I was just at a local bait shop and I was informed that a 57 lbs WSB was caught off the San Francisco coast 2 weeks ago. I also saw myself a 35 lbs WSB that same day at fishermans wharf. He said he caught it out-*side the GG but he wouldn't say where.

How common are WSB to the Sf Bay area?
How would they be targeted up here?

they get em up the marin coast every year, not in huge numbers. last year the playin hookey outa emeryville hit the motherload and limited in a short while. the boats stuck about 1 or 2 every other trip after that for a while, then they went away. don't know a whole lot, but i think it was consistant fishing back in the day for them.

Please practice catch & release in SF Bay so these babies can come back BIG!
(then we'll have a BBQ!) :-)

Chris

That's awesome. I hope they continue to make a comeback up there.
-Brian

Hey, whaddya know, that was my 1000th post!!!

ok see, a hundered is cool, a thousand means you have too much free time lol j/k.

lol. I've just been around here for too long... I remember when Rob was setting up the message boards. $hit, I remember when Rob was setting up Calfishing...
-Brian

ya like i said...u have too much free time lol, na i'm just playin...o ya DID YA CALL YET?? lol

yeah, yeah, I called. Nobody was there. Can you believe that??? lol.
-Brian

I don't think your trying hard enough lol.

I think WSB will be an incidental catch in the area for a long while. Sounds like they are making a slow comeback. I sure liked catching them the other week.

The most popular spot every year seems to be Capitola. I guess the farther south you get the better.

Nico

Nice croaker- here's the deal- us southerners will trade you norbies some WSB for some stripers- We have plenty of the big seabass, you guys have the stripers, and each fish is available but not in numbers in each location- How do we pull this off? I love catching the seabass, never caught a big stripe in saltwater, but they are down here in very small numbers. Two cool fish, it would be great if they were both abundant up and down the coast- I'll call both of their agents and try to get them to be available to all of us-
Tight lines

Bassnet, you know where you might get a little of both is at Morro Bay at the warm water outflow. I caught a couple stripers to 10lbs there and some shorty seabass only a few weeks apart. Kinda cool. Stripers are a kick, I do wish they had them down south.

Yeah Swimbait, there are definitley stripers and wsb at the warm water outflow in Morro Bay. My brother has caught both on silver rapalas last year. That was back before I knew about the fastrac. I've thrown it a few times down there this year, but never got anything. They're pretty much hit and miss. All this talk gets me psyched though, maybe i'll try to hit 'em this weekend. I've got to something, I haven't been fishing in like two weeks (that should be a sin)lol. Its either that or halibut in the bay, so look out for some Morro Bay reports. -Phil

LAST EDITED ON Aug-30-01 AT 05:23 PM (PST)

LAST EDITED ON Aug-30-01 AT 05:18 PM (PST)

It would be interesting to compare the fight of the two species pound-for-pound, if anyone has caught both at comparable weights. Being a newly arrived Santa Barbaran from the SF Bay area I have not yet caught my first wsb, but I have caught stripers. Whereas large stripers put up a good fight, I am not very impressed with the fight of the smaller stripers compared to some other species of the same size. During an El Nino we caught bonito in the SF Bay area. I would say that pound for pound they pull much better than stripers.

The salmon that I have caught were generally larger than the stripers that I have caught, and the gear and bodies of water were much different so it would be hard for me to compare the fight of these two species. Also, because of their relatively soft mouths I would use less drag and take more time to bring in a salmon, whereas I could "horse" a striper a little more and feel its power.

Do southerners know that the stripers in California originated in New Jersey, a tank car of them being dumped into the Delta , I believe, around 1900? Imagine trying to propose a transplantation like that today! If I had been around at that time I would have proposed transplanting into Southern California waters another Atlantic fish, the bluefish. Pound for pound the bluefish is one of the hardest fighters. Even 12 inchers, called snapper blues, put up a great fight; pound for pound better than a striper. The bluefish is voracious. They have been caught using a bandaid on a hook by a guy who ran out of bait. I have caught them with many different baits and lures, including the prototype for the modern swimbait, the French-made viv vif (spelling?) lure. They have mangled many an angler's fingers. I once caught a 30" bluefish that had a 36" eel crossways in its mouth.

Finally, the wsb may be safer to eat than stripers because of mercury in stripers. Catch-and-release is the way to go.

Sorry for getting carried away, but yours was an interesting post.

There was a column in the latest Western Outdoor news about why Bluefish were never transplanted here. Seems the reason is that they are just too voracious and would have eaten everything in sight. They were worried that they would impact local fisheries too much.

I could not believe the coincidence. The day after I posted about the possibility of transplanting Atlantic bluefish to So Cal someone else published a question about it in the DFG Q and A column in WON. Fishy minds think alike.

I've caught the little snapper blues in Long Island Sound, they were fun on light tackle. Any relative of the yellowtail is good enough for me. Especially a forktail with teeth! White Seabass are killer, but they are not known for dogging you like a yellowtail. Tie a YT and a WSB tail to tail, the seabass is drowning. I heard that stripers fight really well, unfortunetly my experience with them is dinks at Skinner, not the same. A 35 lb. WSB and a 35 lb. tail are not even close to being in the same league. Kind of remarkable how well the stripers established themselves on the west coast, the LMB, brown trout, etc. have done equally well since being stocked in the late 1800's. Kind of cool how California can hold records for all of these fish, glad my family moved me out here when I was an infant. (Not to say I'm not jealous of the offshore fishery they have back there, pretty sick!) At least we have better surf, usually, don't look at this summer for a marker.

Long Island Sound brings back memories, although I caught my snapper blues in Jamaica Bay at Rockaway NY. I did not know that blues were related to yellowtail; very interesting and understandable.

Speaking of comparing East Coast and West Coast inshore fishing, what surprised me when I moved to CA is how the inshore Atlantic is generally calmer than the inshore Pacific during the summer. The only times that it was too rough for me to fish in a small skiff off the NY or NJ shore was during a thunderstorm. Just about every summer day, other than that, was fishable, whereas in CA there are many summer days when afternoon westerlies whip things up.

http://www.sfgate.com/sports/outdoors/fishing/

30 lb "average size"!
Man I'd give my left nad to be in Monterey this weekend!!!!

Chris

I'm not sure which boat, but I heard about a night, live squid, charter out of Monterey that is limiting out every trip on WSB. I've been trying to get on it, and I heard one is going out friday night, I'd be on it but, a weekend of flyfishing for big trout and smallies isn't a bad alternaltive.