fishin-impossible.com

eric and i took a 3/4 day boat to catalina yesterday, hoping to finally get some big fish this year. well, like the slump we’ve been in thus far, the day was very slow. no one caught any yellows and only a few bonito were brought on board, none by us. we each picked up a couple of pearch and whitefish that were tossed back, so for a long 11 hours worth of fishing we had nothing to show for our efforts.

one of the main problems we had was that we were setup with heavy tackle, thinking we’d be targeting tuna. So when our attention shifted to trying to catch calico bass and sculpin, we couldn’t really blame them for being line-shy. i’m also terrible at casting a conventional reel, and didn’t bring any spinning reels, so my 10′ casts towards the kelp patties weren’t doing me much good when we were 40′ away from them.

while half of the blame lies on the captain for not finding the fish, there were lessons to be learned. for one, i, for the first time used a scopolamine patch, and didn’t get the slightest hint of seasickness. when i got home that evening i also wasn’t super groggy like i usually am from dramamine. next time i’m going to bring 3 setups, a 12lb spinning rig, 20lb conventional and a 30lb conventional. This way i’ll be ready for whatever i’m targeting. in two weeks, eric and i are going to take our boat off of pv and hopefully make something happen. i’ve been hearing that other than catalina though, the socal fishing waters have all been pretty slow.

Eric and I only do ocean fishing because for one we live right next to it, and secondly there is just so much variety and excitement in ocean fishing. If you fish in a lake or a river, for the most part, you know exactly the types of fish and the ranges of sizes you can catch. In ocean fishing, there is really no end to the variety of fish that are out there. Of course we usually fish for a specific type or types of fish, but nothing’s more exciting than bringing up something you had no idea was even in that area.

But as great as ocean fishing is, ocean water just takes such a toll on our boat. We fish off of an 18′ Glastron with a Volvo Penta 3.0 SX I/O. We also use it for wakeboarding, but most of those trips are in Marine Stadium in Long Beach which is also saltwater. It seems that every other trip we find something that has become corroded and started to fail or fall apart. The most recent problem we had was in a port side hydraulic lift-line for our ourdrive trim. One of the metal fittings had cracked and was leaking ATF fluid pretty badly.

What I thought would be a 30 minute job in taking off the line, ended up being a full Saturday worth of work. To remove the lower line (the broken one), I had to first remove the upper line, and while removing the ends from the piston were simple, the lines that went through the hull were extremly difficult. The manual called for removing the entire outdrive to access this area, but I have small hands and lots of weird tools so I eventually got it off. The replacement cable, was a ridiculously priced $80 at a local shop, but after spending that much time getting it off, I didn’t feel like waiting around for an internet order just to save a few bucks. Putting the cable back on was more difficult than getting it off, but eventually I got it all back together. I topped off the ATF fluid (it took about 2 quarts as most of the system’s fluid was in my driveway now), and a few cycles of the trip up/down to get the air out.

Next weekend, i’m going to install the Volvo Trim Sender unit which I ordered and should arrive sometime this week. Another saltwater victim, the sender went out, shortly after the boat’s warranty expired. This install, like the hydraulic lines from this weekend call for the removal of the outdrive, but I’m going to see if i can’t get it hooked up without that hassle.

Eric and I are hopefully going to get out sometime this weekend for some local inshore fishing, and we’re taking a 3/4 day boat out of Redondo to Catalina on the 24th. Tight Lines!

lately, eric and i have been having a pretty bad dry spell with our fishing. i think the biggest problem is that we’re focusing too hard on huge fish by using setups that are targeting only huge halibut and since we haven’t seen any huge halibut lately, we’ve just been getting too discouraged overall.

in two weeks, we’re going to take a 3/4 boat out of long beach to catalina and hopefully get some good fishing in there. nothing like a few good lands to get you back in the spirit. we’re also going to change things up with our local inshore fishing. next weekend we’re going to fish PV and the horseshoe area with some different setups that target a wider array of fish. like i said, i think we need to broaden our targeting to enjoy fishing again and stop only focusing on barn door halibuts.

i also picked up a prescription of scopolamine patches that should help out on some of thse rollers near the shore of PV that have shorten one too many fishing trips in the past. last weekend i took Dramamine and while it did an amazing job at keeping my stomach at bay, i was so tired on the boat drive in and the car ride home that it was dangerous. scopolamine is supposed to not make you nearly as drowsy, and is supposed to work for 3 days straight.

i figure once we get our basic fishing back in action, then we can slowly stray back to focusing on the huge fish. for now i think the key is to get back in the game of bringing in lots of smaller, good fish and get us back in the groove.

Eric and i finally got out and fished this weekend. We had planned on fishing last weekend, but the boat trailer had a flat tire that took too long to fix and we had to scrap fishing until this weekend. We had the boat loaded by 6:30a and we were on the water around 7a. We baited up with a half scoop of squid from nacho’s and headed to some coordinates we read about in Mark Wisch’s book: Between Two and Twenty Fathoms, all near and around the horseshoe. About 30 minutes into the fishing, Eric’s seasick and i’m not far off from being sick myself. The water wasn’t too rough, but enough for our weak sealegs.

