Mission Bay: June 26

[fishinkid2010]

Today my friend and I fished Mission Bay. We arrived at around 6am to low tide. We launched from Dana Landing, and took a right to head down towards the Sea World Marina. Before reaching the bridge I saw several schools of bait breaking the surface. I threw spinner baits, swimbaits, crankbaits, grubs, and even a drop shotted Gulp shrimp to no avail; there obviously wasn’t much underneath the bait ball. Unfortunately, since the tide was so low I only got one bite while dock fishing in the marina. After deciding to leave that area my friend and I went in search of some better structure. We fished the pilings of one of the Bridges (not positive what street it was… I believe it was Fisherman Channel underneath Ingrahams St.) and landed lots of fish. The changing tide helped out quite a bit. First fish was a little halibut that liked the looks of my ghost shrimp colored grub. After him, I caught a few dozen Spotties on the grub (pumpkin and ghost shrimp color) and drop shot. Things got a little exciting when I threw a 3 in fish trap and drug it along the bottom. I hooked a 20 inch Halibut that was learning to fly. When I tried to net him, he exploded out of the air and nearly landed in my lap. He hit me in the side and drenched me, it was pretty funny to see. I took me four tries to net him with my small net, every time I would try to get him he would start with the acrobatics and jump all over the place. After landing him I got his measurement and let him go. Lucky for him he was just short of being my dinner. The rest of the time spent in that spot produced a dozen or so spotties and a sand bass. For the next few hours until my friend had to head in we fan casted towards the beaches and picked up a few more bass. I picked up a calico near the Bahia to complete my bay bass trifecta.

When my friend left, I headed over towards the bait barge. The bass were biting very well there. I caught about fifteen+ bass throwing swimbaits, krockodiles, and Gulp Shrimp. There were about five rental boats just murdering the area, I felt bad for the poor fish that took the hook deep and were being mauled to death by the people attempting to get the hooks out. Needless to say those people were no experts at quick releases. I saw a young kid catch a 30 inch halibut and some other guy catch a rod and reel with his hook. That was kinda comical to see. I also threw a krockodile and hooked five Barracuda and landed three. (I’m still wondering how a fish can fight me for five minutes with the hook set in its mouth… or so I think, and get off when they had bit a big ol treble hook. ) After the Barries the bite died down and I only caught two more sandies. Headed in after that and called it a day. None of the fish were humongous, some of them had a little weight to them, but they all put up a good fight.

Water temp was around 65 degrees and visibility was about 4 to 5 feet. The eel grass is quite thick in some places and should make for a great spinnerbait bite once the water gets even warmer.














Lots of pics, since that's my favorite part of fish reports anyways