This week’s devil winds finally broke down and left us with flat glass conditions, a small southwest swell and clean clear water.

Tides like the ones we have this week are my favorite time to fish. The high provides great water movement and the low tide exposes outside holes and makes collecting shellfish a breeze. Took a few minutes last week to collect enough littleneck clams and was glad I had them in reserve. Took only a few minutes at high tide to catch a few crabs and make my way to a favorite rock meets sand area.

Thursday provided perfect conditions when an outgoing tide formed a perfect eddy on the edge of beach and rocks. As so many other great posters have said, always look for water movement and fish the edges or churning discolored water. It makes sense that fish wait here for food churned up from the bottom and it provides a good place to hide.

Using the Carolina rig with a 6lb fluorocarbon leader I cast out a chunk of clam with a #2 split shot hook buried deep inside. The churning eddy caught my bait and carried it down stream. I knew I had only one hour to fish and I hoped for the best. When it looked like I was ready to get hung up on the rocks, blam! Fish on…

Fought this spotfin for about ten minutes and slowly climbed over the rocks to shallow water. With a little luck she tired out and I got her up onto the rocks. Check out how dark this fish’s colors are. Took a quick pic and sent her on her way.

Changed bait to a crab and cast back into the eddy. Not much time went by and I was on again. This brute was a real fighter and took over 100 feet of line on a single run. Fought her from one side of the rocks back to the other again and again. Finally she tired and I knew I had to get to the beach to have a chance. Once on the sand it was just the two of us. Finally up on the sand my fishing buddy Ray (I’m envious of your year-long fishing sabbatical!) took my picture and off she went back into the surf.

Friday came and I couldn’t resist the temptation to get on back down to the beach. The waves were a bit bigger today and the very high tide made fishing and landing fish a real challenge. Didn’t catch one spotfin—but the yellowfin croaker bite was red hot.











Caught only one perch this week but it was nice to see!

This week's tide rolls right into good tides next week and the week after. It looks like the swell will be small and coming from both the South and West which should lead to some clean warm water--eventhough we still will have a bit of kelp. As the water cools, look for both the natural and artifical baits (grubs, kroc, kastmaster, etc.) to both work well to find the fish.

This week was another great surf fishing week especially when you need to leav’em biting cause you’re out of bait! Can’t wait to get down there again!

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