El Niño redistributes fish for a season, giving them a long swim home when the party is over. This season has shown us some classic examples of the effects of the warm water event. Just in the past couple of weeks there have been some surprising catches off the coast of California.
Starting at the top of the state, the albacore bite has begun very early and the water temps are just right.
Out of Eureka this week, fisherman Chuck Chastain of Arcata jigged deep under some floating logs about 80 miles offshore and found himself doing battle with a 114-pound opah. The intense fight lasted an hour and 15 minutes on 30-pound leader, but eventually the big, bright-orange fish was on deck and destined to feed families.
A feller fishing tuna off of Fort Bragg had a surprise. He was casting lures and baits to floating kelp paddies way offshore when he hooked into a yellowtail, which is a member of the jack family that is rarely caught much north of the Channel Islands. Well, that was a fine surprise but an even bigger surprise chomped his bait — a dorado, which isn’t usually caught much north of Los Angeles County. You may know dorado by its Hawaiian name, Mahi Mahi. That name works in restaurants, but fisherfolk call them by the Spanish name dorado.
While fishing near the Farallon Islands off of San Francisco, Chris Smith of Pinole caught an eight-pound ocean whitefish. We catch them here off of Santa Barbara and at the Channel Islands, but the experienced skipper up north, Capt. James Smith, had never caught one in their waters.
A sheephead was caught on the popular party boat Kahuna out of Moss Landing. That is a fish that lives primarily south of Point Conception, and only a few have been caught in Monterey Bay.
Bluefin tuna catches have been reported along the backside of our Channel Islands in decent numbers. There have also been reports of billfish such as marlin. These fish are not unheard of here, but nothing seems to bring them to us like an El Niño.
I can recall an early El Niño when my charter passengers caught dorado under kelp paddies right here in the Santa Barbara Channel as little as six miles out. I keep looking for that to happen this year, and I will not be surprised if it does. There were reports of a surfer wrestling a ulua fish in the surf zone below Carpinteria.
This year will certainly be etched in the memory of a great many young anglers as the best fishing year they have experienced. And when later in life they ask why fishing isn’t as good as they remember it when they were young, elders will tell them it’s because they remember the best of times and they don’t get many years like this one in the course of one lifetime.
Celebrate El Niño now, and I suggest a fishing trip. Because as great as El Niño is for the moment, it delivers a knock-out punch to the low end of the food chain, and we’ll be paying the price of that for a few years to come as nature gets back to normal.
— Capt. David Bacon operates WaveWalker Charters and is president of SOFTIN Inc., a nonprofit organization providing seafaring opportunities for those in need. Visit softininc.blogspot.com to learn more about the organization and how you can help. Click here to read previous columns. The opinions expressed are his own.
