Went to the HB Pier to use up the extra live bait from our skiff trip. We had left over live ghost shrimp and blood worms. We started inshore at about 10:20AM. No bites at all on the live ghost shrimp for about 90 minutes so we moved towards the end of the pier on the Northside of Rubies.
Mackerel bite was good here with a couple interesting tactics that were producing. First a guy was fishing a smaller stick bait. Not sure what it was (best guess was Colt sniper). He was masterfully slow jigging this stickbait and was hooking up on mackerel one out of every 3 or 4 casts. He must have caught 20 medium sized mackerel while we were down there with a couple larger ones. Another gentleman was fishing a larger hook with a chunk of cut mackerel and a split shot. He landed two unusually large mackerel and lost another just at the foot of the pier. It was nice to see someone size up their gear to target larger mackerel. Never really saw anyone do that before effectively. His bite was much slower than the guy fishing the lure but the ones he caught were big.
We could not get any takers on our ghost shrimp or blood worms fishing on the bottom at the end of the pier. We were looking for maybe some halfmoons or bass but no takers on that bait the way we were fishing.
Finished back in shore. As a hail mary I used a sabiki to catch a live smelt and fished with it for the last 30 minutes with a live smelt on a fish finder rig. While we were back in shore saw a guy catch a thornback ray on a live smelt. No takers there for us and we left at 4PM.
Morale of the story for us was always fish with the intention of catching fish rather that "using up" bait. Gifted the rest of our live bait to other fishermen just as we left.
The bait was left over from the day before where we rented a skiff out of Newport Harbor. We caught more fish on that day. For the full story check out:
https://www.pierfishing.com/msgboard/index.php?threads/skiff-rental-out-of-newport-harbor.1656/
Mackerel bite was good here with a couple interesting tactics that were producing. First a guy was fishing a smaller stick bait. Not sure what it was (best guess was Colt sniper). He was masterfully slow jigging this stickbait and was hooking up on mackerel one out of every 3 or 4 casts. He must have caught 20 medium sized mackerel while we were down there with a couple larger ones. Another gentleman was fishing a larger hook with a chunk of cut mackerel and a split shot. He landed two unusually large mackerel and lost another just at the foot of the pier. It was nice to see someone size up their gear to target larger mackerel. Never really saw anyone do that before effectively. His bite was much slower than the guy fishing the lure but the ones he caught were big.
We could not get any takers on our ghost shrimp or blood worms fishing on the bottom at the end of the pier. We were looking for maybe some halfmoons or bass but no takers on that bait the way we were fishing.
Finished back in shore. As a hail mary I used a sabiki to catch a live smelt and fished with it for the last 30 minutes with a live smelt on a fish finder rig. While we were back in shore saw a guy catch a thornback ray on a live smelt. No takers there for us and we left at 4PM.
Morale of the story for us was always fish with the intention of catching fish rather that "using up" bait. Gifted the rest of our live bait to other fishermen just as we left.
The bait was left over from the day before where we rented a skiff out of Newport Harbor. We caught more fish on that day. For the full story check out:
https://www.pierfishing.com/msgboard/index.php?threads/skiff-rental-out-of-newport-harbor.1656/
