Friday was my birthday. My wife and I where trying to decide where we wanted to go to celebrate. We have been experiencing pretty hot weather over the last few weeks, so something coastal sounded good. When scouting locations and things to do, I came upon some pictures of offshore fishing. This was something I have been wanting to do for a long time, but never seemed to make plans to do. Perfect!
Offshore fishing in Southern California is fairly popular. There are many options for getting off the land, and out into the open ocean waters ranging from pricey private charters (going rate seems to be about $1000-3000 for a day trip) down to about $45 for a 1/2 day on an "Open Party" boat (also called 'cattle boats' due to the fact that they can get very crowded). I decided on a 3/4 day open party boat. I hoped this would give us a little more time to 'get on the fish' and maybe allow us to travel to some of the less fished areas that the 1/2 day boats just don't have time to get to. At about $65 per person, this was also within my birthday budget (the private charters definitely where not)
Our choice of boat was the "Native Sun" out of San Pedro (the Port of Los Angeles).
The day began early. The boat was leaving at 7am, we where supposed to be there an hour early to check in and get our rental equipment, and the port was about an hour and a half away. That meant getting up at 4am and being out the door by 4:30. We are not morning people (to say the least), but we managed to do it. We where on the road at about 4:35am... that is about the earliest we have ever been late ;)
We arrived at the port just as the sun was rising.
As you can see from the parking lot at 6am, we where not the only ones... This parking lot is across from the landing, at a public park. Most, if not all of there cars are from anglers getting on boats out of this particular landing. Thankfully there are some dozen boats that home here and not all these people would be on our boat!
We got our tickets, went into the tackle shop and picked up our rental rods/reels and purchased some tackle. There where a lot of people waiting to board their boats, and we wondered how full our boat would be. The Native Sun is a 75' x 24' sportfishing vessel that will take a maximum of 80 anglers on a trip. At full load you can imagine how crowded it can be... I was hoping for maybe half-load for this trip. After watching a 1/2 day boat load up and leave, taking about half of those waiting with it, I could see that our boat was going to be quite full...
Finally, It was out turn to board and get settled for the trip out to our fishing spot. My wife and I boarded, settled our poles into some holders near the front of the boat, and settled ourselves at the bow. It was least crowded there and it was fun to feel the wind in our faces and get the occasional spray from the bow cutting the waves. The ocean was pretty calm on the way out, otherwise it could have been much less pleasant riding up there.
It was about a 2 hour ride out to Santa Catalina island. We passed a few sailboats on the way out, and got passed by a few smaller power boats... but it was a fairly uneventful trip out.
Upon arriving, we saw a Galleon under sail touring the island
At this point, the fishing started and the camera was forgotten about, so sorry... no pics
Unfortunately, not only was the ride to the island uneventful for us, so was the fishing... The bite was slow all day on the boat, but a few people where lucky enough to hook a few Yellowtail along with some Kelp Bass, Ocean Whitefish, and few others. unfortunately we both got skunked! I don't feel too bad, there ended up being 60 people on the boat the total number of fish brought in was just over 100. That's just over 1.5 fish per person, so technically we should have caught something between us... but it was our first time out (first for my wife, first time in over 20 years for me) and we where not that familiar with the rental gear (resistance in the spools was set WAY too high, probably to help prevent backlash, but it made casting impossible and we had to hand feed line out to let the live bait swim).
Overall it was still fun, even if it ended up just being a long boat ride to almost Catalina island ☺We ended the day tired and salty. Sportfishing is hard work, even when you are not catching anything, lol.
