Catalina and the Boy from Tennesse

[seatech]

Had my friend Mike out from TN over the weekend and had hoped to get to Clemente for a few big bass. Some swell and a bit of wind mid-channel made us change plans and hit Catalina.

We pulled around the backside and up into the kelp and boilers, I gave Mike a swimbait rod with a 5" Bighammer and said throw that there swimbait into the boilers and kelp. He kinda gave me a WTF look and started chucking.

I had a steady bite going before Mike pulled out his first Catalina Swimbait fish.



Mission accomplished, now we went looking for bigger fish, in much tighter.

I was throwing the Big Pearl Bait Dragon Tongue Surface plastic and a 7.5" Sluggo for a nice bunch of 3-4lb fish on the surface and Mike had a decent pick on smaller swimbait fish.

We fished our way down towards the Isthums and finally Mike yells, "Oh this feels like a bigger fish"...

...and a nice callie, his personal best, comes over the side:




Fished until about 2pm and beat it back before the wind picked up. Ended the day at the SWBA Tourney BBQ with a plate full of Chili's BBQ Ribs, salad, a bowl of Chili and a few cool ones.

Total somewhere around 25 fish for the two of us and Mike managed to also pull about 10 tons of kelp to the boat!!!

Talked to Mike again this morning and he's still pretty stoked on his first big calico.

Ed

[Robert]

Great report Ed! Thanks for sharing! Perry and I went by Performance Tackle
today. That is a great tackle store! The guys in there are way cool!

Robert

[PerryC]

Congrats on the trip Ed and glad to see you got to go fishing with your friend. A 3lb+ spottie or calico has some serious fight to it and I'm glad he got to experience it. I dunno if the Dragon Tongues are going to hit the stores, so I'm getting the larger Senko's instead right now.

We'll talk this week and I'll fill you in on our Newport trip. TC&TL,
Perry