Wallman Steve and I decided to try something new, and took his rig up to Marina Del Rey for some fishing and hooping. Not our regular stomping grounds, so we went with an attitude of doing some recon.
Hit the water around 9:20 AM and looked around a bit. Beautiful conditions, and not even a hint of the winds that blew the last couple days. Tried to catch some fresh bait for the hoops, but only managed a couple of bonito and 3 mini macs. We then headed to the South Banks to see if we couldn’t pick up some Rockfish.
First spot produced some small critters, but Steve brought up one keeper Starry that had its tail bitten off. Closer inspection indicated it was a Ling. Must have been a nice one to have jumped on a standard sized Starry.
We moved a bit and I started soaking a mini mac with a teaser rig above. I felt a small rockfish latch on to the teaser rig, but I left it down there, not wanting to bring up the mac. Pretty soon…WHAM! Knew immediately it was the right kind, and up came this guy.
It had actually eaten the rockfish that was on the teaser, as my mac came up untouched. Tried the same thing again, and this time, a 22 inch Ling ate the mac. With that one released, I put down the rig again with a dead mac. Again, the teaser hooked a small rockfish, and that subsequently got bit. Missed the hook though, and the poor rockfish came up with teeth marks on his body.
By this time, it was mid afternoon, so we headed back to set up our hoop nets. We started dropping the nets around 4:15 and hoped for the best. As first time hoopers in the area, we weren’t sure what to expect.
Let them soak for a while, and the first net had 2 legals. Nice start. By the time we pulled the 6th net, we had our first limit on board, including a 5 lb 9 oz beauty and another about 4 lb. Turns out we had much better success than hoped, and had our double limits by 8:00.
Oh, and we picked up some nice Stone Crab as well. One of them got me on the left pinky, and now the nail is turning black. Thought for a moment he crushed my bone. Man those pinchers got some power!
Anyway, we came home with a cooler full of nice bugs and crabs, plus a bonus Ling. Not bad for a couple of out-of-towners hitting MDR for the first time.
Big thanks to Wallman for the invite and a b!tchen day on the water. Can’t wait to do it again!
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