Recent Inshore Fishing

The last couple weekends I have spent a few hours in the morning fishing between the harbor and San Mateo point for the local bass. This last weekend I had a friend, Thomas McInnish, from out of town accompany me for the early morning outing on Sunday. We fished a lot of small kelp beds on hard bottom spots for good action on Calicos both on swimbaits as well as hard jerkbaits. We were testing some BPS Extreme spin rods with Berkley Fireline on spinning reels and found a lot of fish in the upper water column just waiting for the ambush. It seemed the stringers that where 3 to 6 feet under the surface in the downhill current held the most fish. Most of the sandbass we saw were in 35 to 45 feet of water on the outer hard bottom spots with a couple decent ones in the mix. The spin rods with the jerkbaits were a lot of fun and we used traditionally baitcasters for the swimbaits.
With the WON tournament taking place this weekend there will be a lot of pressure on the Islands and stones north. I think we will see several big fish from the islands taking the top places but who is to say the beach doesn't kick out a heavy weight keeper. Good luck to all of the competitors in the tournament and I applaud the catch and release ethic practiced in the tournament. Slow to grow so let them go.