RUNNING FROM REDS – Even out of Dana Harbor on the coastal spots the reds were too abundant and left local skippers skipping from spot to spot to find fishy places with fewer of them as crews worked frantically to descend those anglers could not keep for already having their two in the bag. PHOTO COURTESY OF DANA WHARF SPORTFISHING
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Channel Islands, Morro/Avila lings snap too as whitefish boost catches well above 10-fish cod limits alone
BY MERIT McCRAE
The rockfish opener did not disappoint. The April 1 opener featured nice weather in almost all areas and indeed the first week featured only one windy day for once. That was on the 2nd. Then the westerlies quickly backed around to north-east offshore Santa Ana conditions. There was some morning breeze shooting southwest off the Oxnard Plains but that too subsided later in the day. Meanwhile the best outer island waters remained beautiful.
Anglers dropped all manner of offerings from hardware to plastics to standard squid strips on flies and all performed in typical bottom biter form. The outer island boats, including the ¾-day runs to Santa Rosa from Santa Barbara, the overnighters from Ventura and Channel Islands harbors, the Santa Barbara Island run out of Redondo, the L.A./Long Beach San Nicolas Island trips, the Newport and Dana Point San Clemente Island overnight runs all packed on the bottom fish, and with the increasing number and size of both whitefish and sheephead lots of anglers bags held 15 or more of the big bottom biters.
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Along the Central Coast out of Morro Bay the bite was good but not wide open, with a lot of natural forage in the local waters. Yet those places farther north and south bit better and boat limits were the norm. Nevertheless the ling cod numbers were great for early season, much better than in recent years past.
Out on Santa Monica Bay 8 or 10 rockfish replaced what had been a handful of sculpin in anglers bags and the whitefish numbers continued to add to the catch. Out on the Long Beach Shelf there was a similar switch.
Out of Orange County the 14-Mile Bank’s deeper waters provided quality catches on shorter trips. From Dana Wharf there was good success off Camp Pendleton as well.
The Oceanside local runs tapped in too, with 5 or 8 rockfish in each angler’s bag on the ¾-day runs.
Out of San Diego the local runs tapped into the opportunity, some fished coastal spots but a few runs headed out to the deeper waters of the 9-Mile bank.
Most of all there were an amazing number of reds, so many even the local coastal boats maxed quickly and found it difficult to find places to fish without them.
The ocean whitefish boom really came into its own and added substantially to the bags all across the board. Check out the Reports By Region for some numbers.
