Surf Fishing Malibu 10-18-2013 with Flannery

Talked my main fishing partner in crime the Flan man into fishing the Full Moon. I / we usually do pretty well on full moon nights with incoming tides, and this day / night was no exception. Low tide was a -0.18 @ 2:49 PM and high was a 4.47 @ 8:54 PM. We fished from about 2:45 PM till about 8:45 PM. Bait was frozen squid as usual.

The weather was absolutely gorgeous and the fishing started out hot right away....for Brian at least, lol. He started out the catching by pulling in a fatty 17" calico bass at 3:12 PM. Damn, nice start!

He then proceeded to catch three grass rockfish between 3:30 PM and 5:00 PM which were approximately 8", 12" and 11" (all released to get just a bit bigger). Wow, he has a four to zero lead on me....guess it is just his day :).

Still not catching jack, I took a moment to take this nice picture around sunset at 5:11 PM (moonrise was at 5:13 PM) while standing on a rock in the middle of the ocean with a fishing pole in one hand and an expensive smartphone in the other...

Wouldn't ya know it. A second after taking this picture, I get hit and it sticks....crap, phone to pocket quickly and reel baby reel, lol. Brought in my first fish of the night, a nice 13" or 14" yellow Fin Croaker (released because I do not care for YFC personally). Yeaaaaa, no skunk for me :).

Fishing was a little slow for an hour until I caught an around 11.5" grass rockfish at 6:19 PM, which was released to get bigger. Hmmm, now his lead is only 4-2 :).

Next fish came at 7:03 PM and it was a big fat piggy 19" Calico Bass! Woo hoo! What a fish and what a fight to get em in through the rocks and eel grass. Calico bass are one of my favorite fish to catch because even the small ones give you a good fight and the large ones fight like hell.

Nice! Two pig calico's in the bucket (and Brian was happy I got a fish I kept so he could shlep off his fish on me to clean, lol) and the lead is down to 4-3 :). I caught the final fish at 7:41 PM which was an approximately 18-20" leopard shark (released of course).

We fished for about an hour after that then resigned ourselves to a nice 4-4 tie for the night, lol. Great night of fishing and catching. We both also had large sharks on but both were broken off even with our semi-heavy gear (I use 40 LB mono Brian uses 60 LB braid with a 40 LB mono leader). We will get one of those beasts in one of these days :).