Daniel: SoCal Angling Prodigy

Today I had the awesome opportunity to fish with Daniel.  As the weekend started out, I was already excited about its potential.  I was going to head up north and fish for the first time up in the Channel Islands.  The Channel Islands have been on my radar for awhile.  I had a post about Kid Friendly Fishing where I identified them as being a potentially good spot for taking out kids.  They also had a late season run last year (September?) where they were catching yellowtail while the rest of the SoCal coast was striking out.  So I was excited for the weekend to fish these islands and potentially catch an exotic or at least add to my SoCal species count.

Little did I know that the weekend would also include fishing with Daniel.  Daniel is 10 years old and frequently fishes Channel Islands Sportfishing with his dad, Homan (as long as he makes his grades).  Despite his young age, Daniel already has 2 jackpots under his belt…including the 27 lb White Sea Bass that put him on the front of the brochure for this landing.

Pacific Dawn was squidding also next to us

We departed the landing at 10pm on Friday night and headed out to the islands on the Pacific Islander.  Shortly after leaving the harbor, we made bait.  Every other trip I’ve gone on in SoCal, there are live bait shacks where the boats just pick up bait.  I hadn’t done this before, but they handed out squid jigs and busted out nets and everyone pitched in to get the bait for tomorrow.  It only took 15 minutes to fill up our bait wells which more experienced salties told me was record time.

Daniel and Bryan with what would've been a legal ling

In the morning, Daniel got the day started early where at the 3rd stop after dawn, he scored a nice ling cod.  I love ling cod!  Too bad the season doesn’t start again until April 1, so the fish was returned to the deep.

But Daniel pressed on and didn’t let it faze him.  As the day progressed, I watched Daniel bring up multiple 2 fish catches (2 hooks is max in California vs. 4 hooks that you’ve seen me do in Mexico).

Daniel fished what looked to be a 6 ft Kencor rod with a Shimano Tekota reel throughout the day.  He had a 2 dropper loop setup and fished a mixture of live squid and squid strips on 3/0 hooks.  He consistently banged out fish at every stop.  I love seeing kids on the boat, especially ones that are at ease fishing and get results!

Thanks Daniel for letting me hang out with you today.  Tight lines!  Salty

Daniel with a nice red

 

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