Our coastal community enjoys fresh fish, and we are blessed to have healthy, robust populations of fish nearby. March 1 is when our saltwater fishing season gets underway in a big way, with the opening of groundfish season, and lots of boaters are making preparations to go catch their own fish dinners for their families.
Those meals will be much fresher and a world tastier than anything found in stores.
Groundfish season is closed for January and February, and that is when private boat and party boat anglers work on fishing gear and on boats, to be ready for the season. Meanwhile, we get these calm, glorious days during the middle of winter and fisherfolk just have to go wet a line.
We can catch bass like calico bass which are fun fighting fish. We can catch hard-pulling sand bass, like the 4-pounder caught Friday by John Vague. We can catch halibut like the 40-pounder caught by Capt. Cory Scott on his private boat.
We fish fairly shallow water for these keeper fish, and we are able to safely release any groundfish we catch while fishing for the bass and halibut.
On March 1, as weather and sea state allow, loads of people will be launching private boats, buying tickets to go aboard open-party boats like Stardust and Coral Sea out of Sea Landing, or chartering private charter boats like Finaddict and Loose Cannon.
Your faithful columnist went out fishing Friday on a shakedown cruise to test some new gear on a friend’s boat and to take a couple of teenagers out for adventure.
The friend was Dave Lopez, a retired Air Force colonel, who flew and commanded wings of our nation’s hottest war planes, and who just earned his captain’s license (Master Mariner) from the U.S. Coast Guard. Congratulations, skipper!
The weather was delightful, and we all had a blast catching calico and sand bass.
We also caught and carefully released some groundfish, including olive rockfish, ocean whitefish and sculpin. We were fishing in relatively shallow water and reeled up slowly, so the fish were healthy and feisty with no signs of barotrauma. Upon release, each one wiggled its tail and made a beeline for the reef below.
One of the more interesting catches of the day was a sculpin that I caught. It was a good-sized one for its species.
While sculpin is the common name for this fish and some of us nickname it a rattlesnake, the California Department of Fish & Wildlife calls it a California scorpion fish and for good reason. It has toxins on its spines, and if it had poked me in the hand, my hand would have swollen up about 30 percent and hurt like the dickens for about two to three days.
Sculpin are very tasty, so we handle them very carefully and during the season we keep them for dinner. Sculpin are in the groundfish family and the season doesn’t open until March 1, so I carefully released this one after explaining to it what a lucky fish it was.
Another thing about sculpin is how colorful they are, with mottled reds and other colors. We do have some pretty fish near here.
— 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.
