Well..... just got back home. AmishEd and I were supposed to be onboard the Mustang with an allcoast charter this weekend for a 2 day trip, but, being Easter weekend, apparently people had something better to do so that trip got cancelled. Luckily we were able to find another 2 day trip, leaving out of Helgren's. We'd heard good and bad (mostly bad) about the Oceanside 95 and its crew, but we had no other options, and it was this weekend or nothin, so we went for it. Upon further consoltation with other folks, we began to hear more good about the boat. It seemed the more people we talked to, the more people said it was a good boat, so our hopes arose. I got to Ed's house at around 3 and we had some time to kill until the boat left at 7, so we went over to the "Fishworks" office to visit Ed's friend and pick up some fishing apparel. Ed hooked me up with the deckhand discount, and I bought myself some sweet deck shorts. I'll have to put em to the test, but their supposed to be resistant to bleach, blood, and other stuff like that. I like em so far, best part is, they've got a tuna on em :-) So, we hung out around there for a bit, and then headed over to Helgren's. The lady at the office told us the boat was having a problem with the cathead and probably wouldn't be able to leave the dock until around 10. Great. The good news was that they'd picked up some fresh dead squid and had a butt and a half load in the cooler. So, we payed up, and walked around for a bit and then hauled all our stuff to the landing and stood in line for a while. We got on the boat at around 6 and put reels on rods, rigged up, and BS'd with fellow anglers while we heard the crew in the bow trying to work on the darn cathead (they'd just been out on a charter full of Marines with no anchor winch...). You know, it seems every time I go to a new landing, the boat has a busted cathead... Finally got that squared away and we rolled up to the bait barge at 10:15, 10:30. Went to sleep shortly afterward.

Day 1
Woke up at San Clemente Island. My first time at Clemente. Fishin started out slow on the east end. Didn't get that gray light bite on the seabass/yellows we were all hopin for. The only real hookups I saw were the same guy who caught about a 20lb. black seabass, and a big old bat ray. I heard somebody lost a cuda at the boat too, but other than that it was pretty slow. We messed around on the frontside for most of the morning, trying to find fish, but just about everywhere we went it was slow. By late morning/early afternoon we ended up drifting for halibut with no success. Captain Richard decided to get some fish in the sacks and we went a rockfishin. The wind was blowin good on the backside and there was a healthy swell rollin. Probably 6-8ft. We went off the island a ways to Richard's whitefish hole, and a whitefish hole it was. Just about every drop on the rock and you caught a whitefish. We didn't want to take any chances with the cathead so we drifted (made for some quick passes and lots of line in the water...). I tied a jax jig in scrambled egg on the bottom of my dropper loop and put a squid head or two on there with one dropper loop hook above it with a strip bait. I managed to catch a couple rockfish in place of the 5 or 6 whitefish I'd had by that time, including one decent sized salmon grouper that liked my jig. After a couple hours of cranking dead weight out of 200 feet of water, just about everybody had had enough, so we went bass fishin. Back to the frontside. On the way around the corner, there was current meeting current meeting current, so we couldn't pass it up. Stopped there for a bit and scratched a calico or two, and then moved down the line. Got to our destination to find nice calm, glassy, clear water, and t-shirt/shorts weather instead of the long pants/hooded jacket weather of the other, windy side. You could see a bunch of blue perch swimmin around which was a good sign. A couple big bass were seen boiling underneath some birds, so I decided it was 10# flyline time. Grabbed a dine, tossed it off the stern, bait was immediately nervous and I got nailed by a barely legal calico. I love it. Flylining's so much fun. Pinned another dine on, same deal, same size. By this time the rest of the guys in the stern are lookin at me funny cause they've been soakin baits the whole time with trinidad 20's and 20# line while I'm tossin dine's on the curado 200 and nailin em right over their heads. 3rd dine wouldn't swim anywhere, so I tossed him and got a fresh one. That one got bit and I got another little calico to the boat. After that it slowed down. Ed got 3 calicos on plastic in about the same time frame that I got my fish, but after awhile it kinda slowed down. I got ripped once or twice after that but the fish wouldn't climb on it. It seemed if I could find a dine that would swim somewhere I'd get bit, but a lot of them for some reason wouldn't go anywhere. So, at 5 or 6 we found our home for the night in the cove we had previously drifted for halibut in. I dropped a dropper loop down and got pecked at by blue perch and little whitefish, but didn't set on any of them. As if the 3/0 hook and whole squid would fit in their mouths... So, with no bull calicos coming to take away the perches' meal, I put the rod in the rack and ate dinner. Steak and baked potatoes. Oh yeah. Night time fishin was slow. Some squid moved through and I got out the squid jig, but couldn't make any. They weren't too thick and were only periodically in the area. Later that night I heard they'd put up the squid lights and got em to the boat but couldn't get em to float and most guys were asleep (including me) so they couldn't really jig em.

