Balboa 4/1 PM

After getting utterly humiliated in the morning, I decided the weather was too nice to stay inside, so I went back to the pier at 3pm. Until about 4 there were schools of sardines around the south side, while casting further yielded small mackerel. However, whenever a sabiki hit the bottom, it was immediately jumped on by tiny (bocaccio?) rockfish. From 4 to until I left by 6:30, the sardines dispersed, and mackerel bite moved to the north side.

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Just remember to throw the bocaccio back given they have to be 10 inches in length. Years ago, people in central California (generally from Pismo Beach to Santa Cruz) would fill buckets with those young bocaccio which in time (together with too many taken by commercial fishermen) resulted in a decrease in the fish and a ban for many years, Finally they allowed one fish and now two but they have the ten-inch rule). You still occasionally see big runs in the central coast, especially at places like Morro Bay, but most people (certainly not all) seem to understand the new rules.

Although I fished the Newport Pier for many years starting in 1962, I didn't take my first bocaccio from there until 1977, the same year I caught my first bocaccio from the Balboa Pier. Some years sees them in that area, some years doesn't.