San Diego & SoCal Fishing Forums

Spent a few hours at Mission Beach again today, and showed up to calm waters and a late arriving “high” tide. Sand crabs were plentiful but the bite was pretty slow. Reeled in a few times to see my crabs picked over without even feeling bites some of the time!

Regardless, skunk avoided. Caught a regular size BSP and a walleye fairly early on, my “usual” mini perch, and my first ever guitarfish. The latter was fun to reel in, though it felt mostly like I’d caught a beach towel that was dragging along the bottom. The handful of onlookers enjoyed it, as did I.

Got 2 of those sngf's myself a few days ago. Sometimes feels like you got into a ball of kelp, reeling in dead weight. The big ones can give you a workout on light gear.

Nice.... I actually like catching larger SNGF on light gear... They put up a great fight...
Butch

Perch killer wrote: Sun Aug 17, 2025 4:31 pm Got 2 of those sngf's myself a few days ago. Sometimes feels like you got into a ball of kelp, reeling in dead weight. The big ones can give you a workout on light gear.

I can imagine! This was definitely smaller than a lot of other pictures I've seen. I could feel the bite immediately, but then it felt like I was stuck on a brick wall. It wasn't moving as much as kelp would in the surf so I thought maybe a ray again, but even the ray I hooked last weekend tried to run a little bit. This, like you said, felt like literally dragging dead weight across sand.

Although the bite has been slow, the grass/kelp has been virtually nonexistent so that has been nice, for sure.

Nice going to beat the skunk. I think those smaller SNGF bite like corbina.