The Spring Fish Are Here

Signs of spring are everywhere for Southern California anglers. Water temperatures are warming with more and more game fish flushing into a myriad of local hot spots every day.

Boats from Newport Beach to San Pedro were catching copious amounts of barracuda off Huntington Beach again on Wednesday.

“You can see the barracuda blowing out on bait with big flocks of birds overhead,” said Capt. Mitch Christensen from the half-day boat Southern Cal out of Pierpoint Landing in Long Beach. “Everyone on board is hooked up; this is crazy.”

Mike Gross, of Torrance, had great success fishing with lures. The key was to retrieve the jigs at a slow to medium pace.

“I watched Mike hook up over and over again,” Christensen said. “Blue and white jigs seemed to work really well.”

Capt. Andy Siratt from the Enterprise was having a similar day out of Marina Sportfishing in Long Beach.

“We have been busy all day,” Siratt said. “There is no shortage of barracuda here.”

The anglers on board the Enterprise finished the day with 413 barracuda, along with a good catch of sculpin.

Capt. Mike Jewitt from the Big Game 90 was at Santa Barbara Island over the weekend when he heard a loud splash off his bow. When he looked over in that direction, he saw a sea lion carcass flying through the air with a great white shark right behind it, he said.

“That was a damn big shark,” said Jewitt, who said the shark continued to maul the sea lion.

Surf fishermen had good action this week with more corbina starting to bite with warming water temperatures. The key for corbina is 4-to-6-pound test with a soft-shell sand crab for bait. This is sight fishing at its best, as you will many times see the corbina foraging for sand crabs in less than a foot of water.

There's good fishing at Dog Beach at the Huntington Cliffs for barred perch to 3 pounds as well as corbina. There were also some halibut and leopard sharks taken there.

Fourteenth Street in Seal Beach was good again this week. Fishing between the pier and the navy jetty has produced barred perch, corbina and spotfin croaker.

Anglers continued to catch good numbers of barracuda in the Santa Monica Bay too. The Redondo Special had 100 barracuda on its Wednesday morning run for 30 anglers. Other schools of barracuda were seen near Point Vincente and Rocky Point.

Last weekend, David Choate, of Torrance, watched private boaters at Rocky Point catch a white sea bass and a yellowtail. Both fish easily exceeded 20 pounds and were some of the first of these species taken by rod and reel.

Steven Konrady, skipper of the Tradition, was happy to hear about the Rocky Point catch.

“Barracuda fishing has been so good that we might have to start checking Rocky for sea bass and yellowtail,” he said. “The [Santa Monica] Bay is on fire this year.”

Free-divers continued to spear white sea bass at Rocky Point. One private boater who insisted on anonymity speared two sea bass over 60 pounds on the same day earlier this week. Divers also reported  big schools of barracuda swimming with the sea bass in the Palos Verdes kelp.

Rock fishermen around Palos Verdes continue to catch lots of opaleye perch and a few more calico bass and cabezon. Frozen peas worked best as perch bait; squid were best on the other species.

Exotic catch

Tracy Viloria from Huntington Beach was at Hotel Palmas de Cortes in Baja’s East Cape last week when she caught an interesting-looking fish.

“Looks like a Golden Trevally [or Golden Jack; Gnathanodonspeciosus],” said Rick Feeney, collection manager from the Natural History Museum in Los Angeles.

“They are found from the Red Sea all the way to the tropical eastern Pacific," he said. "They have a protractile mouth used for feeding on bottom stuff like mollusks, crustaceans, etc. Pretty fish. Sometimes small ones are seen in aquarium shops. They are common in the Indo Pacific but not so common here in the eastern Pacific.”