“Is this sprinkle or is this rain?” I asked myself this morning while going down the stairs with just enough water coming down that it felt like someone was spitting from the roof.
Today is the big white seabass tournament seminar at Sav-On Tackle — 150 people, and capped at that — so the first order of business was to get the seminar gear together. It’s a Seeker-sponsored event, so I grabbed the seabass gear I’d use if fishing in the one fish, one-big-bite tournament: Super Seekers with 90F, 6480H, 6480XH blank numbers.
It might seem overkill to some fishing nothing lighter than 50-pound fluorocarbon on the kelp cutter rigs and having 80-to-80 as the crux of a winning strategy when fishing around kelp and the type of neighborhoods where the divers shoot them. But you want to be fishing on the upper end of the I-think-I-can-hook-a-60-plus-pounder-on-this-gear-and-land-it range.
Enter Range.
WE FISH WITH "HEAVY" TACKLE because it's not about what's biting, but what the next bite could come from. Try to wrap your head around that for a second. Now read this: this 40-pound white seabass Tim Husband, right, caught back when this spot used to hold seabass (and kelp) could have just as easily been a 60-pounder. The bite before this one snapped his 40-pound fluorocarbon; his brother Dwayne, left, lost several fish the next trip and went on tilt and pretty much lost his shit, saying he's done fishing, he's selling his gear, etcetera. It should have been "I'm done fishing with gear on the bottom end of my I-think-I-can-hook-a-fish-on-this-gear-and-still-land-it range." Let there be range and hook-to-land ratios shoot way up when big fish and structure are the two big considerations. The concept goes for everything from bull calico bass to cow tuna.
All fishing decisions for worthy fish should have tackle range come into consideration. Range is always on my mind — from the poker table to the deck to my better half’s moods — and when you think in a range-orientated way decisions get both easier and harder as an open mind thinks things out.
So with the three rods packed up I also achieved coming up with a Tackle Room column — let there be range.
The issue after next is a new supplement, Southern California Saltwater Tips and Tactics, and this week I’ve kept busy grinding out and editing copy from freelancers like Greg Trompas. I’ve been working on an A to Z piece that’s been kinda fun.
On the fishing front, the Enterprise caught a couple of barracuda on its ¾-day trip out of Long Beach Marina Sportfishing. That, and the fact that there’s good ‘cuda fishing and a little bit of yellowtail to the east of the Rockpile is the big news on the salt front.
There’s a good band of 61 to 63 degree water that pretty much goes from Todos Santos Island to above Newport, so the table is certainly getting set.
My prediction: with this Saturday’s full moon there is going to come some big changes to come with the backside of the moon.
Let’s hope one of them is no wind for more than a week for once this spring. The fish will come and bite. We just need a little more length to this stretch of days without 20 knots of wind.
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