Sunday, September 23, 2012

Seminar and this week's surf fish report

Thank you again to all the anglers and Ken and Bill who helped with last weekend’s surf fishing seminar at Bolsa Chica.

 This week was a busy one but I did find time to go down to my favorite bay and suck up some ghost shrimp and sidewinder crabs.

Made my way down to the beach and found beautiful conditions with warm water and medium sized waves. It was a great surprise to see the long-shore current was still moving from south to north because that means that warm, clear water is still moving into our local beaches. I could see water churning in the trough in front of me and I couldn’t wait to cast out a fresh bait.
Knowing that the current was going to pull my bait up the beach, I cast to my right and began to watch my line as it came tight, straight in front of me. For a second, I thought I was snagged but it was just the edge of the trough followed by a hard pull and I’m onto several medium sized barred perch.
I continued to work the trough. It was only about 20 feet off shore and was easy to cast , then let your bait drop into the surf fish super highway. Took a look down the beach toward my buddy and he was on. A little corbina slid up on the beach.
After a couple of smooth hound sharks I was absolutely slammed by this yellowfin croaker who gave a great fight. Yellowfin and spotfin are solid fish and when you hook into one you know it—it’s solid!
Bait was getting low but the conditions were still great. On my last few baits I hooked into three large walleye perch. Three of these guys would have made quite a meal!
It really looks like we are going to continue to have some great surf fishing for corbina, perch and croaker. The water is still quite warm and sand crabs are very abundant. The sand crab season is coming to an end so now is a good time to begin to switch over to other baits like worms, ghost shrimp, mussel, etc.-but with that said, always throw a sand crab on now and then to keep those fish honest!

This week has some great tides for both bait catching and fishing. Last week we saw perch, corbina, croaker, sharks and a couple of halibut caught. They are all out there and waiting for you! As I mentioned before, it does look like surf fishing is going to remain good because of the flow of warm, clear water from the south. Right now there is a hurricane working it’s way up Baja and another one on it’s tail (about 10 days out) just off shore from Acapulco. Both these storms and any behind them will continue to make our fishing amazing right into November.

Good luck out there and I always appreciate a fish report (and especially one with pictures) so we can let everyone see what you are catching…

Tight lines and good surf fishing,
Bill

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