09-15-2015, 06:29 AM
“I have a spot.”
Four words that have opened many humble brag, over-the-top conversations about white seabass, halibut, and calico bass.
![[Image: 2f66b803007fd042e3a1bb3d1687ddbb_i6r5.png]](http://fishtacochronicles.com/images/2f66b803007fd042e3a1bb3d1687ddbb_i6r5.png)
“The squid beds” are talked about like they are spots. Ditto for long, sprawling halibut drift zones. Bass spots are discussed as if they never leave the rocks or kelp stalks. Truth is, none of these are spots. They are zones that fish and bait transition into based on conditions and spawning cycles—in varying degrees—for mere moments in time.
I’ve long said that private boaters often limit their success by setting hard rules for themselves. (I am hardly exempt, as I have ranked my favorite coastal white seabass spots from one to 12.) But—and this goes for this season especially—there are few spots that are the same as they were. While rock and reef and beaches never move, kelp lines have shifted and shrank down and even disappeared. (RIP Slide Kelp.)
Saying “this is my spot” and anchoring up or even drifting on it could result in some long days this season, as with a lack of kelp many spots are now hard bottom zones.
Spots have turned into zones. Whereas a corner or nook in the kelp was a highway that had yellowtail one way, seabass the other, which you set up on in years past, this season the entire reef is open if you have kelp-cutting keys. No kelp means that you can sit deeper than ever, and fish entire zones, not just “the spot.”
Kelp lines and the corresponding bottom structure, specifically is like art and the canvas is always changing. When you get back to the kelp, you may notice that it looks different. There’s no kelp on the surface (Catalina and Clemente).
While some kelp spots have stringers in sand or on light rock, shale-type bottom without any real hard bottom (like above Oceanside) it is hard bottom that holds the most kelp. The kelp line is where the kelp stops and we have a shot at hooking game fish and actually landing them. This line shifts year-to-year, cycle-to-cycle, but hard bottom stays the same. Mark hard bottom. Especially where hard bottom meets sand, or harder bottom—like major rocks. When there’s no kelp left, you will be setting up not on kelp line spots, but hard bottom zones. It was setting up on hard bottoms and isolated stringers on an urchin-rich kelp that got me trying different ways to set up on known spots.
When I started guiding for white seabass along the coast in 2012 one of my favorite kelp lines was no longer a kelp line. It was a patch of stringers. The first seabass a client caught on my boat wasn’t on a squid nest, or some flourishing kelp line. It was on a Salas 7X dangled above a patch of hard bottom with three or four stringers on it. And that patch was 106 yards inside the previous kelp line that once had too many stringers to count.
Now, I do not think about specific spots, but how to sit based on how the kelp is set-up, what the current is doing, and how the fish might be transitioning in and out of the kelp. If you find yourself back in the kelp, but wondering why it isn’t the same as you left, take stock of the changes before just dropping the anchor on “the spot.”
In 2015, a lot of what were spots on my GPS are now zones. A kelp-free canvas has changed the way I sketch out my trips.
![[Image: 2bee961a05e09701ee8b9cd453f859a4_7bv8.png]](http://fishtacochronicles.com/images/2bee961a05e09701ee8b9cd453f859a4_7bv8.png)
MARCH 27, A DRAINING TIDE a live mackerel fished on 60-pound Seaguar to a 6/0 Owner offshore hook…the author’s first tanker of the season on a kelp line that is no longer a kelp line—rather a zone to look for fin bait and seabass trailing behind—helped him realize what it was going to take this season to keep the WSB dream alive.
Brandon Hayward offers coastal white seabass trips from May until July before switching to offshore fishing in August. He can be reached at (949) 212-0719, or through his web site www.onemancharters.com
Four words that have opened many humble brag, over-the-top conversations about white seabass, halibut, and calico bass.
“The squid beds” are talked about like they are spots. Ditto for long, sprawling halibut drift zones. Bass spots are discussed as if they never leave the rocks or kelp stalks. Truth is, none of these are spots. They are zones that fish and bait transition into based on conditions and spawning cycles—in varying degrees—for mere moments in time.
I’ve long said that private boaters often limit their success by setting hard rules for themselves. (I am hardly exempt, as I have ranked my favorite coastal white seabass spots from one to 12.) But—and this goes for this season especially—there are few spots that are the same as they were. While rock and reef and beaches never move, kelp lines have shifted and shrank down and even disappeared. (RIP Slide Kelp.)
Saying “this is my spot” and anchoring up or even drifting on it could result in some long days this season, as with a lack of kelp many spots are now hard bottom zones.
Spots have turned into zones. Whereas a corner or nook in the kelp was a highway that had yellowtail one way, seabass the other, which you set up on in years past, this season the entire reef is open if you have kelp-cutting keys. No kelp means that you can sit deeper than ever, and fish entire zones, not just “the spot.”
Kelp lines and the corresponding bottom structure, specifically is like art and the canvas is always changing. When you get back to the kelp, you may notice that it looks different. There’s no kelp on the surface (Catalina and Clemente).
While some kelp spots have stringers in sand or on light rock, shale-type bottom without any real hard bottom (like above Oceanside) it is hard bottom that holds the most kelp. The kelp line is where the kelp stops and we have a shot at hooking game fish and actually landing them. This line shifts year-to-year, cycle-to-cycle, but hard bottom stays the same. Mark hard bottom. Especially where hard bottom meets sand, or harder bottom—like major rocks. When there’s no kelp left, you will be setting up not on kelp line spots, but hard bottom zones. It was setting up on hard bottoms and isolated stringers on an urchin-rich kelp that got me trying different ways to set up on known spots.
When I started guiding for white seabass along the coast in 2012 one of my favorite kelp lines was no longer a kelp line. It was a patch of stringers. The first seabass a client caught on my boat wasn’t on a squid nest, or some flourishing kelp line. It was on a Salas 7X dangled above a patch of hard bottom with three or four stringers on it. And that patch was 106 yards inside the previous kelp line that once had too many stringers to count.
Now, I do not think about specific spots, but how to sit based on how the kelp is set-up, what the current is doing, and how the fish might be transitioning in and out of the kelp. If you find yourself back in the kelp, but wondering why it isn’t the same as you left, take stock of the changes before just dropping the anchor on “the spot.”
In 2015, a lot of what were spots on my GPS are now zones. A kelp-free canvas has changed the way I sketch out my trips.
MARCH 27, A DRAINING TIDE a live mackerel fished on 60-pound Seaguar to a 6/0 Owner offshore hook…the author’s first tanker of the season on a kelp line that is no longer a kelp line—rather a zone to look for fin bait and seabass trailing behind—helped him realize what it was going to take this season to keep the WSB dream alive.
Brandon Hayward offers coastal white seabass trips from May until July before switching to offshore fishing in August. He can be reached at (949) 212-0719, or through his web site www.onemancharters.com
Let God lead the way!
Give a man a fish he eats for one day, teach him to fish he eats forever!
Give a man a fish he eats for one day, teach him to fish he eats forever!
