Went back to El Segundo yesterday (Monday, November 27). Weather cool but clear, minimal wind, no seaweed to speak of. Big shorebreak that made keeping the rigs out difficult.
Interestingly, there were a lot of sand crabs, though the fish weren't biting them. In fact, the fish weren't biting much of anything.
Fishing with mussels – "fresh," but that's using the term very loosely, as they were rancid. Which might have been part of the problem. Fishing with 1oz pyramid sinkers on a c-rig with treble hooks (do a good job of holding the bait).
Between my friend and me we caught two fish, a decent yellow fin croaker and a perch. Not a great fishing day, but sometimes you take what you can get. Nice to get out for a little bit. Historically, I don't have much luck this time of year and usually just hang it up in SoCal until spring, so this is still an improvement over the historical norm.
I've gone out a couple times on my own in Redondo Beach, mostly just to kill time while my son was surfing. No bites. Then again, I wasn't fishing with mussels, I was fishing with Gulp sand worms, which have never worked very well for me. Had a couple short bites and that's it.
One of those times I saw someone else go out with the paddle tail, had his GoPro all set up on his chest. Watched him get skunked. Wonder if he posted that footage or just lied and said he hadn't been out in a long time when he finally catches something.
I couldn't help but notice his girlfriend (at least I assume she was his gf) was kind of embarrassed by the whole GoPro thing. Yah, it was cringe.
I've seen a number of people throwing the paddle tails out there in Redondo, without much success. I know they do catch things – I've caught a few with that setup. But very few. The only thing that's consistently caught fish is mussels and sand crabs.
The sport has more and more gravitated toward the "fly fisherman" mentality, by which I mean the "fly fishermen who spend a fortune on equipment, waste a lot of time and don't catch many fish."
(At this point I tried to find an image of the "surf fisherman in waders" and all that came up were images of freshwater fly fishermen and duck hunters, which illustrates my upcoming point about the lunacy of waders at the beach.)
I fly fish. That's where I got really good, before I started really ocean fishing. My fly fishing is cheap – cheap equipment, cheap flies, something on my feet to keep from slipping, and that's it. Yes, I catch and release, mostly because the trout tastes like crap and I don't want to deal with it. But I understand the fisheries are fragile, too.
Over the years I watched the sport be taken over by rich assholes (or people who spend like they're rich assholes). They've got the clothing, the gear, the expensive equipment, the lingo, those waders that nobody needs unless it's really cold (which it isn't in the Sierras in the summer, and almost never is at the beach), the GoPros to get footage of their sunk. What they don't have are fish on the end of their line.
Then I've watched as these bozos went from taking over the Sierras to taking over salt water fishing, particularly Southern California surf fishing and, unfortunately, quite a lot of the inshore fishing in Florida.
The waders and the GoPro… SMH… I mean if you're going to be a pussy and wear waders when it's in the 70s, why would you want to show it to the world in a video?!? It just baffles me. The only good reason to wear waders is to avoid hypothermia. Yes, I have a pair – in Florida, where they were used exactly once in December (totally unnecessary, I could have casted far enough out from shore) then sat in storage for almost a year before I pulled them out earlier this month (still wet, but they seem otherwise okay). Point being, I kind of regret having them. There are other ways to keep warm and maintain your dignity in the bargain. It's an especially bad look when the barefoot dude in board shorts with one pole and a bucket is out fishing you on a regular basis.
And yet I'll see these idiots online making fun of the bait fishermen. As if wasting money and time on plastics and waders and thousands of dollars of equipment is somehow more noble than catching more fish on shrimp or mussels.
I'm not an expert at fishing, not by a long shot. I've got a lot to learn. But that's all the more reason to go cheap. If you don't know what you're doing, why pay a fortune for equipment? Why not ease into it and spend strategically?
And I don't care how good you are, why on earth would you put a body condom on yourself to keep from making contact with the ocean? Isn't the whole point of surf fishing to… I don't know, BE at the BEACH, instead of insulating yourself from it? It's water. It's good for you. Again, hypothermia aside – and there are much cheaper options made of breathable material out there that you can actually wear in public without looking like you're heading to a nuclear meltdown site.
Why do you want to fish if you want to avoid all water, sand, sunshine, sea air, or contact with bait or fish? And spending all that money to be Beach Bubble Boy? It's like the whole mask wearing thing – that's really idiotic, but alone, in your car, something's seriously wrong with you. It's not a lava lake, it's the beach.
The other unfortunate byproduct of the invasion of incompetent fly fishermen is the whole "catch and release" surf fishing thing. First of all, if you're ocean fishing and you don't want to eat your fish, what exactly are you doing there in the first place? If you just want to enjoy the tug and not keep any fish, that's what the fresh water is for. The world's food supply literally comes from the ocean. So if you're going out and throwing back your catch... what are you eating?
