2024 Groundfish regulations have been approved for state waters and we are running trips! You can find those 2024 regulations here.
Some changes for this year include a 2 vermillion rockfish limit, and depth constrictions for different times of the year for the Central Section south of 36 degrees latitude. The first 3 months (April, May, June) of the season we can fish all depths. Followed by 3 months (July, Aug, Sep) of fishing in waters from 0 - 300ft defined by the states 50 fathom boundary line. Then the last 3 months (Oct, Nov, Dec) of the season we must fish greater than 300ft on the other side of that boundary line.
4-21-24
We ran our first two trips of the season this weekend and capitalized on some beautiful weather. We loaded up our amazing passengers and ran up the coast a dozen or so miles and started out in around 350' of water and grabbed our limit of vermillion rockfish in a few drops, several nice coppers came up as well.
After getting our reds we targeted mid water column species like chillipepper rockfish and yellowtail rockfish, which are usually suspend of the bottom 30 - 40 cranks of the handle. We loaded up on the tasty chilis and saved some room for some more variety that the shallows had to offer.
We then made our move into the shallows to target some lingcod and other species of rockfish. The lingcod were on the chew and we caught and released dozens of shorts with a couple legals mixed in, this provided some awesome fishing. We finished out our time trying for that jackpot lingcod in the shallows and ran into some cabezon doing this Saturday. Sundays trip jackpot was a 12lb lingcod caught on a swimbait.
There is a lot of pyrosomes in the water that the rockfish are feeding on and the shrimp fly tipped with a small strip of squid was absolutely lethal fished slowly near the bottom replicating the slow drift of the pyrosomes in the current. Some anglers found success with the jig and teaser, but the 2 fly rig was the top producer. The numerous short lingcod in the shallows wanted everything we had to offer including the fly, tube baits, swimbaits, and jigs.
Saturdays trip ended up with 5 Cabezon, 3 Lingcod, 10 Bocaccio, 42 Vermilion Rockfish, 75 Rockfish for 21 anglers.
Sunday trip ended with 26 Vermilion Rockfish, 13 Copper Rockfish, 13 Bocaccio, 44 Rockfish, 4 Lingcod for 12 anglers.
