Santa Barbara 10-15-07 - Kayak Fishing Adventures on Big Water’s Edge

sbsyncro · 10-18-2007, 08:05 AM

On Monday, my yak fishing buddy and I headed out into the gray weather around 0900, launching from the harbor boat ramp. NOAA report was for small craft advisory and 30-40 knot winds in the afternoon, so we wanted to make sure we launched at a place that would A) put us into a place where we could ride the wind back and B) avoid a surf exit, since the afternoon swell has been pretty big (for kayak fishermen) lately on our south and south-west facing beaches (most of them).

After spending about 45 minutes fiddling with gear and rigging a couple extra rod holders to our milk crates (and me filling an 18" section of ABS pipe with recovered lead bullets from the local range to use as a ballast in the front of my tandem) we paddled out into the harbor and headed straight out from the harbor mouth to a spot I'd scoped the other day on my new Cuda 250 fish finder. I'd caught a couple of short calicos there, and wanted to give it another try.

We found the spot (about 0.75 miles off shore) again and drifted over the structure a couple of times using 5" swimbaits (mine tipped with squid strips). After a couple of nibbles but no strong takes, we paddled out towards the sewer pipe outfall warning buoys and anchored near some lobster traps, trying to orient the anchor line and drift while watching my FF so that it positioned me directly over the structure. While we were there the lobster boat came by and pulled their trap, dumping a bunch of rock crab and it looked like they pulled one or two legals from the trap. They headed off to their next trap about 100 meters away, and after a few minutes we could hear them hooting and hollering - I guess they must have had a good pull on that one!

Anyway, after playing around with the anchor and trying this new technique of drifting while watching the FF, then tying off the anchor line, we fished the spot for about 45 minutes with no results.

We headed East, staying about a mile off shore (and in about 40 feet of water), slowly trolling swimbaits and looking for more interesting bottom features. After about 30 minutes of this, we'd been out probably 2 hours with nothing to show for it, so I suggested that we try my little "micro reef" that I'd found so productive last week (5 legal sand bass, two shorts, and four rockfish within about an hour). My buddy sarcastically said to me as we were arriving "Yea, like we both know that just because fish were biting last week here, they for sure will to-.." And before he finished his sentence, he was on a fish. I hadn't even had time to get my line in the water yet!

He was using a lime green glitter scampi grub with about 1/2 oz weight - probably 4" total length - and brought in a nice 17" or so sandie. I wanted to target some rockfish, so I put on a 5" bighammer swimbait with a touch of squid and dropped it overboard right into what looked like a mess of fish on my FF. I let it fall all the way down, rest a minute, then gave it a twitch, stop, then slow retrieve and POP - fish on!!

And so it went for the next two hours or so - I think in total we probably landed about 25 fish, sand bass, rockfish, and one ~16" sculpin (which was quickly released). It was great to be in a spot with such consistent bites, because we could relax about catching fish and concentrate on experimenting with different techniques and patterns, etc.

This spot is really small - probably no bigger than a pickup truck, but seems to have a very nice population of hungry fish. After the first few, we only kept either foul-hooked or otherwise unreleasable fish, and still came home with a dozen fish between the two of us. At this point, I think I will avoid this spot for a while unless I want to bring one of my kids out for some catch & release fun. I want to let the population rebound a bit after taking about 15 to 20 fish from the spot within the last two weeks.

Here were some of the things we discovered (as operating hypotheses) while fishing the spot:

1. Never would have found it or fished it without a fish finder. As I have said in previous posts, I have been fishing for 5 months without catching anything meaningful, and now with a FF, I pretty much get something every time, or at the very least, find interesting spots to try again in the future

2. GPS is the key to success - you have to be able to mark the spots that look good or produce so you can come back to them and try different techniques under differing conditions. Without the GPS you are really back to a lot of guesswork even if you have a sonar/FF

3. In the same spot where there seemed to be both nice sandies and rockfish, we could consistently "choose" which species to target by varying our method (for those of you that know this already, forgive the excitement of a newbie)

.

For sandies, we would cast up past or along the edge of the reef area where the fish were bunched up, let the swimbait drop to the bottom, twitch it a bit, then begin a slow retrieve. Nine times out of ten the sand bass would hit just as you began the retrieve, as the swimbait was rising back up off the bottom and moving laterally through the water.

For the rockfish, we would just drop the swimbait over board and let it flutter straight down. We probably got a lot of takes on the ride down, but with a spin casting reel its hard to tell, so I always noticed the fish once I had begun to "flutter bounce" the bait just off the bottom. There were also times where I would get rockfish with the bait just literally lying lifeless on the bottom. My theory is that they are attracted by the free-fall, and then watch for a few seconds before darting out and inhaling the bait.

One interesting thing we noticed while experimenting with different patterns - the color of the swimbait didn't seem to matter, but if we tried something too small (e.g. less than 3") we would not get the consistent attention that the 5" baits were getting.

