Lobster season coming to a close

[AJFishin]

My buddy and I went out last night for our last trip of the lobster season which officially ends at 11:59pm Wednesday night. So any of you SoCal guys that want a few lobster before the season ends, get out there!

It was a beautiful late afternoon on the water, a little windy unfortunately, and while heading over to the bait barge I saw what looks like Martin's RORO boat coming into port....


I had a feeling no one was going to be at the bait barge since I never got a reply to my text message earlier in the day and sure enough it was vacant, so we left right away and headed over to a spot that we always catch mackerels. Unfortunately the wind was too much, kept blowing us off of our spot to fast, and I was only able to get 1 in about 10 minutes. I noticed there was a lot of guys running out and setting up early on their spots for the final weekend of the season, so not wanting to waste anymore of our time, we left and headed over to our hoop netting spot early. Once on our spot I cut up the 5 salmon heads I had brought with me (that luckily my wife got me earlier in the afternoon just in case the bait barge was closed) and the one fish I caught. While my buddy got the hoops ready, I sparingly divided everything in 10 bait tubes, not that much bait in the tubes, but we crossed our fingers and hoped for the best.

Dropped our 10 hoops by 6:30 for a long soak, an hour and half, to let the little bit of bait we had do some work. We did some fishing near our spot while our hoops were soaking, but only caught some Calicos, no good bait fish to rebait the tubes with.

First set got us 1 legal lobster, a couple short lobsters, and 6 rock crabs.

We let our second set soak for an hour which got us 5 rock crabs and 4 short lobsters.

We decided to do a 3rd set and let it soak for 45 minutes and got 6 more crabs and 2 more legal lobsters and we called it a night at 11pm.

On our way back in, LED lights were blinking all over the place and surprising we could see guys that dropped their hoops right in the shipping lanes, in between tankers and even in the harbor entrance, not the most ideal spots with the harbor traffic moving through and it's a good way to lose your hoops.

We got home by 12:30am with 3 lobsters and 17 big meaty Popeye rock crabs, pretty decent night considering what we had for bait and actually getting the crabs was a nice change. We had a good season, found a few new spots, met some good people, got my wife and daughter hooked on hoop netting, and looking forward to next season with excitement!
Now it's time to get some work done on my boat that I have been putting off and get ready to try my luck with Thresher sharks this Spring for the first time.

Our first lobster is buried on the bottom lol....

[martin3]

Good last hurrah Jeremy!

That Ro/Ro vessel is one of our competitors,  from NYK.

[AJFishin]

Good last hurrah Jeremy!

That Ro/Ro vessel is one of our competitors,  from NYK.

Thanks and yes, also about 5 of those crabs had their last hurrahs this evening during dinner, lol.

Next season we're going to have plan a trip, you can jump on my boat and you and I can get some lobsters.

[Always Fishing]

Nice work AJ.