This last weekend, I had the kids with me, but before I could figure out where we’d be fishing we had to deal with Carmegeddon.  If you don’t live in SoCal, what may you ask is Carmegeddon?  Good question…it was supposed to be the gigantic traffic jam caused by the closing of the 405 freeway north of the 10 past Mulholland to the 101.  It was predicted that northbound traffic would be backed up to San Diego.  On the fishing side of things, word was that the halibut and white seabass bite was good in Santa Monica Bay, but how we’d get past the predicted freeway parking lot was the issue.  Well Saturday night rolled around and Rick, the owner of MDR Sportfishing called in to say the freeway was WIDE OPEN.  Fishermen like wide open, so we made plans to get on the Sunday morning halfer on our home boat, the New Del Mar.

As Rick said, the freeway was open.  I guess everyone stayed home.  After boarding and getting out of the harbor, Jake was in the wheelhouse learning how to read the fish finder with Capt. Danny.  The Redondo Special chimed in over the radio that they were into some live squid, so we headed south to try and make bait.  I was good with the skipper’s decision in that if we could get live squid, our chances of hooking up on a flattie (which I need badly for my Top 10) or a nice WSB were going to go up significantly.  In the end, we didn’t get on the squid, but hung around between Redondo and Hermosa in skinny water to work the halibut and bass.

We lost a bit of time trying to get squid, so the end count wasn’t great, 15 bass (sand and calico) for 22 anglers, a few assorted rockfish, and one halibut.  MDR regular Mike took the one halibut on a live sardine.

Tough day for the Salty crew.  I was playing around with some new gear from ICAST which didn’t prove out to be fruitful (I’ll try some more before making a verdict).  I didn’t get my flattie and Jake didn’t add a sand bass on his Top 10.  The ‘thrill’ of the day for me was getting on a bat ray with my bass rod.  Pretty good ride, but not the kind of flattie I was looking for.  It wasn’t a total loss though as Unsalted (Jake’s nickname as glossed by Big Vic, the lead deckhand) won the end of trip raffle.  I was really happy to get back on the water after looking at fishing gear all week in Vegas for ICAST.  We all enjoyed another beautiful sunny day on Santa Monica Bay.  We’ll be back.  Tight lines!