Ventura Harbor Memorial Day 05-28-2012

Not having any plans set in stone other than spending time with the wife I was delighted when my buddy Brian called and asked if we wanted to go to Ventura Harbor to do some jetty / surf fishing in the Ventura area. After discussing it with the wife we decided that we would love to go. Picked up Brian & Nicole in Simi at around 1:15 PM and headed for Ventura. I knew Mahigeer was going to be in the area since I had spoken to him and he was at Sterns Wharf and planning to stop by Ventura pier. He could not come over to the jetty and we did not want to go to the pier because of the inevitable Memorial Day traffic. I did take a shot of the pier in the distance below so I could say I took a picture of him, lol. Started fishing at end of the jetty around 2:30 PM after dropping stuff off, finding parking and walking a couple blocks back. There was a ton of dead kelp and eel grass in the water which made the chances of catching any fish slim. I tried all sides of the jetty with Octopus, Mackerel, Muscle and Shrimp but almost every time I brought in my line it was covered with eel grass. Hard to catch a fish when your bait is buried beneath a huge clump of crud, lol. Left around 5:30 about 45 minutes past the high tide. We were both skunked, but it was a nice day out there, the swells were pretty big. Both of us and our gear got soaked a couple times. Couple shots of the area and a video I found on my phone of a Sarcastic Fringehead I caught in my net at Ventura Pier on 05-15-2012.

Surf Fishing North of Santa Monica 03/04/2012

Hit up the surf for a couple hours with Brian from about Noon till 2:30 P.M. We used sand crabs, live shore crabs, shrimp, muscle and limpets for bait for a big ole skunk. Beach was packed with people since the weather was nice. The only thing we caught all day were nice views such as the one below (my camera sucks from far away, but it was phenomenal).

Jetty Fishing Pierpont Bay (Ventura, CA) 02/25/2012

Met up with my fishing buddy Brian at 8:00 AM in Woodland Hills. After a quick pit stop at 7-11 for muchies and drinks we proceeded to the jetty. We started fishing around 10:00 A.M.. Brian hooked up on a wall eye perch pretty quickly using muscle. I went quite a while without anything. At some point, I noticed an about two foot wide hole between three rocks that had water down below, so I dropped my bait (frozen squid) in there and just a few minutes later...tap, tap bam fish on. Pulled up a 10" rock fish, sweet! After that I moved around casting to rocks and holes I could see and caught four more rockfish from 10 to a little over 12". They were all the same species of rockfish (not sure what kind, anyone know? We were thinking grass or brown rockfish). Brian also joined in the rockfish party and landed 3 or 4 of them as well. He also hooked into a nice 5" or so rock crab which we promptly returned since it was caught on hook and line. We packed it in at around 3 PM. Another great day of fishing in Ventura, CA. All fish except the biggest rockfish were promptly released to get bigger.

Fishing area and fish pics below (in no particular order):