SOCAL SALT REPORT

Monster seabass pop up off south Orange County coastline BY BRANDON HAYWARD/WON Staff WriterPublished: Jun 30, 2009

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Sportboats and skiffs have run-ins with slug seabass; Dana Wharf’s Clemente gets a 681⁄2 pounder — the biggest wsb so far in 2009 DANA POINT — Water in the mid-sixties has resulted in some huge — actually downright monstrous — white seabass for boats fishing the south Orange County coastline. “Our scale bottoms out at 70 pounds, and we got one that went 681⁄2 pounds today,” said Cory Leiser, skipper of the Clemente out of Dana Wharf Sportfishing, on a call with WON on Sunday. The story behind the big biscuit was the stuff that seabass lore is made of. “The guy (Jeffrey Graham of Bakersfield) that caught it had a bird nest in his upside down rental rod,” said Leiser of the start to the seabass story. The line broke, so Marcus (Bailey, the boat’s deckhand) started hand lining it up. I really thought it was just a bat ray, then Marcus said, ‘You might want to grab a gaff.’ To be honest, I forgot he was still dealing with the thing,” added Leiser, who was in a bit of shock when the big seabass came up boat side. “The thing just came up and laid there and then I stuck it,” added Leiser, who, ironically, says that a 28-inch white seabass is his personal best. The 681⁄2 pounder is the biggest rod-and-reel caught seabass to be taken anywhere in southern California this season, although its far from being the only big seabass for the week out of Dana Wharf. Friday had another big seabass caught on the Clemente when David Tate scored a 45 pounder. On Saturday the San Mateo had a pair of seabass on its half-day trip. The seabass were caught by the father/son duo of Norm and Michael Clenshaw. The elder Clenshaw scored a 21 pounder, only to be outdone by his kid, who ended up with a whopping 58 pounder. The run-ins with slug seabass have not been limited to sportboats in the least. Timmy Husband and Teera Saivichit found a batch of willing croaker Sunday afternoon, and Saivichit gave this writer a call after the two had the biggest day they’ve ever had on the local croaker on Husband’s Parker. “We were fishing down around San Onofre and we ended up with five seabass from 42 pounds to 47 pounds,” said Saivichit. “It was all on the sardines and Spanish mackerel. I was fishing 65-pound Spectra to 50-pound fluorocarbon and hooked a couple fish that I never stopped… we had a 15-pound yellow down there too.” Saivichit said while their fish were on sardines and Spanish mackerel, there was another boat near them that was putting the screws to the big seabass as well. The only difference was that the other skiff was tanked up with live squid. There have been rumors of squid outside the Dana Point Breakwall as well as down around the San Clemente Pier. The big seabass have been popping up for Oceanside boats fishing the local kelplines like those around the Barn Kelp. A Friday 3⁄4-day trip on the Sea Star had 2 of the seabass to go with 38 calico bass and 5 sand bass for 12 anglers. Cory Leiser said that the seabass are so spread out that, “I think that pretty much any huge batch of kelp has seabass right now.” In the meantime, the calico bass fishing has been fair to good when the boats have anchovies, and there have even been signs of yellowtail around for the local trips.