This week's weather roller coaster at the beach started with warm weather that cooled to strong west winds followed by warm weather followed by a cool coastal eddy for the weekend.

Water that almost reached 60degrees last week rolled over by the wind and cooled to 57degrees by mid week. Yet even though the water was a bit discolored and quite a bit cooler the fishing was still good and promising to be great once warm water settles in. Small surf this week and next should help to make this happen

Some good news is that the coastal eddy that's happening today (sat.) will bring a southwest wind that will push warmer water up from the south and get us one step closer to a full-on spring bite.

Sand crabs still remain plentiful in areas where the sand is soft and free of pebbles and broken shells. Although we fished exclusively with crabs this week (because they're free, of course) that doesn't mean that other baits like grubs, mussel, worms, rock crabs etc. wouldn't work great. Last week a nice 8lb spotfin croaker was caught in Newport Beach on a inn keeper worm--It's the worm that protects beds of blood worms.

Fishing both the evening and morning high tides offered opposing results.

Think about it... We have had clear nights this week, the moon is almost full and we have both a morning and evening high tide. What does that mean? Well in surf fishing that means that the fish will be feeding at night (as we learned by catching some nice perch after dark) and most importantly, that fish will be feeding in the afternoon on the upcoming high tide. Why? Because when fish can see from the moon at night, (they can see a small shadow cast from their food caused by the moon) this makes food easy to catch---So fish will then wait until the next afternoon high tide to eat again.

With that said, evening fishing was great on the sand crab with a good bite on yellowfin croaker, barred perch and walleye.

For the beginning of next week we have some decent morning and evening high tides giving way to a smaller period of tide swings all the way through next weekend. I would fish this weekend and early next week on the beach and work next weekend toward jetties and rock structure, provided the swell stays small. This is where you can make use of the small tide changes to find some rock holes that are holding fish.

Thanks again to all the folks who came to my recent seminar at Sav-on Tackle. Let me know if you have a favorite tackle shop or fishing club where you'd like to have a light-line seminar.

See you at the beach,

Bill

www.fishthesurf.com