I took another friend out on SD Bay this morning. Met Kim at Seaforth in Coronado at 8 am. We headed down to a part of SD Bay known as "Area 51" for some long drifts in various depths, from pretty shallow (around 8 feet) to kind of deep (about 30).

When I woke up at 6:30 the wind was coming from the north, which worked well, because a strong incoming tide like today's, comes from the north when fishing the south of SD Bay. What it doesn't help with though is covering much of a variety of water depth. The typical wind in SD blows from the west and carries a skiff from shallow to deep water. We had to move our drifts east for deeper drifts of west for shallower.

When we set up our first drift, Kim was on a spottie immediately. Good sign, she had 3 on me before I had my first spotted bay bass. After that we had a pretty steady pick of spotties and nursery-sized barred sand bass. Not too bad at all.

Flies were generally small and orange, mostly surf-style, or small clousers. I tie Newport Special-derived flies in variations of orange, red, gold, and rootbeer, that work very well on spotties. I also pulled out my 8 wt (I usually use a 6), w/ a 450 grn Streamer Express, and tied a crease fly on. In about 20-30 ft of water I cast then let out a little more line to get it on the bottom, and after just a few short, sharp strips hooked a decent-sized spottie. He even put a good bend in the 8 wt. Not bad for an experiment, something suggested by the guys at Andy Montana's in Coronado.

All said and done we boated around 40 spotties and a mackerel. Not a bad morning. Always nice to fish w/ new people.
Marc

MARC,

I have been wanting to do SD bay for sometime now... Your report just makes me wanna get to it Right A Way....
I've talked with a Sportfishing Boat Captain I know down Diego way about "Borrowing" his "Bay Boat" for such an Outing...gotta see what will happen....

I envy you for close access... perhaps we can venture out into the Bay together sometime in the Near Future....

Thanks again for a Fine report....

DEAN.....

_________________
"Buy the Ticket, Take the Ride" Hunter S. Thompson