Day 2
Today we new what we were up against. In the morning we went directly to the whitefish spot to fill the sacks before the wind/swell picked up. Same as yesterday, easy fishin on the squid strips. Crankin those drag screamin rock cod out of 200 feet of water can only entertain for so long, however. Ed didn't even resort to the squid strips and was determined to catch a fish on a brush hog or a white zipper worm on a "giant dropshot" aka dropper loop. He did manage one fish on the zipper worm (which he'd been fishing most of the trip and doing quite well on I might add) which was cool. No real size today. I got one pretty alright red, but nothin to write home about. After we got tired of that, we moved inside to some kelp that looked REALLY good. A couple bass boils here and there, some current pushin the kelp down... Only problem was the wind was blowin the boat in the wrong direction (they fixed the cathead, again, the night before so we were anchored) and that was pretty annoying. The guy next to me in the stern hooked a yellowtail that took him to the corner just smokin sticky drag, before his knot broke. A couple bass were caught, but we moved on to the frontside. Not much doin. Hit one pretty good sheephead spot. One notably big goat came in, Ed lost one that looked good size judging by the bend in his rod, and a few smaller sheep came in. The stop before that, or after that, I can't remember, I got a little johnny bass on plastic, but that was it. We took off at 3 o'clock and got back to Oceanside at 8:30. 1 Jack in the Box, 1 gas, 2 coffe stops, and 4.5 hours later I pulled into my driveway... Wait a minute, I think I feel a fever coming on, I better stay home tomorrow...

Even though we didn't get into the yellows or wsb (still a little too cold for em I guess), I think we all had a good time. All the bad stuff folks were talkin about the boat seemed non-existant as I don't think I could find anything wrong with the boat or the crew. The boat was laid out VERY nicely, and the crew was great. The boat had a very large rear deck with plenty of casting room, even when I broke out the 10ft. jigstick. The boat is 95 feet long, and like I said has a lot of room to fish. You could easily fish 30 people in the stern. Really wide boat which was nice. Galley could've used a LITTLE more room to sit down, but it wasn't a problem as I don't think there was much more than 20, 25 people onboard. Heads were very nice and clean w/ showers. Some of the nicest heads I've utilized ;-) Bunks were well ventilated. Only thing I didn't like was the pillows were covered with plastic so it made your head sweat, but what can ya do... I can't really think of anything wrong with the crew. They were great. Fun to be around, worked together nicely when work needed to be done, ALWAYS right there when you caught a fish or had a snag. When we were fishin bass, there was always somebody tossin bait for the duration of the time we were there. I would definitely fish this boat again in a heart beat. I really like the layout of the boat, and the crew was great. Another thing that made the trip go smoothly was it was 90% regulars so everybody could relax. I love trips like that. Somebody even caught the easter bunny (stuffed rabbit that the deckhand put on somebody's dropper loop). It was pretty funny, this guy was pretending to be all anal, saying "get the gaff, get the gaff..." before he even had the fish halfway up, and stuff, and then it's a freakin bunny. I even found a chocolate rabbit in my tackle bag on easter morning :-). Gotta love it. So, the yellows and seabass never showed up for us, but I had a good time and look forward to fishin this boat again, hopefully this summer sometime. The coffee's starting to wear off, so I'm going to sleep now.
-Brian