The mellow days of a South Coast fall
From hot surface iron colors to an early show on cows and an almost endlessly closed San Clemente Island, this fall has already created its own memories. To get away from squid this year you had to go on a long range trip and even that might not have worked

"Gerbie (Brian Sims on the Royal Star) said there is squid at Geronimo, Cedros and all the way down to the 13 (Fathom Spot)," said Barry Brightenburg of Always An Adventure Charters. "There's so much squid at La Jolla the rockfish have stopped biting."

Of course Barry's latest trip had this year's number one targets in mind - yellowtail and white seabass - but he came up empty Monday. "I have trips the next couple nights, I'll let you know how it goes."

I was able to get Mark Wisch on his Boost Mobile cellphone (a popular item among the Channel Islands fleet) this morning (Tuesday) and he WAS targeting rockfish.

"I'm metering rockfish solid on the Dropoff but they're not biting," said Wisch. "A whole new area of bait moved in at Izor's. Besides all the squid, there's krill around, too. Hey, there we go - a 6-inch starry." The rockfish bite actually got better and better as we talked, but it was nothing like Sunday's trip on the Pacific Edge.

"We just just killed them at Nic (San Nicolas Island) - big reds, big lings, big whitefish," said Wisch. "The day before that we only got one yellowtail at Santa Barbara Island, but at least it was a big one. The bite was off and the talent level on the boat wasn't the best. We did have fair to good hooping for lobster at Catalina on both trips.

.On Sunday this writer drove down to La Jolla to hang out with John Grabowski and Ed Zieralski on their 4 to 6 p.m. All Outdoors Radio show on KCBQ 1170 AM. You can check out the show online at www.alloutdoorsradio.com if you missed it. We had a good time and the two hours with a couple old friends went by too fast.

Tommy Gomes of Catalina Offshore Products noted that the nets up the line had a good hit on the late season wave of swordfish that swarmed the coast and its inviting 63 degree water full of life. That was after the stick boats made a lot of good money and fired up a couple novices. Both Rick Maxa of Fisherman's Landing Tackle and Bob Hoose of Berkley/Penn got to go on harpoon swordfish expeditions and came home converts.

What with the time change it was dark as I drove home and light boats and some sportfishers practically produced a perfect illuminated outline of Box Canyon off the Border Patrol checkpoint in Camp Pendleton.

The last couple evenings I surfed just inside of there at San Onofre. Today i thought I saw dorsals of the great whites that have been frequently spotted there lately, but when I saw them flop over I knew they were mola mola, or sunfish.

Just a handful days earlier I had seen a light boat camped out in front of Port San Luis in Avila Beach while on a business trip with my SportfishingReport.com partner Chad Woods. There were only a few days left of the rockfish season for Patriot Sportfishing and Virg's Morro Bay and they were making the most of the good weather with pretty hefty passenger loads. Next year they get 8 months, so its back to the good old days.

.We drove home by the San Marco Pass and stopped in at his Auntie Pam's new digs on a ridge above Los Olivos. I don't know why "Zen Master" Phil Jackson of the Lakers goes to Montana for his escape with the vineyards and coastal mountains of Santa Barbara County so close.

Coming down the pass into the town of the same name the Channel Islands were clear as the So Cal sunset haze would allow and offered a spectacular vista you felt you could reach out and touch. No wonder SFR chartermaster extraordinaire Homan Khaki went out with Shawn Steward on the Aloha Spirit and got his wife on her first yellowtail - a 40 pounder on squid, of course.

The week had started out where I would end up - down in San Diego visiting Fisherman's, Point Loma and Seaforth. It was at Seaforth that ghost shrimp were on sale and at Fishermans that Doug Kern taught a customer how to cast a Waxwing and Ricky Maxa showed me the Pit Viper and Python pattern Salas 7X surface iron jigs that Bruce Smith on the Shogun has been touting.

Bruce is a fishy son of a gun - one of the best fly tyers and fishermen on Pyramid Lake besides a top long range skipper - so I believe.

Speaking of fly fishing, my brother Bob just spent 10 days dragging his trailer around in caravan with his fishing buddies. He said the driving rain and low water made fishing tricky at Eagle Lake, what with the fish feeding shallow, but they managed a handful of those native rainbows each.

Then it was on to the Trinity River near Junction City where there are not a lot of steelhead in the system yet. Bob said they had a few chances each anyway. He dumped his but Eric Crump was able to catch and release one of his biters.

Meanwhile Phil Desautels of www.smilingsalmon.com reported the Smith River cleared and tightened up, but his clients were still connecting with quality kings. Another storm is on the way this weekend, but there were fresh fish in the estuary, so the fall run should last at least through Thanksgiving.

Rich Holland's Roundup