Sorry for the late report, but better late than never. I fished on the Apollo out of Santa Barbara on 5/1. I was clueless to what was going on at Santa Rosa, but when my boss’s son Wyatt and his uncle invited me I figured why not. When I realized that boats where limiting on WSB all week it really got me excited. After almost missing the boat on Saturday night we had a bumpy ride crossing the channel. I woke up at grey-light and started fishing 8oz on a dropper loop. The boat hooked about 4 fish doing this, my boss’s son caught a 20lber, but all in all it was pretty slow.

At about 9am I noticed that birds started to work schools of squid on the surface so I figured that the fish had moved up in the water column. I was trying to find my lightest led head and I happened to have one of the big hammer 1/8 oz darter heads I use for 3" swimbaits. I knew it was a wire hook so I backed off the drags and gave it a try. First cast I pinned on two squids and let the set up drift back in the current. 50ft behind the boat I get bit and set into a nice fish. 20min of battle on a loose drag, to keep my hook from bending, yielded my biggest ever WSB at 23lbs. Completely stoked I head back to the rail, the crew said we all should try to help the boat finish a limit because it was looking slow enough that not everyone would be able to hook a fish. At this point the boat had maybe 10 fish and there was always fresh ones being hooked. My very next cast with the same rig was an exact repeat of the previous cast. I realized about 20sec into the fight that the new fish was no bigger than the last one so I called over to Jay, Wyatt’s uncle, and handed him the rod. Twenty minutes later he boated the twin of my fish. I didn’t even want to tempt my luck again but, hell that is why we do it. I lost my only darter head to the second fish but I found one of the 3/8oz big hammer heads and used the same method. This was a forged hook so I was able to turn the screws a little more. After two casts with this set up, to my utter disbelief, I hooked a third fish. Immediately I realized that this was a big fish. Even with tighter drag I couldn’t slow this fish down. After 30 min I boated my personal best WSB and biggest fish ever not counting shark. The fish topped the scales at 45lbs on the nose.

A few fish where caught after that but it pretty much slowed down after that, so we went rock fishing. Awesome day, great crew, great captain, and a boat I will fish on again. The crew said that the fish caught today where of a much higher caliber than they have seen all week. For 25 anglers we had 16 WSB and limits of rockfish. Smallest bass was 20lbs and biggest was 46lbs x( . My first fish I split between a couple of guys who didn’t have a sea bass already. Trip of a lifetime, pics below


my 45lbr

http://www.calfishing.com/dc/user_files/3606.jpg

boat shot

http://www.calfishing.com/dc/user_files/3607.jpg

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