Sugar coated swill on SD bay.

Launched at 8:30am with the whole fam, planned to anchor up next to Zuniga, soak some chicharos, eat some chips and dogs, and do some snorkeling. A boat picnic, if you will.

Mother nature had other plans, as she often does. Windy, waves, drizzle, lameness. “Gee, whatch out for the record heat wave.” Idiots. We stuck to the peas soaking as much as possible, but the wind made if very difficult to hold a tight position. The Seether took a nice hit on the rocks and knocked a little chunk out of her belly. No big whoop, that’s what fishing boats are for. I got the first fish, a nice opey just under 3 lbs.
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To make it more fun I was using my ancient Chinese secret reel. This is a very old and very tiny. Shimano Bantam. Sooo much fun. The handles are about 2” apart.
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There were various microscopic rockfishes caught by various people, then I caught this cartoon fish. What a strange dude. Handled only his bottom lip, then sent him back.
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The wind was getting more than I could handle and we were running out of chicharos, so we had to resort to plan B. I’ve got nothing against the good old sandbass shuffle, but I’m trying to take my wife and kids out to do something different. Anyway, it was either long line for sandies or leave, so set up the way we always do. A 1.5oz Spinbomb out of each side of the boat and a jerkbait drop shotted in the middle. We dedicated 1 hour to drifting. We were looking for fish to add to the opaleye party of one. My wife took the drop shot, because she always wants a halibut. We made a couple mini drifts and that produced only one 11” sandy. My wife and my kid traded rods and my wife lights up the Spinbomb rod. We made jokes about it being a big hali,… and it was.
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A 33” halibut she named Wildfire, on a cold Nebraska night.
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We only had to drift about 30 minutes to get what we were after and although our rip roaring, pea soaking, opaleye festival was a flop. The halibut softened the blow.