Wednesday, October 5th, 2005
Knowing nothing about beach conditions or the tide situation, I head down to the ocean this morning. Sunny beautiful day. I'm sick of going to seacliff, so I head for Manresa. I stand in the parking lot there, looking at the water, and decide to not fish there, as it is way too flat looking, and I'm kindof tired of this beach also, at least if it doesn't look fishy. Not that I'm an expert or anything.. maybe it is fishy but I just don't see it.
However, I have a new toy to play with: my dad gave me his old Nikonos, with
a 35mm lens, to try out as a beach & water camera, so I take a few pictures
with it to test how it works. The nikonos is really manual. It also doesn't have
a light meter built in, so I use the exposure setting on my digital to get
a reading. Hopefully they will match up.
I then drive down to sunset, and look at the water there, from up in the parking lot. I see one guy down there fishing. Beach doesn't look great here either. I 'hem and haw' a lot, and finally decide that I can't stand looking at it any longer and need to go down there to stand in the middle of it with a fishing rod, fish or no fish.
Another piece of new gear; a RIO pro shooting head, 8wt, type 8 so it sinks at about 8 inches per second. Thin line. I bought it on sale from a shop in Worchester, MA, along with an intermediate head, and a couple of full size lines, for way less than half price. All new lines, so a really sweet deal.
Same flies on the same leader as last time, and I really need to make a new leader for them, and the eyes on the miki look like they are about to fall off soon, and the leader has a couple of nasty overhands in it, but I put them on anyway. I take a few more pictures with both the nikonos and the digicam.
Anyway, I go down to the beach and cast a little. The beach is steeper in places,
and a little carved out, but no obvious holes or structure. I think there is
something like a sandbar out a little ways, but not huge. I walk by the bait
guy that is there, and fish on the other side of him. No hits. He isn't catching
anything either. On my way back, I stop and talk to him. His name is Bob, and he
has fished the beach for 50-some years now; a real regular. He showed me his
setup and we talked talked a bunch about the beach fishing. Sure knows a lot.
Some notes: the winter bite is better on the outgoing tide. Try pescadero or
San Gregorio beaches for a variety of perch species, including redtail and shiner.
Steep beach though, so bring the spin/casting rod as flycasting might be tough.
He made his spinning rod from an 8wt flyrod blank; nicely shaped handle. Some
green line that he is using that has zero stretch (4-letter word, I don't remember)
to a plastic slider with a snap that holds
his sinker, to a bead to protect the knot, to another snap (stainless, heavy
duty) that connects to about 9' of black 15lb amnesia that holds a 3x long, large
stainless streamer hook, about the size of the grass shrimp he uses for bait.
He fishes the bait like grubs, with a slow retrieve. Stripers like those
shrimp a lot too..
Bob said that last week was great here, and a whole bunch of Phillipinos were lined up fishing. This week it is really slow, so the fish seem to have moved elsewhere (or all got eaten --Lars). Bob is a real regular on the beaches, as mentioned. I think I've seen him down here before, and other regulars would probably recognize him. He is well protected from the sun, wearing sungloves as well as a good hat.
After talking some more, the water begins to look better, so I cast a little more before heading out. Somewhere here, probably in snagging a piece of kelp on a lousy backcast, but maybe out in the water, my leader breaks and my flies are gone. I'm not exactly surprised, and it serves me right.