Saturday, September 10th, 2005
Not the greatest outing, but some experiments were made, and I found a few
fish anyway, despite less-than-ideal weather and tidal conditions.
I went down to Seacliff again, around 9am. Fog is clearing today (dangit!). Good for the beach crowd and the tourists, bad for the fishing. Especially if you're not out at dawn. I geared up with my 7wt lamiglas rod today, and a new RIO 250gr shooting head, type 6 + amnesia running line. Rod feels a little soft with this line, maybe it is overlined a little bit. In the past I've used a DT-6 line with it, which has usually been fine. But, I figured out how to cast with it, so I used this setup for the morning.
The surf at seacliff was very calm, and the scallops from earlier in the week weren't so obvious. Neither were the little rips, which meant that the fish were be more scattered. It turned out that there was a lot of kelp in the surf, just not visible from shore, so after a few casts, I got in the car and drove to Manresa.
Manresa was a bit better -- no kelp anyway -- but the beach there was pretty flat as well. I walked northwest and fished the spots that looked fishy-er than the rest; calmer areas that might hold a few perch, larger foamy patches. I found one such spot where I landed a small perch, and felt a few more grabs. At the next similar spot, I found some more fish, but they all shook off before I could see them. I think they were all pretty small. When I quit to walk back, around 11am, I had made it to the condos.
Lots of surfers out today, and shorebirds too. It was a nice walk on the beach. I saw pelicans, and a seal or sea lion. At the end of the outing, I thought the 7wt rod worked ok, but I kept throwing pretty wide loops with it -- maybe a 200grain head would have been ideal -- and I was getting tired of the knot in the amnesia running line catching in the guides. The braided loop setup slips through much easier. I suppose my knot at the loop -- a bimini -- is a bit overkill.. but I think that when I installed it, the thinking was that it would be mostly outside the rod tip. I'm finding however, that with the 30 foot heads, I strip in so that about 7 feet of the head is inside the rod guides before picking up the line off the water, which means that I have to shoot the thing out again on the backcast (preferably) before I cast the thing out.
Tides for today:
2005-09-10 04:29 PDT 3.30 feet High Tide
2005-09-10 06:46 PDT Sunrise
2005-09-10 07:22 PDT 3.10 feet Low Tide
2005-09-10 13:49 PDT Moonrise
2005-09-10 15:01 PDT 5.34 feet High Tide
2005-09-10 19:22 PDT Sunset
2005-09-10 22:27 PDT 0.62 feet Low Tide
2005-09-10 23:10 PDT Moonset