Another interesting thing we found was that there was one particular lure in my buddy's kit that literally pulled 5 fish for 6 casts - it was amazing. It was a cheap kmart special dark blue bullet-shaped minnow type pattern with a flourescent yellow-green curly tail on about a size 2/0 hook. No matter where he put it or how he worked it, he hooked up nearly every time! Unfortunately on the 6th cast, he snagged and lost the lure, and of course didn't have any more. Doh!

Well, for any of you suffering from the frustration of not catching anything (and too bashful to say anything about it on the boards!) I'd like to tell you there is hope.

You just need to pry that $200 loose from your wallet and get an Eagle Cuda 250 S/MAP. (or if you have more than 2 bills, for an even better one!). But as I said, the GPS is a REALLY nice feature to have integrated into the unit - I have three separate hand held GPS units and still opted for the integrated one on the Cuda.

After being a die-hard catch & release-only fly fisherman for my entire fishing life, it is really weird to see me with a stringer of fish and such a goofy smile on my face, but for at least a little while I feel compelled to be a "meat hunter" while I settle into this new sport and get over the excitement of finally catching fish after 5 months of frustration!

Once I get my Optio W30 H20-proof camera, I'll have more on-the-water pictures!

- Brent

steveooo · 10-18-2007, 08:18 AM

Great Report!!!

Dan · 10-18-2007, 08:26 AM

Great outting!

Big flatties lurk in those waters.

sbsyncro · 10-18-2007, 08:36 AM

Ah yes, but my fly-fishing experience combined with "fishing ADD" makes them impossible for me to catch. I simply can't handle the "pin on a live bait and sit there for three hours" gig....

I'll throw a 4" Kroc while paddling back to the harbor along the shore and frequently hook into shorties, though. Now if I could get them to take some kind of big streamer fly on a 10-wt rod with sinking line .......

dgax65 · 10-18-2007, 10:33 AM

Nice report. Keep them coming.

Useful Idiot · 10-18-2007, 04:37 PM

I've had some good days on the halibut up there using the same 5" big hammer (no squid) and doing a 3 crank retrieve across the bottom. Just let it hit bottom then do 3-5 quick cranks, let it fall and hit bottom, 3-5 cranks, fall... Give it a shot. Beats dragging a trap rig across the sand flats. If you're up tight to the beach, especially goleta beach and west beach try throwing a rebel fastrac minnow almost onto the sand and just straight retrieve it across the shallows. That bait will also catch those wsb at the receiver when the sun goes down.