You do know the huge majority of your catch that goes back in the water dies, right? You're not protecting the fishery. Protecting the fishery comes down to commercial fisheries and habitat preservation and improvement, two things that have nothing to do with you standing on the shore waving a pole.
So again, if you're not eating what you catch... what ARE you eating?!? Whatever it is has to be a worse option environmentally than eating your harvest from God's ocean.
And again I blame the rich asshole fly fisherman mentality here. These guys bought thousands of dollars of shit to flail around fresh water and do their "catch and release" bullshit. But regardless, the pressure of so many n00bs damaged a lot of freshwater habitat. Which they they blame on people who keep fish, which had been going on just fine for centuries before they showed up. I'm not a scientist, but if things were okay 30 years ago and since the rich assholes showed up the fisheries are dying, I don't think the "catch and keep" people who have been there for generations are to blame. It's most likely whatever happened WITHIN those 30 years (hint, hint).
Then they show up on the shoreline and think, oh we have to "protect the fishery." There's plenty of fish in the sea. You and your pole are not damaging the fishery, especially since most of you aren't catching much of anything to begin with. But I still wonder, if you don't like the taste of fish (which is the only logical reason I can think of to be "catch and release" in the ocean), what are you doing there? And what are you eating?!? Even that fucking tofu is doing more damage to the environment than the guy who takes his fish home to feed his family. A LOT more.
Okay, I get it, if you're keeping fish just to throw them away that's stupid. But if you're eating them, name me a more environmentally beneficial way to source protein. I'll wait. Fishing is in the Bible and sanctioned by God himself. Fishing to feed your family is noble. Fishing to throw them back (where they pretty much all die) is as wasteful as keeping them to throw in the garbage. Even more wasteful if you compost (though your neighbors will probably object).
The point here isn't to encourage people to break the law, it's to point out the sheer absurdity and moral idiocy of people who mock and ridicule catch-and-keep fishermen and who imagine they are being "morally superior." You're not - in fact, just the opposite, because your fish are dying at the same rate AND you have to go out and get your protein from the store when you're done. So you "catch and release" people are doing it wrong.
Have there been times when I was fishing and couldn't keep fish? Yes. And in those cases I tried first to give the fish away to someone who would eat them. Because I'd much rather give someone else a fish to eat than let it rot on the sea floor. I understand that's not a horrible option - crabs, other fish and microorganisms eat the carcasses, but in the overall scheme of things it's better for a person to eat that carcass and avoid buying that protein from the store.
So the order of "moral superiority" when it comes to recreational fishing is:
- Minding your own business and not acting like an arrogant jerk because you do or don't let fish go. (But let's face it, 100% of the asshole behavior is coming from the "catch and release" side, the other side already IS minding their own business. That's why I keep pushing back.) That form of pollution is more toxic than any other act.
- Catching what you eat, eating what you catch, including bycatch (in adherence with the law).
- Keeping the "good fish," letting the "bad fish" go or giving them to other people.
- Catch and release.
And the GoPro… Okay, I know everyone has a fishing video. Heck. I have them. And there have been times when it would have been cool to have a video of me landing one of the big ones I've caught, just for my own entertainment. Nothing against that, just like everyone has some homemade porn here and there. Common sense says you keep all that to yourself.
But just like the homemade porn, if you're going to post that shit and advertise to the world, you better be good. And most of you are SO not. I include myself in that category, I suck at making videos, but I wouldn't be caught dead strapping a GoPro to my chest to video me landing a pompano. Just like nobody (apart from weirdos who are probably wearing ankle monitors) wants to see action footage of someone disappointing his Tinder date while adjusting his iPhone every twenty seconds during his two minutes of glory. Private collections are "private," not just for you, but for everyone else as well. Especially everyone else. We DON'T want to see that shit, and you don't need the pity and derision.
Don't get me wrong, I'm happy when I land the pompano. And it's nice to get laid, too. But, no, the world isn't begging to see another shit video. And if you make it worse by adding a crap TikTok filter and soundtrack, we're going to find you on the beach and put an end to your film making hobby.
"Florida Man destroys some jackass' GoPro on he beach, get commendation from the Governor."
There are a few good fishermen out there who know how to produce quality educational video content. Then there are other good fishermen who basically use YouTube to brag about their exploits while contributing nothing to the betterment of the sport, but at least their footage is good. That's just self-indulgent crap, but at least decently-produced self-indulgent crap. It goes way downhill from there. And I mean WAY downhill. There are a lot of good fisherman who just suck at video, and even more mediocre fishermen who suck at video.
If someone hasn't asked you to produce video content, just assume there's a good reason for that.
Nobody wants to see that masturbation video. And nobody wants to see you hauling in a stingray (same energy) – unless it stings you. And I'd rather you just didn't get stung, for everyone's sake.
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