Happy Near Year yall!
I made it out yesterday for the first time since Nov. Water was lumpy but reasonable. Dropped the crab traps and ripped out to my stomping grounds. The chovie rod explodes on the first drop and a beaaauty 10lber is on. Awesome fight, total bulldog and really nice first fish of 2019. This was with a purple haze kite flasher, effective and a lot less drag then a normal flasher. I like em. Continued to scrub the pinnacle but only a small ling would come to play.
Tide was fully picking up at this point, plus the wind pushing my 16.5'er around wasn't making life easy... and then I made a bad navigation move circling my pinnacle and went broadside to the current and blew my braid right into my kicker prop! FML! 130ft of braid, tuna cord, snubber, ball... cya later! Y I K E S. Luckily I had spares and 170ft of braid left so we weren't out of the game yet.
We went to our next piece of structure that was holding a ton of bait and looking juicy upon arrival. Chovies had seemingly turned off at this point (in my mind, lol), so I switched to a classic tomic on my side... otherwise known as the finisher. Fished the area hard and pounded the bait but was only able to scrape up a nice 11ish ling that went back down to fatten up till May. Pulled off the pinnacles and hit the sandy contours looking for bait. Found it down 170 deep in nearby bay not long after. Picked up another just legal on the plug. Plug rod explodes and pops again but it didn't stick! Way she goes!
That was it for the day, only an hour or so left before dark so went and grabbed the traps. Only 3 keepers... going to have to find a new spot!
Good luck out there peeps, looking forward to your reports this year