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.

Redondo Big Pier 12-17-2011

Copies and pasted from PFIC report by Redkorn (I put comments in parentheses)

Redondo big pier
Bait none (I tipped my Sabiki with pieces of pacific mackerel)
Rigs- Sabikis

I was planing on going to my jetty early 4am sat but the winds that day were blowing storm out to sea. So I decided to wait.

I found my self later at Redondo pier in the after noon looking for macks, dines and lobster.

Water was clear, warm, no wind and empty.

Burger had showed up later, we both hooped only to find small crabs, starfish, octos.

To kill the boredom I pointed out one of the many hoop nets I saw early in the day that were lost to the piles. I saw about 13? the look like black lard dots under the water =)

So I rigged up something snagged it and with the help of the strong Burger over the rail it came.

It was covered in weights, sabikis,hooks,lures of every weight and size. Madness! No lobster in it tho but we got to see lots of life (Muscles, Conch, Octopus, starfish, parasites, and an overall sewage smell...how nice!!! I did get 30+ weights of various sizes for the effort).

Burger later left and so did I. No fish, no bait (I did get some shrimp somewhere else after I left the pier, I made my own contraption and wanted to test it), no lobsters a warm bed at home sounded much better.

Ventura Pier 12/04/2011

Fished / crabbed Ventura Pier from about 7:00 A.M. till 2:30 P.M.. Started out at the end and worked our way back using cut mackerel and octopus as bait for fishing and a mash up of misc. crap, mostly mackerel, for crabbing. I caught zero fish all day, Brian managed one small perch and a jack smelt. Got three keeper crabs, one slender crab and two rock crabs, but threw them all back before leaving as three crabs ain't gonna give you much crab meat to work with. Was a long day due to the lack of action, but was nice none the less.

Catalina 11/12/2011-11/13/2011

Met up with Redkorn and Mahigeer for some fishing and bug hunting @ the Mole in Catalina. Mahi and I were on the 8:00 A.M. boat from Long Beach and Redkorn was on the 6:15 A.M. boat. Seas were super rough on the trip out, and as a result it was a miserable boat ride because literally 25% of the passengers were puking into little black plastic baggies...after that mess we arrived to cloudy skies, but no rain yet. After getting set up and making friends with Beaky the Cormorant...



















We dropped one net each on the off chance we could get a confused lobster out during the day. No luck there, but we did also have this nice visitor around most of the trip...






























Redkorn & Mahigeer both landed very nice Sheepheads (sorry no pics) and I landed a ton of Calico bass, most under sized, one just over legal but returned anyways. Once dark set we all put in our second nets and stopped fishing. Lobster wise, between the three of us we pulled at least 30 shorts throughout the night and 3 legals (all by Redkorn). I also pulled up this nasty looking octopus, which was returned since I caught him with my net, which is not allowed by the DFG rules.































Once the sun came up to clear skies we pulled up our nets and fished until the departing boat came. Caught a ton of Blacksmiths & Half Moons with an occasional undersized Calico Bass, Pacific Mackerel and Jumbo Spanish Mackerels.































Parting Shots































And the final catch in my sink at home. Great trip as always, even though I only got to bring home one keeper bug. Mostly because of the great company and friendly locals.