My brother and I decided to try our luck on the sandbar in the Santa harbor. We were throwing 3" big hammers in various colors and neither of us got a single bite. We noticed that the water in the harbor was a dark red and smelled really bad, it looks like a nasty bloom is in effect. On a better note we fished the bait receiver on 7/9 from about 7-10pm using squid and small shiner perch we were catching near the sea landing docks. This was very productive, we managed to get 2 medium white sea bass on the squid and 3 halibut 1 reaching 23" all caught on the perch. Let me know please if any of you guys have had any luck in the harbor recently. I always see a bunch of guys float tubing and I am sure many of them post here on cal-fishing, I am curious as to what is working out for others.

Seems like when the red tide gets really heavy the bite can shut off some. Years ago when I was fishing the harbor a lot this seemed to be the case. It also seems like when the red tide gets really heavy you get a ton of small mackrel, sardine, and sometimes chovies in the back of the harbor. When there is soo much food in there I think it makes the seabass bite in very short windows right at dawn and dusk.

Hey man, we usually don't bother with bait because we do really well on swimbaits and crankbaits, plus it's less mess and hassle to deal with in the tube. Try a 5" rainbow trout big hammer for the seabass (straight wind, medium retrieve, toward the surface) and a 3 or 4" big hammer in lemon/lime, pepper trout, or sea wolf for the halibut. Rob wrote a halibut article on the site which will dial you in on the retrieve. Another bait to check out is the fastrac minnow or spoonbill minnow in black/silver or blue/silver.
-Brian