West Coast bottom fishing
Hit the Sonoma Coast of California yesterday for what looks like the last decent weather window of the rockfish season. The swell report, which is never correct, was calling for 1.5’ at 16 seconds with a little wind chop. For our here that would be about as good as it gets! My buddy Justin and I loaded up the Hobie kayaks and made the hour long drive up to Timber Cove. This would be Justin’s first time fishing the coast from a kayak. When we got to the beach launch it was very apparent that the conditions were a little sportier than we had anticipated. It was still doable though so we got unloaded, dragged our gear down the beach, and made our way out through the surf.
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It started off slow with only a couple of small gopher rockfish hitting the 4oz diamond jigs. Not too surprising as the conditions were pretty bright and we figured as the sun began to fall that the bigger fish would be a little more active. As it turned out we didn’t have to wait too long. A huge fog bank rolled in and as soon as it swept over us we starting seeing bait schools move up on the graph.
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We moved over to a rock pile that was loaded with sea lions and started catching some lingcod and a couple big vermillion rockfish.
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Dark fell on us before we could finish our limits but we managed a decent haul of fish for the freezer. Here’s Justin with a nice vermillion rockfish and a good blue cabezon. I wish I would have taken a pic of the meat. It is slightly blue as well just like the cabezon’s skin.
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And finally a pic of the total bag.
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Originally Posted by Mars Bluff
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