Fogarty bottomfish, 5/24

Buddy and I fished Fogarty today. Launched around 0600 to avoid the negative tide. Even still, the shallowest point going over the reef was about 10 ft. Waves stood up a bit going over that. But once we were beyond the shallows, it was pretty nice and only got nicer as the morning wore on.

Slow bite at first. We trolled for salmon for a little bit, and I watched a 2-3 lb salmon (shaped like a coho) leap out of the water a few times. No bites trolling, and the water was about 50 degrees, so we stowed the salmon gear pretty early and switched to bottomfish.

We started fishing some deeper stuff, 100-140 ft, but it wasn't really happening out there. We gradually moved into shallower water, and found a much better bite in the 40-60 ft zone. Limits of lings and rockfish. My two keeper lings were 32" and 35", and nice blue ones at that. The rockfish were the usual: deacons, blacks, yellowtails. With the higher tide, coming back in around 1100 was a breeze. Only a few boats out, didn't see any other kayaks. Really happy we took the day off from work to capitalize on the window!

Fine job!

thank you for the great report and well done!

Thanks fellas. Forgot to mention the baits/lures. Jigging spoons and herring were tops today. Only a little love on the soft plastics and live rockfish. I trolled a live deacon around for quite a while for only a couple half-hearted grabs. Switched to herring, and it was Game On. My buddy was fishing a 2 oz P-Line Laser Minnow on a light spinning outfit, and crushed the rockfish and a few lings. I marked a lot of bait out there today, looked like herring.

I keep looking at Monday's forecast, but it looks just a bit too chunky.

Get'em while the getting is good. I always feel like the pressure on the closer to shore spots really ramps up after Memorial Day. The charter boats start booking up and activity with sport boats increases, and neither want to run more fuel necessary for their limits.

I have fond memories of when we used to hold the ORC on dad's day weekend. Shoot, now I'm just missing the feeling of looking forward to ORC. I guess it makes SBAOTD that much more of a big deal.

Yeah, the main reef right off Government Point gets fished pretty hard through the summer to where it gets tough to catch quality fish there later in the year. Almost always a few boats fishing it on the nice days.

Regarding ORC, maybe it's a reflection of the current kayak fishing scene. The market's aimed at black bass fishing nowadays. Forward-facing sonar, electric motors, big bulky kayaks designed for boat ramps and stand-up fishing, etc. Anglers like me probably helped propagate it, since I'm still fishing from a 2015 Revo 13 with a V2 drive. I don't make the kayak fishing industry any money!