and weighed a good 5lbs at least.

During the process of untangling him and removing the hook, a rather large shrimp dangles out of his mouth. I remove this to find that this guy also found a small octopus. Fascinating to see what these guys eat. Apparently bringing him up from 100 feet of water caused him to dump his contents. Leaving his catch in his mouth, I returned him to the sea and wished him a prosperous journey.


Reset my line with a fresh squid and started drifting again. Soon a small halibut is on the line. He is quickly released without even bringing him in the kayak. Free to grow some more and become dinner at some future date.

I tool around for another hour then head to the pier since nothing is going on. After exploring the pier for a while and dodging one dudes cast AT me (Those dudes can be real asses at times), I head to the outer breaks thinking perhaps some hungry halibut could be wandering around there. Nothing. Another hour passes. I then decide to head into the harbor where I have had some luck in the past. Instead of heading directly in, I decide to have some fun and ride just outside the outer breakers. This was quite a bit of fun, riding up the waves just before they crest over. A little dangerous perhaps, but it was rather entertaining and made for some good exercise.

Soon I am in the harbor drifting around. No bites again. Nothing for hours. Seeing as it is now after 2PM and the wind is picking up, I call it a day. On the way in, I run across another kayaker who is experimenting around with his first kayak fishing run. We talked for a while and after recommending he come to this forum, we part ways. Packed up, headed home.

Now that I have properly converted coordinates, I hope next weekend is more productive. It would be nice to have some good action.