San Diego & SoCal Fishing Forums

New to the modern surf fishing techniques of lighter gear, grew up doing the bait and wait with heavy sinkers on the Camp Pendleton breakers with my dad back in the 70's. Have never stopped fishing, just mostly by boat, until now.

Have been watching all the You Tube stuff and finally picked up new modern gear at the Pacific Sportfishing show in Del Mar. Have fished 3 times so in the last week and half, and am working on getting confident on the methods and were they work.
Tried the Lucky craft and Warbaits neck breakers at Bolsa Chica on incoming tide, no luck.
Went to Crystal Cove and really worked the Warbaits neck breakers hard mostly because of the "Salad", cormorants and pelicans drove bait onto the beach, but all I got was missing tails on my plastics to the cormorants.

I was reading up on this forum and saw the postings from Kastmaster, it reminded me effective that lure has been for me in the past, so tried it this morning at 19th Street Newport Beach this morning. Once tide starting coming in at 8am the nibbles started, got a 40+ inch guitar shark and my first Barred Perch, I really liked the fight on light gear and am now officially all in on this form of fishing. Its funny how the rear Dorsal fin on a Guitar shark look like a large corbina tail when your hooked up and want to believe its really a HUGE Corbina.
Just waiting to find the Sand Crabs and will give Carolina rigs a shot.

Question do you like fish the structure exposed by low tides, are the high tides more productive?
Anyone else up in this area?

Wow, nice work pulling in that guitar on the iron! Surfperch are fun on the km also! It's gonna be a fishy spring and summer for all I hope. I look for structure whenever I'm on the ocean, but lately, my tide strategy has been either fish 1st thing in the morning or when the mood suits me, whatever tide. My recent keeper halibut came at a low tide, but I was there simply cuz I'd finished chores.