SAN DIEGO/MARINA DEL REY – Private boaters have found limited availability of live bait at times, all along the coast in recent days as providers held supply to make sure there was adequate amounts for the sport boat fleet. There was grumbling and finger pointing online of course, but the reality was a return to a largely anchovy-based supply – one that typically becomes less available during the late summer just as demand peaks.
Bait haulers like Everingham Brothers down south were working hard to keep supplies flowing but with clear waters coming all the way into the beach and anchovies moving out into deeper waters, getting them into the net gets challenging.
With San Diego to Dana stocks getting slim we checked with Capt. Rick Oefinger at Marina Del Rey to see if things were similar farther up the coast. He said he was afraid to say for fear of jinxing himself, but there were plenty of sardines in the Bay. Last week’s were beautiful 4-inch sardine, same as anchovy which had gone MIA just like they used to do this time of year, back when anchovies were all we had.
He’d had 6-inch sardine the last couple of nights, fishing bait. There were plenty of them, but it would be nice to have some yellows in the Bay to feed the bigger ‘dines to.
All good, right? Well the following morning he texted. “I must have jinxed us… no bait (last night).” Hauling bait is fishing. Oh well. It’s just the ebb and flow of the seasons. Clean waters and squirrelly scared bait fish.
