Towed my 15ft aluminum Duroboat “Red Drum” down to Newport Beach to fish the bay after the Allcoast Surf Fishfest. Fortunately, I found two open parking spaces near 13th Street. After getting all the gear out of the boat and into the car, I headed up to 15th Street to sign in for the Fishfest.

I headed south down the beach where I saw some Sand Pipers digging for sand crabs. Just like when I fish from my boat, I keep my eyes open for feeding birds or just groups that are hanging out in a certain area, because they will often show you where the bait and feeding fish are hanging out. Caught two 7 inch Barred Perch within ten minutes.
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Then about an hour later I hooked something that was more stubborn than a kelp stringer. After a couple minutes of some tough pulling, I pull up this mess of monofilament line, half of a fishing rod, a pair of sun glasses, a rusty sabiki bait catcher, seven 2-4 ounce lead sinkers, four split shots and three snap swivels. Some of the lead sinkers actually had barnacles growing on them, so that mess had definitely been in the water for a long time.
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At around 9:30am I hooked the money fish, a nice 13.5 inch Barred Perch that ate the Gulp camo-sand worm. That bait is like candy for Perch.
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After the give-away ceremony, I headed for the launch ramp with Jason “jscrib and Kevin “Mars”. We fished around the docks for about an hour for one Spotted Bay Bass.
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Since the bay fishing was slow, we went south of harbor and got into a couple of Sand Bass bites and a bunch of White Croakers. Here is Jason with his monster Flatfish of the day.
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Once the tide started to come back in we fished the break wall for a while for one small White Sea Bass and some Mackerel. Then we went back further in the bay and Kevin caught three Halibut to 20 inches and Jason caught a small Halibut, plus we caught some more Spotted Bay Bass and Barred Sand Bass. I’m sure we would’ve done better if the water wasn’t so “red tide”, but we still had a blast fishing around all those multi-million dollar homes and yachts. Can’t wait to do it again. HOOK-UP!!

Nice report and pics...how was the surf? Not far from Newport Point there which can really fire on a solid south swell!!

Nice!
Sounds like a fun even, congratulations on the win.
Hope it covered your gas money :)

Good score on all that quality tackle!!

Josh

Sounds like a decent day. Especially get that sole, those things can put a hurt on you.

Amish Ed
You can't catch it again if it's dead!