Before heading back down to SD for the holidays to see family, I thought it would be nice to head out to the coast and round up some rockfish to freeze and bring down with me for a fish fry! So one of my buddies and I headed out to the haystack rock at Pacific City on Friday of last week. He had never been there and I was itching to get back out to the rock. We get to the beach and the temp is in the mid twenties, there's a consistent off shore breeze at about ten mph, and it's pretty humid. So all of that wrapped up equals COLD!! Water temp. was around 48 and the sand on the beach was pretty stiff. The surf, however, was finally playing nice and well under 8 ft. so this was the day to do it!
We get on the water shortly after 9 after bundling up in our layers and were in the fish by 9:30. Plenty of rockfish, a little cabezon, and a couple of legal size lings were caught. My largest happened to be my first rockfish of the day coming in at 18" and well over 4 lbs.. We stayed in close to the rock for most of the day but did attempt to head out to my favorite hole and see if we could fight the wind. We couldn't.
I was jigging with 4 oz. of lead and couldn't keep it even close to straight down. Even though the fish were biting like crazy, we were getting blown out pretty quick, so we headed back to the lee of the rock.
It was great to get out there again and hitting up my favorite spot sure was a nice way to wrap up 2009.
Cheers from Oregon!