In an attempt to salvage the trip, we headed back inside the breakwater and drifted the live squid near the cabrillo beach light house. We got a few bite-offs, but no hook-ups and we still had almost a full tank of squid. What a waste of $30. Needless to say our spirits were crushed and it’s gonna have to take some big fish to change things around for us.

The water at the horseshoe was pretty cold, around 55F. There were quite a few other boats fishing the same area we were. Inside the breakwater, it was closer to 58F. Hope everyone else is having a more productive fishing year than us!

so far this year, we’re 2 for 2 in getting skunked. the weather is getting nicer and sunday was a perfect day to be out on the water, but we had nothing to show among 5 people and 5 hours of fishing!

we got medium sized sardines at the san pedro bait barge and worked the lighthouse for about two hours with nothing but a few rakes. we then worked the wall near the long beach side of the port with nothing, tried fishing around the long beach bait barges, went out to the horseshoe, and the west side of the jetty… nothing.

where the hell are all the fish?

from news.yahoo.com:

BOSTON - Call them Pavlov’s fish: Scientists are testing a plan to train fish to catch themselves by swimming into a net when they hear a tone that signals feeding time.

If it works, the system could eventually allow black sea bass to be released into the open ocean, where they would grow to market size, then swim into an underwater cage to be harvested when they hear the signal.

What’s next, teaching them to coat themselves in batter and hop inside a fryer?

Read the rest of this entry »

eric’s been busy with work, and i’ve been busy moving so it wasn’t until today that we got in our first fishing trip of 2008. we headed out from davey’s locker at 9am to calm seas and a beautiful day, but nacho only had 3″ anchovies and we were planning on bounce-balling sardines for halibut. we headed back inside to pick up sabikis to make bait and squid in case we couldn’t. we were only bringing up small smelt, so we decided to bounce-ball swimbaits and the squid. after about an hour without a single bite, we drove up to the breakwater to cast plastics and fish the anchovies for bass, again without a single nibble, and after an hour of that we headed home, completely defeated.

at least the fishing can only get better from here

(CNN) — Fishermen in Bangladesh beat a rare river dolphin to death because they had not seen “this kind of creature before,” according to local news accounts.

The sun sets over the Ganges River, home to the rare Ganges River dolphin.

The fishermen then tried to sell the body of the Ganges River dolphin as a rare fish. When they failed, the men gave up and dumped it outside a museum — where a large crowd tried to catch a peek, the national Bangladesh Sangbad Sangstha news organization reported Tuesday.

Elisabeth Fahrni Mansur, who works with the Bangladesh Cetacean Diversity Project, told CNN that the mammal was trapped in the low waters of a tidal channel.

“It wasn’t dumped in front of a museum,” Mansur added. “The animal was taken to a visitor center where it will be prepared for an exhibit.”

The Ganges River dolphin inhabits the murky waters of the Ganges River and can be spotted only when it surfaces to breathe. Thus, they are very rarely seen, according to the World Wildlife Fund Web site.

Unlike its marine counterpart, these fresh-water dolphins have a pudgy body and an extra-long and sharp-toothed snout. They are almost completely blind probably because of the poor visibility of the waters in the Ganges River, the WWF said.

The World Conservation Union places the total population of the dolphins at 4,000 to 5,000. It classifies the Ganges River dolphin as an endangered species.

The air-breathing mammals sometimes die after they find themselves stranded in shallow waters, Mansur said. The construction of dams has reduced the flow of fresh water in many parts of Bangladesh.

The dolphin population is also dwindling because they sometimes get caught in a fisherman’s net.

The fishermen caught the dolphin Monday in Bagerhat, a city near one of the world’s largest mangrove forests.

The forests of the Sundarbans — Bengali for “beautiful forest” — lies at the delta of the Ganges and two other rivers on the Bay of Bengal.

(CNN) — An anti-whaling group is accusing the crew of a Japanese vessel of kidnapping two activists who climbed on board the ship to try to stop its whaling operations in Antarctic.

Australian citizen Benjamin Potts and British citizen Giles Lane — both members of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society — came on board the Yushin Maru No. 2 Tuesday.

Apparently the Australian government is claiming that the captain of the fishing vessel is a “terrorist” for having tied up the protesters that boarded his ship. The Japanese whaling vessel, the “yushin maru #2″ was legally fishing in the Antarctic, and while whaling remains a controversial practice, anyone who boards a vessel uninvited should be pleased that the only thing done to them is being physically restrained.

[read the CNN.com article]

or at least posing with fish that their boyfriends and husbands probably caught (or maybe that they caught, i’m not trying to be sexist). eric and i haven’t been out fishing for a couple of weeks now, but since the weather has been freakishly warm for january we’ll hopefully get out this weekend or next. until then enjoy random babes posing with big fish: