A California Dawn Bottom Fishing Adventure With The Boys Of Butte City Hunting Club    By: Cal Kellogg October 12, 2007 More Articles by Cal

Over the past couple months I've been pretty darn busy. Of course I've spent a good deal of time setting behind the computer helping put together issues of the Fish Sniffer in addition to editing The Trout and Kokanee Journal and Bass Angler News. I also ran off and spent a week in Alaska, put in some time chasing bass on local lakes and teamed up with Gary Coe and Justin Wolff to shoot a segment for Angler West Television at Lake Berryessa.

One of the things I really look forward to every summer is chasing rockfish and lingcod aboard the California Dawn with Captain James Smith. I'm a big lingcod enthusiast and there are few skippers as good as James when it comes to putting his clients on quality lings. This year August was upon me before I knew it and I hadn't so much as set foot on the Cal Dawn. As we say at Fish Sniffer headquarters I'd been to busy fishin' to go fishin'. That's a pretty cool problem to have. Right?

Well, with my Alaska adventure completed and my schedule returning to normal, I finally had the time to call James and set up a trip. Friday August 24 was the best date for me, but several guys from the Butte City Hunting Club had chartered the boat for the day. Since it was going to be a light load, James figured it would be fine if I tagged along to catch a few fish, takes some photos and write a story about the events of the trip.

I was so excited about the trip that I couldn't sleep the night before and rolled out of Auburn at 2:30 in the morning. I ended up arriving at the Berkeley Marina a full hour before I needed too, but that only gave me some extra time to play with my tackle and tie up some live bait leaders.

Tawny Houston, the California Dawn's cook showed up at around 5:30 and I headed down to the boat and ordered one of her awesome breakfast burritos. As I ate, a collection of camo clad duck hunters filtered onto the boat. By the time I'd finished my burrito James had arrived and it wasn't much longer before we slid out of the marina. Clearing the breakwater James set a course for the Golden Gate with a total of 16 anglers aboard counting me.

The plan was to run up along the Marin County coast and make a stop near Duxbury Reef in hopes of picking up some kingfish to use as live bait for lingcod. "Kingfish have been tough to come by this summer, so I hope we can catch some," James told me as we eased into a protected cove to try our luck. Unfortunately, the skipper's concerns proved warranted when we failed to boat a single kingfish.

Undaunted and with calm seas prevailing along the coast, James decided to run all the way up to the lightly fished waters offshore of Point Reyes. With a 1.5 hour ride in front of us I decided to head into the cabin and catch a nap so I'd be ready for rockfish mania when we arrived.

Now when I was in college, I snoozed through my share of lectures and every once in a while I sleep right through the alarm clock. Yet, it is amazing that when I'm sleeping on a charter boat I'm instantly wide awake when the sound of the motors changes pitch, indicating that we've arrived and the skipper is slowing down to look for fish. And so it was when James slowed the boat a short distance to the north of Point Reyes.

Earlier in the summer I'd had great luck at Point Reyes dropping an 8 ounce Megabaits jig ,so I grabbed my Lamiglas Big Bait Special jigging stick and tied a blue and silver jig to the leader. The surface was nearly flat calm with a gentle swell, so I didn't think I'd have any problems working the bottom 100 plus feet below. Despite the calm surface, the current was absolutely ripping. When I dropped the jig it took off like I'd pitched it into a river.

Most of the anglers around me were fishing live anchovies with 8 ounce sinkers attached to their leaders and they didn't have any better luck hitting the bottom than I did. As James motored back up current for the second drift of the day Captain Mike Gaddis, our deckhand for the day had everyone switch over to one pound sinkers to deal with the fast drift.

I grabbed my go-to heavy weight Fenwick Saltstik rod teamed with an Abu Garcia 9000 reel spooled with 65 pound Berkley Fireline Super Braid, tied on a 3 way live bait rig and connected a 16 ounce torpedo weight to it. Even while using a heavy weigh it wasn't easy to stay on the bottom. While were picking up fish steadily the bite wasn't wide open. However, the rockfish coming into the boat were an exceptional mixture of quality browns, coppers, blacks and vermilions.

After making a few drifts with live anchovies, I just wasn't catching as many fish as I though I should, but I wasn't sure what the problem was. Thinking back to the last time I fished with my brother Erik, I remembered how well he'd done fishing his anchovies on a red hook. Thinking it couldn't possibly make a difference, I swapped my chrome live bait hook out for a red octopus hook. It might be a coincidence, but as soon as I started using the red hook I couldn't keep the fish off my bait. I'll need to experiment more with that in the future!

The highlight of the morning came when Peter Hulkkonen successfully battled an awesome 10 pound vermilion. By early afternoon we nearly had full limits of rockfish aboard, but no one had landed a keeper lingcod. Wanting to put some lings in the box, James decided to make a short run to the south and hit an ultra shallow reef where his clients had done well on lings in the past.

The water on the reef was between 20 and 30 feet deep, so I exchanged my heavy rod for my jig rod. I started out working with my Megabaits jig, but while I picked up a pair of rockfish on it, it was clearly too heavy in such shallow water.

On the first drift a handful of keeper lings came over the rail, including a beautiful red-colored ling that Steve Hardy of Vacaville landed. As we repositioned for a second drift, I got rid of the metal jig and replaced it with a P-Line Pulse Raiser. With only one other angler on the stern, I flipped the bucktail jig out over the reef and worked it along the bottom as if I were plugging for stripers.

I'd almost worked the jig back to the boat when something slammed it hard and took off on a short blistering run. I kept the rod tip high, hoping to keep the fish out of the rocks and worked the reel. Moments later a husky ling appeared behind the boat.

With Mike gaffing a fish on the bow, it took him a minute or two to make it back to the stern. The ling hung just below the surface and I was careful not to lift its head out of the water. Presently, Mike arrived made a quick stroke with the gaff and brought the thrashing 13 pound ling aboard.

After making a few more drifts that resulted in a couple more keeper lings and several rockfish, James decided to call it a day and head for port. As we crossed San Francisco Bay my Berkley digital scale revealed that my ling outweighed Peter Hulkkonen's big vermilion and I won the big fish jackpot, proving once again that it is better to be lucky than good!

It had been a great day on the water. We boated limits of handsome rockfish and in the end we added some tasty lingcod to our sacks. We'd all hoped for better lingcod action, but the current just didn't allow us to work the bottom effectively.

I had great time fishing with the guys of the Butte City Hunting Club. If they shoot as well as they fish, the ducks better avoid their blinds this fall, that's for sure!