San Diego Bay 9/29

Took a skiff out on San Diego Bay on Sunday. Got the last bit of a low to high tide, from 8:30-10:00 and a high to low from 10:00-4:00. Was a huge swing both ways, 6.2 feet. We targeted shelves and transitions, equipped with a new garmin striker 4 and depth maps (https://www.oceangrafix.com/chart/detail/18773-San-Diego-Bay).
Bite was on the first three to four hours. Hitting a ton of fish on a little transition from 35-42 feet and some other similar structures. The first half of the day were spots east of Coronado Bridge (East of the last pier and West of the military base). I used a 40 G slow falling Jigpara in a sardine color, reeling up and over structure then letting it fall on slack line.
Things got interesting when I switched to a Jigpara spin in the 40 G model and hit two 18-20 inch halibuts and a PB spotty on three consecutive casts. There have been some freaking hogs out there this summer. The last halibut tore the blade off the spin, and bent my hooks.
After I ruined the spin and pinged the Jigpara, it began to be a grind. Had some luck with a white gulp mullet on a Carolina rig, but it definitely slowed for me.
Ended the day soaking squid on the East side of Coronado (too lazy to do anything else). There’s a very pronounced shelf at pillar 13 that drops from like 15 to 30 feet that needs to be explored, but we wanted to fish deeper.. Slapped some trash stingrays around, and some small spotties. One of my friends was pulling in guitar fish all day, but also got a behemoth croaker and a bonefish on squid.
Hit one more big spotty on the troll back through glorietta (deep diving lucky craft), and headed home. Total was 25-30 fish, all-in-all a pretty fun day.

 

Hard to say, it was nice to locate the drops quickly and pretty interesting to see what was going on down there in real time, but it’s hard to not get on fish in that channel. Also had to have someone hold the transducer because the suction cup mount wasn’t working, so probably could’ve gotten a LOT more use out of it. Need a couple more sessions to tell how much of a difference it makes.

 

Felt like it at a couple moments... I like it how those things quickly turn into a receptacle for loose fishing gear.