10-18-2007, 08:05 AM	#1
sbsyncro Member Join Date: Oct 2007 Location: Santa Barbara, CA Posts: 80	Santa Barbara 10-15-07 On Monday, my yak fishing buddy and I headed out into the gray weather around 0900, launching from the harbor boat ramp. NOAA report was for small craft advisory and 30-40 knot winds in the afternoon, so we wanted to make sure we launched at a place that would A) put us into a place where we could ride the wind back and B) avoid a surf exit, since the afternoon swell has been pretty big (for kayak fishermen) lately on our south and south-west facing beaches (most of them). After spending about 45 minutes fiddling with gear and rigging a couple extra rod holders to our milk crates (and me filling an 18" section of ABS pipe with recovered lead bullets from the local range to use as a ballast in the front of my tandem) we paddled out into the harbor and headed straight out from the harbor mouth to a spot I'd scoped the other day on my new Cuda 250 fish finder. I'd caught a couple of short calicos there, and wanted to give it another try. We found the spot (about 0.75 miles off shore) again and drifted over the structure a couple of times using 5" swimbaits (mine tipped with squid strips). After a couple of nibbles but no strong takes, we paddled out towards the sewer pipe outfall warning buoys and anchored near some lobster traps, trying to orient the anchor line and drift while watching my FF so that it positioned me directly over the structure. While we were there the lobster boat came by and pulled their trap, dumping a bunch of rock crab and it looked like they pulled one or two legals from the trap. They headed off to their next trap about 100 meters away, and after a few minutes we could hear them hooting and hollering - I guess they must have had a good pull on that one! Anyway, after playing around with the anchor and trying this new technique of drifting while watching the FF, then tying off the anchor line, we fished the spot for about 45 minutes with no results. We headed East, staying about a mile off shore (and in about 40 feet of water), slowly trolling swimbaits and looking for more interesting bottom features. After about 30 minutes of this, we'd been out probably 2 hours with nothing to show for it, so I suggested that we try my little "micro reef" that I'd found so productive last week (5 legal sand bass, two shorts, and four rockfish within about an hour). My buddy sarcastically said to me as we were arriving "Yea, like we both know that just because fish were biting last week here, they for sure will to-.." And before he finished his sentence, he was on a fish. I hadn't even had time to get my line in the water yet! He was using a lime green glitter scampi grub with about 1/2 oz weight - probably 4" total length - and brought in a nice 17" or so sandie. I wanted to target some rockfish, so I put on a 5" bighammer swimbait with a touch of squid and dropped it overboard right into what looked like a mess of fish on my FF. I let it fall all the way down, rest a minute, then gave it a twitch, stop, then slow retrieve and POP - fish on!! And so it went for the next two hours or so - I think in total we probably landed about 25 fish, sand bass, rockfish, and one ~16" sculpin (which was quickly released). It was great to be in a spot with such consistent bites, because we could relax about catching fish and concentrate on experimenting with different techniques and patterns, etc. This spot is really small - probably no bigger than a pickup truck, but seems to have a very nice population of hungry fish. After the first few, we only kept either foul-hooked or otherwise unreleasable fish, and still came home with a dozen fish between the two of us. At this point, I think I will avoid this spot for a while unless I want to bring one of my kids out for some catch & release fun. I want to let the population rebound a bit after taking about 15 to 20 fish from the spot within the last two weeks. Here were some of the things we discovered (as operating hypotheses) while fishing the spot: 1. Never would have found it or fished it without a fish finder. As I have said in previous posts, I have been fishing for 5 months without catching anything meaningful, and now with a FF, I pretty much get something every time, or at the very least, find interesting spots to try again in the future 2. GPS is the key to success - you have to be able to mark the spots that look good or produce so you can come back to them and try different techniques under differing conditions. Without the GPS you are really back to a lot of guesswork even if you have a sonar/FF 3. In the same spot where there seemed to be both nice sandies and rockfish, we could consistently "choose" which species to target by varying our method (for those of you that know this already, forgive the excitement of a newbie). For sandies, we would cast up past or along the edge of the reef area where the fish were bunched up, let the swimbait drop to the bottom, twitch it a bit, then begin a slow retrieve. Nine times out of ten the sand bass would hit just as you began the retrieve, as the swimbait was rising back up off the bottom and moving laterally through the water. For the rockfish, we would just drop the swimbait over board and let it flutter straight down. We probably got a lot of takes on the ride down, but with a spin casting reel its hard to tell, so I always noticed the fish once I had begun to "flutter bounce" the bait just off the bottom. There were also times where I would get rockfish with the bait just literally lying lifeless on the bottom. My theory is that they are attracted by the free-fall, and then watch for a few seconds before darting out and inhaling the bait. One interesting thing we noticed while experimenting with different patterns - the color of the swimbait didn't seem to matter, but if we tried something too small (e.g. less than 3") we would not get the consistent attention that the 5" baits were getting. Another interesting thing we found was that there was one particular lure in my buddy's kit that literally pulled 5 fish for 6 casts - it was amazing. It was a cheap kmart special dark blue bullet-shaped minnow type pattern with a flourescent yellow-green curly tail on about a size 2/0 hook. No matter where he put it or how he worked it, he hooked up nearly every time! Unfortunately on the 6th cast, he snagged and lost the lure, and of course didn't have any more. Doh! Well, for any of you suffering from the frustration of not catching anything (and too bashful to say anything about it on the boards!) I'd like to tell you there is hope. You just need to pry that $200 loose from your wallet and get an Eagle Cuda 250 S/MAP. (or if you have more than 2 bills, for an even better one!). But as I said, the GPS is a REALLY nice feature to have integrated into the unit - I have three separate hand held GPS units and still opted for the integrated one on the Cuda. After being a die-hard catch & release-only fly fisherman for my entire fishing life, it is really weird to see me with a stringer of fish and such a goofy smile on my face, but for at least a little while I feel compelled to be a "meat hunter" while I settle into this new sport and get over the excitement of finally catching fish after 5 months of frustration! Once I get my Optio W30 H20-proof camera, I'll have more on-the-water pictures! - Brent

10-18-2007, 10:33 AM	#5
dgax65 Guerro Grande Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: Houston, TX Posts: 629	Nice report. Keep them coming. __________________ Douglas Gaxiola Team No Fish- Amateur Staff

10-18-2007, 04:37 PM	#6
Useful Idiot Senior Member Join Date: Apr 2005 Posts: 286	I've had some good days on the halibut up there using the same 5" big hammer (no squid) and doing a 3 crank retrieve across the bottom. Just let it hit bottom then do 3-5 quick cranks, let it fall and hit bottom, 3-5 cranks, fall... Give it a shot. Beats dragging a trap rig across the sand flats. If you're up tight to the beach, especially goleta beach and west beach try throwing a rebel fastrac minnow almost onto the sand and just straight retrieve it across the shallows. That bait will also catch those wsb at the receiver when the sun goes down. __________________

10-18-2007, 08:18 AM	#2
steveooo Senior Member Join Date: Sep 2005 Posts: 1,921	Great Report!!!

10-18-2007, 08:26 AM	#3
Dan Senior Member Join Date: Mar 2006 Posts: 1,053	Great outting! Big flatties lurk in those waters.

10-18-2007, 08:36 AM	#4
sbsyncro Member Join Date: Oct 2007 Location: Santa Barbara, CA Posts: 80	Ah yes, but my fly-fishing experience combined with "fishing ADD" makes them impossible for me to catch. I simply can't handle the "pin on a live bait and sit there for three hours" gig.... I'll throw a 4" Kroc while paddling back to the harbor along the shore and frequently hook into shorties, though. Now if I could get them to take some kind of big streamer fly on a 10-wt rod with sinking line .......