Trout Fishing: Tube Fishing

My favorite trout fishing technique of all time is tube fishing for trout. Tube jigs are small plastic skirts that you tie directly to your main line with 4 lb test. You must use a long rod with heavy action. The heavy action is how bouncy the pole is when you shake it. The more shake, the heavier action the rod is. A heavy action rod is important when tube fishing for trout because you can shake the rod and the jig will shake lightly.

Mini Tube Jigs

The best jigs to use are the 1/16 oz jigs green and white colored Power Bait brand. The official name for the jigs are Atomic Teasers. The green jigs should be used when the sun is bright and high in the sky and the white jigs should be used during low light conditions.

White Jigs Power Bait brand

Green Jig Power Bait brand

Jig retrievals include slow falling retrievals, fast darting retrieval, jerking and pausing retrieval. The slow retrievals usually work best during very cold and very warm water temperatures when the trout are less active and the faster retrievals are good for cool water temperatures when the , but experimenting with retrievals is best to figure out the speed the fish prefer for that respective day.

To enhance your jig's action and scent, add worm trailers which come in various colors as shown rigged on the tube jigs above. I never fish without the worm trailers. If the fish are finicky, sometimes the only way to catch the fish on the jig is with the worm trailer.

Worm trailer for tube jig

Jigs are a great way to catch trout and it can be very fun to fish them. I encourage everyone to try jig fishing for trout if your feeling confident in your ability. Sometimes jig fishing can be frustrating, but it is my favorite way to catch trout. Good luck!

Brandon Lynch

Trout fishing: with bait

Bait fishing for trout is the most basic form of trout fishing. Many times a year, during the summer, my family and I go up to Mammoth Lakes and fish. The single best bait to use when still fishing for trout is a live worm. The ever present difficulty with worms is the fact that the worms sink out of the trout's sight leaving you with no fish. To compensate for the sinking of the worms, many people result to inflating their worms. Inflating worms is gross and worm inflaters don't work well (unless you can get a syringe). The best way to get a worm to float is with a marshmallow. Buy mini marshmallows and baby night crawlers, tie them on a carolina rig with a size 4 tall shanked hook, a half ounce egg sinker, a long leader of 4-2lb test and a small swivel, and hands down you have the best rig to catch trout.

The second best bait for catching trout still fishing is with power bait. Power bait fishing is exactly the same as worm fishing with the change being the hook and bait. You should use a size 12 treble hook and power bait of various colors. Make sure you have enough power bait on your hook to float the bait. A best power bait is hard to pinpoint. I have caught fish on every color power bait but usually rainbow power bait and original yellow is consistent.

The third best bait for catching trout still fishing is salmon eggs. I rarely use salmon eggs because I feel they have the same effectiveness that power bait has but are more difficult to work with as they usually sink. A marshmallow can be used to float the salmon eggs. Rig the salmon eggs like you would rig the worms.

This is the rig, the hook would be good for worms and salmon eggs with marshmallow

Whatever bait you use, make sure you don't litter and leave extra bait places. Bait fishing for trout is fun for the whole family because it is easy and effective. Next time your skiing in Mammoth, make sure you make some reservations for summer to try out these bait fishing techniques.

Brandon Lynch

Surf Fishing: Grubs

A great way to get fish to bite when sand crabs are not present and the fish are active is with curly tailed grubs. I have tried many different colored grubs, but only a few have worked well enough to write about. The best grubs are Big Hammer grubs in motor oil red flake and christmas colors. The key to being a good grub fisherman is soaking your grubs in a scented gulp product. I always buy Gulp! sandworms for all times of the year and I throw the grubs in with the worms to get them... Stinky...

This is the Big Hammer grub in christmas color

So after throwing the grubs in the scented liquid it's time to use them, you should hook the grub using a tall shanked hook with barbs on it (preferably red colored), with a longer leader than usual (maybe 3 feet long), on a carolina rig with as little weight as can be used according to wind and surf.

3 foot leader, light weight, small less than 3 inch grub

You should fan cast the rig in each direction and try to find structure (trenches and holes) and fish around them. Often times you can feel structure as you reel in slowly. Try different retrieves starting slow and increasing speed. Sometimes fish will hit the grub, often with heavy current, when you are not moving the rig on your own. Other times fish will hit by reaction meaning a fast retrieval is needed. A good retrieval is often a jerk and reel method where you jerk the rig once hard and reel in the slack at medium speed causing the grub to dart and stop. The fish will often hit the grub when it is still, but when you jerk the next time, you will surely hook it.

Grub fishing can result in many different species being caught. One time, fishing on a jetty in Long Beach, I hooked up on a small halibut with a christmas grub. From halibut to surf perch, grub fishing is a fantastic way to catch fish in quantity and quality.

Brandon Lynch

Winter Surf Fishing at Bolsa Chica State Beach

Over this past winter break I spent a lot of time at the beach. I camped at Bolsa Chica state beach from December 22 to January 4 and everyday I went fishing. The first few days I went fishing early in the morning and the typical winter surf fishing catch manifested. Winter surf fishing catches, at Bolsa Chica State Beach, usually consists of small and sometimes VERY small barred surf perch.

Typical Surf Perch Caught

Fortunately, as I continued to fish each day, the fishing got better. My dad caught a one pound yellow fin croaker and we both caught some very nice sized barred surf perch. Some walleye surf perch even found their way on my hook which was a first for me in huntington beach.

