Mission Bay, 3-20-15

[Amish Ed]

Launched at about 7:00am with Landwhale and Monstahfish (good to meet you). Headed towards the area of yesterday's hot bite and slowly worked our way across the bay's entrance. Very slow pickings. Eventually made it to the area of yesterday's bite and met Buddha (nice to finally meet you too). I wasn't getting bit at all and had left some reluctantly biting fish elsewhere. So, I headed back to them. The reluctantly biting fish bit for a while, then everything shut down with slack tide around 10:00.

Landwhale and I slowly drifted back to our launch site and I was giving serious consideration to calling it a day at 11:00. Steve was in the 20's and I had 10. He was getting me back for the last few weeks. Then I noticed a point that was kind of protected from what was by then a white cap inducing blow. So, we paddled over (Monstahfish joined in the fun eventually), and I immediately started hooking up. In 20min. I had 9 more fish. Then the bite slacked way off. But, by 1:30 when we headed in I had a total of 27. Unfortunately, for all that I only had 1 legal and handful in the 12-13" range.

Early on the bait of choice was a brown and orange jig (orange 3/8 Slayer head and custom skirt) w/4" New Penny Paddlerz trailer. Other misc. 5" Paddlerz got some fish too. The noon bite was all about a 5" Smokey Shad Paddlerz on a 3/8 Ultrahead. Regularly re-applying Hot Sauce made a noticeable difference.

To cap off a fun day of fishing Steve and I had lots of traffic on the way home. 1hr+ to get to Encinitas. The drive ended up being 2.25hrs total.

[landwhale]

Started off the morning in Sail Bay with a slow pick fishing the areas along the 5 mph bouy line as my FF refused to light up. Slow pick all the wy across and back even a few fish during slack tide on the blade. Redbone Paddlez dipped in Uni Butter and the Tin Roller made up my baits of the day. The wind came up and we drifted with it back under the bridge toward the Ski area and Ed started catching spotties and I was stuck on 21 fish couldn't get a bite till I stared casting way up wind to give the 3/8 oz heads to reach the bottom. Carry far less tackle nowadays and had only 3/8 heads with me. Again the key was fresh Uni Butter and cast up wind slow retrieve keeping the bait on the bottom. Ended up with 33 including 4 legals and another 2 hrs on the freeway after I left Eds to home at least I had a great time fishing with Ed and got home in time for dinner.

[ghotion]

How long will the Unibutter stay fresh after being opened?

[Amish Ed]

Now why would you use Uni Butter when you can use Hot Sauce? :D

[landwhale]

As long as you don't store it with saltwater in it it won't spoil.

[monstahfish]

Hey guys, sounds like we all did pretty well. It was good to meet you and Buddha. I ended up picking around sail bay with Buddha most of the time and every once in while I would get into a hot spot and pull in a handful in short order. I did find a few larger fish this one wouldn't lay flat and I didn't have a tape so I'll let you be the judge. The bait was a 5 in paddlerz.

[buddha]

As usual I totally sucked. MB has my number as always.

[Amish Ed]

Nice bass Shane. Look forward to doing it again. How's the shoulder holding up?

Jeff, keep putting in the TOW. You'll get MB at some point, and then you'll wonder why it ever seemed so hard. At least that's how it was with me.

[monstahfish]

Ed's right my first few times I got maybe 1 or 2 fish then you saw how I did on friday. You should consider getting some braid and that might help with strike detection and feeling the top of the weed beds.
Thanks for asking Ed. The shoulder is mediocre at best. Waiting for clearance to get an mri. Probably a rotator cuff tear where my bicep tendon connects so it's a little little bit out of position and that's why it's impinging in the joint. I might be jumping the gun but with my crude knowledge of how things work, I'm guessing the only way is surgery and that's going to take me out for 3-6 months. In the meantime, I will try to do all the pt that worked for a short while before, though I think there is more damage this time around.

[buddha]

I don't know if you follow lunar tables or believe in them but last Thursday and Friday were the highest rated days for the month for fishing and the sun rise and moon rise were fairly close in time.

http://www.bassmaster.com/astro-tables#

That being said it certainly didn't help me!

[Amish Ed]

First time I've ever seen a Lunar table. But, I do watch the tides. I don't plan my fishing around them, but I like to know the when and how much anyways. At the very least I then know what to expect for movement and might plan where I fish based on that.

[alanw]

You guys should do a Hot Sauce vs Uni Butter competition.

I'm a big believer that the solunar periods affect fishing, but haven't really been able to translate that to catching more fish... yet.

[Amish Ed]

Steve and I have a competition every week :) In reality, while I like Hot Sauce best and Steve likes Uni Butter, I think the fish like both. They might prefer one over the other depending on conditions and location. Steve and I are usually pretty close as far as #'s go though. Some days he does better, sometimes I do.