I thought I'd try something different today, and see if one can fish for perch with a floating line and an indicator. I have this new indicator from Ernie, who says it won't fall off the line, like the others I had did.
Manresa, around 9:15 or so. Overcast. I strung up with the 10' #9 rod, as I'm working out for my backeast trip in july, and want to bring that one. Also it seemed appropriate, somehow; maybe the long rod will make mending easier, if needed. I'm experimenting, see.. :)
There's some pretty interesting looking structure just northwest of the parking lot, a channel that runs diagonally outward. I waded out on the left side -- its pretty shallow, until the dropoff.. well shallow enough, but the waves occasionally flood my line basket. First cast the indicator pops off.. oh well so much for that, but when retrieving the line, I get a fish on. Aha! So this works too!
I spent the next hour and a half or so just fishing this one hole. I switched sides a few times. The wind came up a bit, but not overly problematic. I caught about 14 fish total, 3 of them larger barreds in the 10-11" range, and a whole lot of small ones, including one double. I had another, bigger one on too, but it shook off close to me. It pulled really strong, though. All took the surf miki, except for the one fish that was part of the double. Interesting; maybe I just hit it right this time, and found a honey-hole, but I think I'm going to fish more with a floater this summer, and see how that goes. The leader was about 7-8', I guess just right for this condition. Not huge waves, but not calm either, with foamers and smaller breakers coming in. They definitely grab that line more than would happen with thin running line, though I could sortof throw a mend over the wave.
The bummer on this trip was that I managed to soak my camera, so its a goner. I had taken to keeping it on a leash, hanging inside the waders, as the extract-it-from-the-plastic-bag routine was bugging me, but somehow it ended up outside the wader and the weight of it helped it slip under the wading belt right around when a bigger wave washed by me. So now the choice is to blow almost $300 on a new waterproof one, or just replace the one I had via ebay, for less than a hundred.
Anyway, a very cool morning.
Tides for today: 2006-06-30 01:07 PDT 4.52 feet High Tide 2006-06-30 05:51 PDT Sunrise 2006-06-30 08:15 PDT -0.02 feet Low Tide 2006-06-30 10:37 PDT Moonrise 2006-06-30 15:54 PDT 4.11 feet High Tide 2006-06-30 20:31 PDT Sunset 2006-06-30 21:05 PDT 2.90 feet Low Tide 2006-06-30 23:54 PDT Moonset