PC Saturday

really really kicking myself for not going sunday, especially since it looks like window for salt this year is rapidly closing... ON the plus side, prepped and sold my old Outback in 24 hours so wasnt a lost day. 

I'm loving all these trip reports. This and the DIY stuff were the reason I joined this forum over 7 years ago. So, I'll add my trip report here, too:

Mrs. Redbeard and I showed up at first light and were happy to see 2019 AOTY champ (and ORC champ, and AOTD champ) Casey just a couple of cars over, and local legend onefish right beside us. After a chat we all got on the water.

I had been tempted to go salmon fishing but I sprained my knee a few weeks back and it's still recovering, and so I was in my paddle kayak, which has no rudder, and I hate trolling in it. But also Mrs. Redbeard has been wanting a low-key day and so that sealed the deal.

I had a couple of goals, which included getting a good fish on a Buzz Bomb for the AOTY side challenge and trying out some new custom triangle jigheads in 4oz. a buddy of mine poured (I can't remember your forum name!). I had paired those with some 6.5" Big Hammer swimbaits and they looked good. I also brought some herring as another area I want to work on is bait fishing for lingcod.

For how flat it was we both rushed the launch and it was kind of dumb. I just flat out didn't take the time to read the water at all. It worked out fine but I took a wave to the face that I didn't have to.

Once we got out, I let Mrs. Redbeard choose the spots and we found the NNW drift convenient - we got out a ways on the reef and then just let it take us. She was working curly tails on the bottom and immediately started hooking up good rockfish in the 18-19" range. She ended up with 3 blacks around 18.5", a similar sized vermillion, and a small lingcod.

I didn't have very fast action but I was working on my buzz bomb tactics and after a smallish black rockfish I eventually hooked up a 28" lingcod on it. I switched to the swimbaits but didn't have much luck. I did catch a decent cabezon (22"? just a guess) which gave me a great fight and was released, and a couple of small fish. Then I worked the herring for a while but the bite had really turned off for both of us so we moved around a bit but had no more luck.

There were 80 bajillion red jellyfish around, making fishing difficult at times, and we saw a lot of pelicans and a mother sea lion with her pup.

I was anxious to get back to the beach to get packed up before the high tide sh!+ show on the sand, so we headed in. I took my time in the tiny surf and had no problems. I was glad we came in when we did, however, with the water already almost up to the soft sand.