Howdy Fellow Salty Dogs,

I trust that everyone has had their fill of Turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, and pumpkin pie. I was on the water the day after thanksgiving targeting the shallow water cod out at the Channel Islands! What an awesome trip!

I've been a huge fan of shallow water codding for some time now. I got hooked about 5 years ago and have yet to stop buying jigs! This was the first trip I've taken out of SEA Landing in Santa Barbara aboard the boat "Condor" and it was great. The boat is a big 80' steel hull and although it's a little noisier than a wood hull, it seemed to handle the bumpy water pretty well. The crew was a little light as we had one deckhand (Charlie), the cook(Susan), and the captain on this trip but it's probably because they didn't plan on having 30 passengers on a Thanksgiving night trip! Yes...that was a pretty big group for a holiday night. We planned on fishing San Miguel but instead, fished Santa Rosa. I guess that was because of the weather. We had some medium size swell but they were really tight together. Needless to say, the 30 passenger group shrank to about 20 or so with the injured soldiers taking refuge down below in their bunks.

We started our trip in about 80-90' of water. We picked at some small reds, chuckleheads, and some lings. We fished that area for about 2 hours and headed for a little deeper water. We ended up in about 180-200' off of a ledge. The current made it tough to stay over the ledge but we fished it for a couple of hours anyway. I'll tell you...as soon as we went out to the deeper stuff, I knew we would be into the fish! On my first drop, the jig barely hit the bottom and the fish was on! That drop produced a nice 5-6lb Chucklehead! Over the next 2 hours, drop after drop produced quality fish! There were reds, chuckleheads, lings, starrys, chilipeppers, salmon grouper, johnny bass, blue bass, bank perch, and even a stray sheephead (jackpot winner) unfortunately not mine. There was a wide variety of fish to catch if you were willing to fish the jig. For the people that were fishing the bait, most of them ended up with 3-5 fish in the sack and most of which were of the smaller variety. For me...I was ecstatic about my day! I ended up with 8 large chuckleheads from 5 to 8 lbs, one johnny bass, one salmon grouper, 7 Lingcod (Released...one over 10lbs!) and a few assorted smaller fish that were stripped out for bait.

We ended the day drifitng a huge beach for some halibut without any results. You needed to see this beach! It was awesome looking. That was it...we really had a great time and on our return to port, the water laid down and everyone was feeling fine. For those of you who may be interested in shallow water codding??? I say you don't know what it's about until you try it! It's a lot like fishing Calico or Sand bass in the spring! It's a ton of fun and you don't really need a lot of different tackle to do it. My one suggestion is to use 50lb test spectra and at least a 40 lb leader. That combination will make all the difference in the way you fish and the number of fish you catch.

Good Luck and Good Fishing

Darin
aka Hookup90247