Monday Update: Call in sick, fish yellows either on a San Diego half- or three-quarter day boat or on a skiff. There's spots up from the border to La Jolla. Literally. For once, there's plenty for everyone--mostly to look at since the spots of puddlers are on tiny squid--but if it starts to bite, look out. It could end tomorrow (or today) or be the start of something special.
"Somebody hook one," said Mikey Schmidt with Point Loma, not the usual Coronado Islands, as the backdrop to his Malihini. There was a little spot of puddlers up off the bow, and so far only Robert Groeber had been able to trick a yellowtail, his coming off a sonar school about an hour earlier. A chrome Tady 9 yo-yo iron never looked so good in a yellowtail.
"Okay, fine, I'll give a beer to whoever gets the next one," came next from Schmidt. All of a sudden I realized something: I hadn't had a beer all week. Having a drink on the job never sounded so good.
The spot started to get back up, right on the edge of where I thought I could get a Tady A1 light. Right as the first few backs started to get out of the water I released on the cast, thinking how good it feels to fish with a Newell 332 again as well as how rewardingly refreshing a Coors Light would taste. The spot pushed the little ball of one-inch squid up high and dry, and the small Tady landed right where I would have put it if I could have dropped it from one of the tern birds chirping above.
"Brandon's going to get bit!" claimed Schmidt, and then 20 plus pounds of green back that just found its way into U.S. waters rolled on the smallest surface iron that Tady still has in production. A few minutes later a chilly slug of the Rocky Mountain water flowed at four knots down the throat. It was the best beer of the year. Well, it was up there anyways...
The scene happened today on WON's annual Malihini surface iron seminar trip. It was mostly all show and no go on the 18- to 26-pound yellows that have marched right over the border. But the show was worth the price of admission.
Yes, the yellows are biting. There were "only" 10 yellows caught by the sportboat fleet out of San Diego, but the counts don't even come close to telling the story behind the volume of yellows from La Jolla to Point Loma out in the deep water. And there's spots on the U.S. side of the border.
Yeah, we finally have something to fish for.... a heads up: they want the surface iron fished on the slow to medium slow grind. And they are skittish: if you are on a skiff, don't run them over. There's plenty of spots around to spread out the crowd this week.
AN OLD NEWELL 332 on the new Calstar MAG GG 90J put the Tady A1 in the right spot, and I managed to get my first local exotic of the year in the deep water outside Point Loma. And everyone said it was going to be a rockfish trip...
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