NPH Coastgauard station - Corona del Mar. No stripes for me!

[CheapPelican]

9.5 hours for one spottie.

7:30 launch from lifeguard station. Took a while to make bait but ended up with six sardines and threw lots of macks to the seals. Swells were not friendly. All the kayakers I started to paddle out of the jetty with turned back almost immediately. Apparently the word got out that the dines were plentiful cause all of a sudden I was surrounded by a pod of dolphins and I dont know how many seals. The dolphins were so preoccupied that a pair dove right under my bow. With all the bait fish getting owned by the mammals I figured anything worth catching would be laying low during the feeding frenzy (was I wrong?)so I took out an old camera and took some zapruder film quality footage before the battery quit.

http://youtu.be/ctNwC27xg9s

I ended up braving the swell and made it out of the harbor. C rigged a dine and trolled around the buoy and drifted for a while for no results. Trolled to CDM. Got my line tangled in my rudder. Ended up getting sick from dealing with that mess so I decided to head back in to recover. Threw my Swim jig around the marine laboratory and got my skunk buster. Met up with andrewtp and hit the moored boats. He found a hole got several spotties and sandies. I only got a huge mack and my swimbait tail bit off.

[Amish Ed]

Too bad it was slow, but at least you were out there and got to see some wildlife.

[CheapPelican]

Yeah, I don't get out that often but whenever I do, there's always something amazing to see.

[min-va]

Did you ever try the NPH back bay under the PCH bridge?

I haven't fish the back bay for a while, since the mouth is not doing good for the last few times..i think is time to try, some good halibut fishing there, just drift around bridge with live bait or gulp.

[Yakin]

Actually I was out there a week before and all I had around me were dolphins caught a few fish and then got escorted back into short by them

[T Bone]

NPH backbay is now an MLPA I think the bridge is the boundary.It can be epic drifts in a good tide.

[andrewtp]

The water is warming up in NPH, seems like the bass are starting to chew. The color that was workin for me was Xmas tree in 3" BH.

It was nice to have Cheappelicans company on the water to shoot the breeze with. Also met w William novotny(sp) earlier in the day, cool to meet guys from the board. There's always something new to learn and future trips to plan.

[William Novotny]

It was my pleasure andrew. I ended the day with one sandy that I didn't measure because he swallowed it good and I had a time getting him unhooked and wanted to get him back in the water, but id say about 13". And one halibut hookup off the balboa side docks on a live sardine. I should have known the light 12# leader would get thrashed, and it did by the third set of head shakes. Did a drag of the same area trying to produce another bite for hours but couldn't hook back up. I was satisfied just to know there is life in nph again.