Took the bus from UC riverside to Newport Beach. 5:30 am to 9:30 am. Headed on to the pier and by the time I was done rigging, the tide was falling. Fished until 5 o’clock and caught nothing but a few small smelt and a small jack mackerel. Lots of tiny smelt around. People said that they had very little mackerel in the morning, and it seemed the bite started after I finished packing up. Saw a striper in someone’s bucket. Saw a really short halibut in someone else’s bucket, but I couldn’t really do much about it because it was already dead at that time. Plenty of people with snagging rigs in the surf and plenty of surfers too. Also saw a decent bat ray pulled up on a chunk of mackerel. Really slow, but then again I was fishing the wrong tides.
