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