Lucifer keeps them in the slips

Lowest weekly angler count in years

Author

By Daniel Powell

Publish Date

Feb. 19, 2017

High winds built seas up to 45’ feet on the offshore banks, keeping boats on the trailers for over a thousand miles of coastline. (johnnorth/iStock/Thinkstock)

The strongest so far in a series of Pacific storms, aptly named Lucifer, slammed into southern California Friday, shutting down the sportfishing fleet and keeping local anglers on not-so-dry land. High winds built seas up to 45’ feet on the offshore banks, surf over 12’ locally, and up to 20’ along the Baja peninsula, keeping boats in the slips and on the trailers for over a thousand miles of coastline. Prior to Lucifer’s arrival, the fleet was concentrated mostly on the local kelps for calico bass and sculpin or on the flats looking for sand bass with the ¾ day and longer boats heading just south of the border toward the Coronado Islands while mostly targeting lingcod, yellowtail, sheephead, and rockfish. Flurries of yellowtail were biting off the nearshore banks from Colonet south early in the week, but mostly only for the local pangas that were able to get on them as the impending storm kept the San Diego boats closer to home. Still, with the lowest weekly angler count in years, the rockfish numbers were pretty good for the boats that made the run across the border.

Dock Totals 2/12 – 2/18: 437 anglers aboard 26 boats out of San Diego landings this past week caught 2 yellowtail, 6 calico bass, 21 sand bass, 1,571 rockfish, 139 sanddab, 10 halfmoon, 1 finescale triggerfish, 95 whitefish, 5 bonito, 11 lingcod, 1 halibut, 199 sculpin. 8 sheephead, 1 spider crab and 5 spiny lobster.

Top performing boats of the week:

February 12: The San Diego running out of Seaforth Landing with 26 anglers aboard fished the Coronado Islands area and returned to the slip with 1 lingcod, 1 yellowtail, 1 bonito and 120 Rockfish in the gunnysacks.