There's a ton of bait along the beach and in the channel finally, and the thresher shark bite is wide off Laguna Beach, but the big news tonight is that Governor Schwarzenegger has pulled the plug on Michael Sutsos, his latest appointment to the Fish and Game Commission.
Sutsos made the mistake of siding with Commissioners Jim Kellogg and Daniel Richards on his very first vote concerning a Marine Life Protection Act issue when by 3 to 1 the commission decided to hold a special meeting this Wednesday regarding a 45-day extension on the comment period on the environmental impact report for the impending closures along the South Coast.
It's pretty obvious Governor Schwarzenegger wants those closures as part of his legacy and nothing is going to get in the way of meeting the deadline to get them approved while he is in office. The word is he already has a very "green" appointee set to slide in place and lock in the majority in favor of the closures.
It's also obvious whatever deal was in place to put a sportsman on the board instead of a puppet wasn't strong enough to handle the possibility the appointee might use his or her own good judgement. Anyway, it's easy to find the letters for the word renege in the Governor's name.
Meanwhile, the stretch of coast that will be closed under the South Coast IPA proposal is going off for threshers. Accurate's Ben Secrest reported he and Scott Shew picked up a load of mackerel from Sports Barber Al at 3:30 Sunday afternoon (Al was on his way in, they were on their way out) and headed up the coast to the upper reaches of South Laguna
"We had 10 bites, 5 hookups and caught 3 fish," said Secrest Monday afternoon from Accurate headquarters in Corona. "I've caught a lot of threshers and we had one we released that was easily over 200 pounds. It was a real kick, we were in my 16-foot Klamath and the fish was almost as long as the boat. It was a full on Christmas sleigh ride, it pulled us a mile. Releasing her was pretty tricky."
They did keep a meat fish, a thresher that weighed 107 pounds. "I let Scott pull on it for a long time. Even so, it jumped in and out of the boat the first time I hit it with the gaff. It was a good head shot though, so we just waited it out and got it the next time."
Secrest said the key was not going overboard with the tackle. He chose the Accurate BX-2 400 reel loaded with 50-pound braid on an Accurate Extreme 6640 rod.
"I had a piece of 65-pound fluoro and on the end of that 4 feet of 80-pound fluorocarbon I connected with a double Uni-Knot. The neat deal was that above the double Uni I put a big egg sinker that couldn't get past the knot.
"I actually cut the mackerel into strips and pinned it on a 5/0 J hook. The key was to put the boat in and out of gear. We tried straight trolling for the first hour and it didn't work. The fish are running around in 20 to 40 feet of water over 60 to 90 feet at most. That's why you don't need heavy tackle, they can't run anywhere."
Secrest said he saw many anglers using too heavy of tackle. The other mistake he noted was many were choosing to keep the larger fish instead of smaller threshers.
"The big fish are the breeders," Secrest said. "Let them go and keep a fish that's 70 to 100 pounds if you need some meat. It's wide open."
If you don't have your own boat to chase the tasty longtails, Davey's Locker is offering shark trips on the Western Pride.