This is a walleye surf perch

The conditions at Bolsa Chica beach were cold and windy. The waters were rough and the tides were climbing and falling steeply. These conditions support the previous hypothesis that winter surf fishing is miserable and poor. The difference this winter from last was the presence of trenches that were observable from shore at the middle and high point of the tide. Great surf fishing seems to depend most on structural presence than it does other conditions. Fishing the rising tide was better than the falling tide. This past trip has shown me what I don't know. All that I do know for sure is that I will be back very soon to fish Bolsa Chica this winter.

Brandon Lynch

June: Corbina Arrival

After fishing at Dog Beach a couple of times a week during the summer, my uncle came out to my house from the San Fernando Valley to help my family's construction work in our bathroom. He did not believe me when I told him that Dog Beach was incredible. So, the next chance he had, I took him fishing. I showed him the best rig, the best bait, and how to work the rig. Something interesting that happened about halfway through June was the arrival of corbina and millions of sand crabs at Dog Beach. Corbina are a large hard fighting surf fish that proved very difficult to catch. The conditions changed a lot mid June. The sand crabs arrived by the millions, the water warmed, the holes and trenches got deeper, the tides got higher, and  the corbina arrived as a result.

Corbina!

My Uncle's Corbina

In order to catch a corbina, you need an extremely light and long leader (a 24inch 4-2lb test leader is perfect), the smallest weight you can possibly use (less than 1oz), sharp medium sized hooks (corbina have hard cartilage mouths), and soft shelled sand crabs to match the size of your hooks.

My Corbina

You should work your bait by casting just over a hole or trench and only reeling in the slack resulting from the waves pushing your bait towards shore. Step away from the water when you are fishing (as corbina have fantastic eyesight) and don't be afraid to fish in less than a couple of feet of water. Sometimes, early in the morning, you can see corbina's backs out of the water as they launch themselves on shore to devour sandcrabs. It is safe to say corbina DO NOT fear becoming beached on land. You should always be weary when feeling a corbina bite because they tend to chew the bait before you feel the bite. In other words, what feels like a tiny surf perch can turn out to be an 8lb corbina. Many other forums will say that corbina fishing is best in the fall, but for me, nothing can beat summer corbina fishing.

Brandon Lynch

Eureka!

After our failure at Crystal Cove, my dad was a bit discouraged. We began to wonder if we would ever figure out surf fishing. Fortunately, our luck was about to change! One day when my dad decided to bring my dog to dog beach I brought a fishing pole. This was the breakout day that gave me hope. I threw out my line and caught 3 perch in about an hour. They were small, but the bites were much quicker than anything I had experienced with surf fishing before.

Being the "fishing nut" that I am (my mom's words not mine) I took every chance I got that spring to go surf fishing. I brought my friends with me and even made my parents drop me off alone sometimes. We would catch perch and an occasional guitar fish or shark. Pretty cool but I knew things could get better.

My friend Slater with a guitarfish notice deep blue water behind
his head (a trench)

My friend Slater and I with a small barred surf perch

Going surf fishing as often as I was going, I began to figure out tricks to increase the amount and size of fish that I was catching. The first thing that I figured out was that the trench, as shown above in the picture on the right, is where most of the fish were being caught. Before, I would throw my line out blindly as far as I could. Now I could find deep water and structure and cast there for better results. An additional early discovery I made was that the best hooks for surf fishing are circle hooks significantly smaller than the crab's carapace. Small size 2 fine wire circle hooks were absolutely perfect for the surf perch. Being fine wire they would not kill the sand crab and being a circle hook would not often be swallowed by the surf perch

This is a good sand crab to hook ratio

As I continued to experiment, my uncle became interested in my surf fishing quests and together we would experience the best that Southern California surf could offer.

Next Post more surf fishing info

Brandon Lynch

Surf Fishing Equipment

When I was young, my dad would always take me surf fishing up north in Lancaster where his cousin lived. Surf fish in Lancaster was BORING. We would set up large 10+ foot poles with sand spikes and wait hours for one bite (if we were lucky). Then we would reel in a small fish on a reel with 20lb test. Needless to say, you can barely even tell you have a fish on, and what fun is that? I honestly never liked to surf fish until I learned how to do it the right way.

The wrong way

The right way

The right way to surf fish was taught to me an event called the Fred Hall Show in Long Beach. A man at the Berkley seminar booth for salt water fishing techniques was explaining to us the art that is surf fishing. He taught us that the right way to surf fish requires a ~7 foot, high action pole (very easy to bend), about a 1 oz egg sinker (depending on the current you can heighten the amount of weight or lower it), a swivel, sand crabs or the Berkley artificial shrimp and sand worms he mentioned, and a 2-4 sized hook. The hook, weight, and swivel were to be tied in a Carolina Rig (like the one shown below). The weight and hook combination with the high action 7 foot pole sounded surprisingly similar to the gear we had for trout fishing! With this new completely foreign information my dad and I hit the surf! With our trout gear!

Our first experience surf fishing with our trout gear was less exciting than we expected. We went down to crystal cove and used Berkley shrimp but we caught nothing... What we needed was practice and experience with this new gear along with knowledge of tides and other factors.

Next post will have more surf fishing information.

Brandon Lynch