Fishing Report: By Del Brunning

Birds, Birds, Birds!

The morning was a little chilly and overcast, with a slight, breeze as 9 FIB’er volunteers awaited the arrival of the Olive Crest kids, and their counselors, for a ½ day of fishing on the Amigo out of Newport Landing. When everyone arrived, we headed out of the harbor and rigged the kid’s lines with wire leaders in hopes of catching up with some Barracuda. Before departing the harbor, we stopped at the receiver for some bait, both anchovies and sardines; they also threw some squid on board. Seemed strange to me but I had never before noticed the huge amount of Pelicans at the receiver looking for a free meal. They were being antagonized by a Pit Bull mix dog. However, the Pelicans were as big as the dog and the kids were having fun watching all that was going on.

Baited up, we headed North off the coast of Huntington Beach and stopped at a spot which yielded us some nice Barracuda. However, the bite was short-lived so we continued up the coast to find some rock piles, at varying depths, to fish on. We were able to get into a fair bite at each spot but the fishing was tough as the wind picked up a bit and made it colder and the water temperature was 57 degrees. Captain Tom had to constantly maneuver the Amigo to try to get us over the fish. We also had to fight off the pesky Pelicans that followed us to every spot in huge numbers and would crash on our bait with every cast; sometimes with 2 or 3 diving on the bait at once. It was a challenge as many of them were hooked and needed to be dragged to the boat and released. I have never seen so many Pelicans go after bait like this in my life. They obviously were very hungry.

Even with these obstacles, we were able to land some Calico Bass, Sand Bass, Sculpin, and a lot of Tomcod at these rock piles. The final fish count was 5 Barracuda, 4 Calico Bass, 4 Sand Bass, 1 Sculpin and numerous quantities of Tom Cod for our trip.
It was an exciting trip for the kids and a blessing to the FIB’er volunteers. We thank the Lord for the privilege of sharing God’s love with them and look forward to the next fishing experience with them.