During that time, the best fishing in my opinion was actually at the less visited piers, such as San Clemente, simply because there was less competition. The regulars there were using much less “greedy” set ups, with 1-2 feathers, and landing bonito one at a time throughout the day. They’d start biting with the morning light, and on certain days you’d see schools of them at the end of the pier, swimming in large circles, and chasing small fish under the pier. They are very fast fish – much faster than mackerel from what I’ve seen, and definitely one of the best fighting fish. I initially tried to catch them with store bought sabiki up with 20 pound test, but soon found out that the bonito are capable of tearing the hooks from the line, such that whenever I had 2-3 bonito on a sabiki and they were going in different directions, the sabiki broke. I eventually stopped doing that and went with the standard 1-2 feather set up.

Reading your post, I now know that the small fish frustrating everyone trying to catch live bait at San Clemente pier was salema. I’ve heard from the regulars that salema make for very bad bait, as no fish takes them. I don’t know why myself but having tried it, indeed it looks as though no fish want to bite them. No idea why. The same was the case for the small halfmoon we have been getting at Balboa pier.

We haven’t been getting a lot of mackerel during the day this year. I think it has a lot to do with the bonito. The mackerel, which used to and are now biting again around 5-7 am, adapted to bonito schedule and there would be days when you won’t find a single mackerel during the early morning. Those days, you’d get schools of bonito out at the end of the pier, and having fished mackerel as live bait, bonito DO eat them. So I know I’d be scared were I a mackerel, because there’s no way a mackerel would be able to escape a bonito in open water, which explains why they’ve become night fish. Bonito don’t seem to hit at night, but the bait are still there, so the mackerel come. Had you stayed later than 6 pm at Newport, I think you’d have seen wide open mackerel bite, as that’s been the case every time I’ve visited the last few weeks.

You’ve heard it from others already, but yellowtail were indeed hitting Newport and Balboa about two weeks ago, though only for 2-3 days. Around the same time, big bonito were also being caught – up to five pounds, when the normal bonito you get is about one pound. A week after that, however, the bite shut down completely. The bonito were gone from the end, and even the live bait people were having a difficult time catching them, when earlier they’d take every little fish you threw in the water within minutes. Their replacements have been increased amounts of mackerel and, unfortunately, lizard fish. I say unfortunate, because lizard fish love to hit live bait not much smaller than themselves, and spending all that effort just to get a 12″ lizard fish is not fun.

That said, there are still larger fish in the water. Just last Saturday I was at Balboa at night and saw fish >16″ circling the surface. They looked similar to bonito so I thought they were back, but later on changed my mind because these fish were pretty slow. They didn’t look to be bass – they were on the surface and in a school. They also weren’t barracuda because they weren’t that long. I wasn’t able to tell what the fish was till I saw snaggers in the surf pulling up mullet. The ones they were getting were small, but there are large ones out at the end. I have no experience with mullet so have not tried to get them. They don’t take the usual bait.

As for the fishing improving, I certainly hope so! But from the looks of it, the fish went south, as on the same day you saw yellowtail at San Diego, there was again no fish being caught at Balboa and Newport. Whether it’s because of the hurricane, I don’t know, as the rain has come to southern California this week. Come to think of it, although you guys missed the fish by a week, you did avoid the rain There’s always a bright side.