La Jolla 6/13

[Salty]

Pretty interesting day out there yesterday. Launched at about 5:30. Tide was low, super mellow waves with a little cloud cover. Struggled with bait at first, finding only a handful of Spanish. Made my way to deeper water to start searching for marks and found a school of hungry greenbacks hanging around 15-30' in the column. Filled up my livewell with those pretty quickly. Started the day trolling a greenback and dropping the yoyo on anything that looked interesting. My buddy got a solid bite and fought it for about 30 seconds before whatever it was shook the hook.

Eventually I switched to trolling 2 lines: 1 greenback on a flyline and 1 on a dropper setup about midway in the column. Eventually got into a good fight on the dropper that lasted long enough for the New Seaforth to make a 90-degree turn and drop anchor 100 yards from me("Go ahead and get your lines out guys. We're gonna try this spot..."). Unfortunately, once I got it to color, I saw it was a black sea bass. Kept it in the water, snapped a quick pic and let it go. Gave me a nice splash in the face as a thank you as it dove down.

While trolling the area, I spotted floating rockfish all over the place that were obviously improperly released and left to die. Zig-zagged through the area and used a makeshift descender with a flattened sabiki hook and a 12oz weight to drop down a treefish and 2 small vermillion. Came across another larger vermillion and spotted a shark circling it. There were bites out of the rockfish already and we watched the mako finish it off with a lot of thrashing.

Headed back in around noon. Tons of bird activity diving on bait, but nothing was interested in my bait, iron or jig. Made it back to the beach around 1pm. The swells had picked up big time at that point. Tide had filled in, waves were dumpy. Lots of chaos at the landing. My buddy and I made it in just fine, but there were several yard sales just after us. One had none of his stuff secured and dumped it. My friend and I went swimming to help him find anything we could in the surf. Somehow, my buddy(Gnarwhal here) found his phone, fillet knife and his Dawia Lexa on a 9' rod in 5' of water under the breaking waves. I happened to find a pair of prescription Ray Bans while diving under a wave and found the guy on the beach that they belonged to. They were all pretty stoked and it was awesome we were able to recover so much, but it was a really good reminder to always secure my shit! Anyway, even if I don't always find what I'm looking for, it's always a good time at LJ...