BY MERIT McCREA
SANTA BARBARA/VENTURA/OXNARD – One could see it coming, major westerly winds for the SoCal coast for the much anticipated rockfish opener on April 1. Atop Santa Barbara Island there were times when winds held steady over 50 knots, with gusts to 65. It was actually windier mid-Bight rather than the usual epicenter somewhere off Point Conception. On the whole south coast, just the ½-day boat Premier out of San Diego got out fishing. However, several Central Coast boats made it from Morro Bay. But by the weekend the weather was down-right nice.
That’s when the Santa Barbara Channel Island fleet made their move and it was everything an angler could hope for. Over the weekend the Coral Sea out of Santa Barbara Landing put every angler on their limit of ling cod. In addition putting a bit of time in after the big Santa Rosa halibut 9 aboard that boat Sunday. The Stardust had over 300 rockfish and 35 lings.
Up in this area as in others the abundance of vermilion greatly outstrips angler’s bag limits in a hurry. It’s all part of a day’s work for skippers to find fish with as few vermilion in the mix as possible. Looking for quality reds that weren’t vermilion Capt. Tucker McCombs on the Endeavor out of Ventura Harbor Sportfishing tried a new tactic – go deep, very deep.
On a charter with a group of 12 anglers who had electric reels they went in search of blackgill reds and jugged their bags with big ones. But the surprise was finding biting black cod as well, nice ones. The fish were big enough they looked like lings in their catch.
Tucker said it was game-on and they could have filled up the bags with 10-fish limits of black cod too. With western discovery of far eastern culinary cuisine, black cod have become a very desirable catch with making delicious miso black cod the goal.
While his gang fished 4 pounders in as deep as almost 200 fathoms, it is possible to fish even a commercial 20 hooker with just 2 pounds if you’re careful and strategic about tangles. It appears it’s just as legal to fish black cod with more than 2 hooks as it is sand dabs. You just have to not have any rockfish, lingcod or greenling aboard if you’re rigged with more than 2 hooks per line per person.
One deep-water trick is to spread the lines by dropping the back ones first while motoring slowly ahead, spreading the gear out over a wider area. But the boat cannot spin at all once the lines are out.
For anglers not familiar with modern e-reels, they’re push button digital. You can drop your gear to within a few feet of bottom without ever actually tapping the bottom with the sinker. When it’s time to come up you can leave the rod unattended and the reel will automatically stop winding with the gear a few feet under water.
Capt. Jessie Martinez on the ½-day Speed Twin out of CISCOs said in shallow the sea lions make fishing difficult, so deeper has been better. It turns out many shallower areas closer to the shorelines have sea lions that have learned to steal even spiny rockfish off anglers lines. The better fishing has therefore been farther from these pesky varmints.
Nevertheless even with 51 anglers at the rail Saturday they managed to fill every angler’s limit – 510 rockfish. In fact, over the weekend limits were the rule on the rockfish, and the overnight boats posted combo catches of rockfish, lings, sheephead and whitefish that in the neighborhood of 15- to 18-fish averages.
