How to Catch Bait in La Jolla? How to Sabiki?

[jorluivil]

There are so many things that can help you find bait without a FF.

1. Birds - look for birds that are circling, diving, or just lingering around in groups
2. Seals - look for seals that are thrashing around or sticking to a specific area. It's not uncommon to see seals that are munching on a mackerel, when you see that happening there's a really good chance that there is bait in the area.
Water surface - on days when we have calm/flat conditions look for ripples in the surface of the water, large schools of bait that are on the upper column make the surface look like the water is boiling
Splashing bait - keep your ears focused on bait that may be splashing on the surface, sometimes it may be splashing behind you or on your right/left side. As soon as you hear the splash and you know where it came from you need to immediately cast into that area.

Sabiki rod - personally, I believe these things are a complete waster of money. Get you oldest light action rod and marry it to a small bait caster, that's all you need.

Dehooker - get yourself a dehooker, as Tony (fulrac) says, "this is a critical piece of equipment" and i completely agree with him. Getting the bait off a sabiki is extremely easy when you use a dehooker, much much easier than having to grab the bait with your hand and don't worry about dropping the bait on your kayak, nothing is going to happen to them. I've had bait sitting on my kayak a few minutes and they survived an entire fishing session. Also, I would suggest you bend back the barbs on the sabiki hooks, this helps tremendously when you're shaking them off with you dehooker.