I was told you fish for these fish at high tide. No point in heading out at low tide and low tide here can be very, very low. The channel, at low tide, is constricted down to something you could skip a rock across. Hard to know just how deep the channel is when it is low like this. I’ve never seen a boat use the channel at this tide, but I suppose that is its purpose.
I wanted to fish at least once a month and this was, by all accounting, the last day of the month. I ducked out of work just a little bit early and raced home. There, I got some meat out to thaw and grabbed by gear and then off to the water.
The tide was as far out as it gets. The water was a long way down. But… the 28th… last chance.
I figured I’d fast about for 30 minutes or so and then I’d head back in time to make dinner.
Funny what you see out there at such low tide. In the water were sponge like plants, bright red. I’ve never seen those before.
low low low tide
I set about the job of blind casting for California stripers. Cast, retrieve, cast, retrieve.
Then, a most unexpected thing happened. There was a grab. I missed it. I cast again and there was another grab and I was tight to a fish. Was it a halibut waiting for more water to get back up on the mud flat? Was it one of the jack smelt I sometimes catch?
No.
It was a striper.
low tide striper
I wasn’t supposed to be able to catch stripers at low tide. I probably wasn’t supposed to catch stripers in February, or on the cusp of a cold front. But… I did.
The thing I knew just before that fish was that low tide was not the right tide (and that February was not the right month). Funny… now I know something else, which is probably also wrong in one or more of a hundred ways.
That’s what I love about fishing. Being wrong and finding out that I was wrong by catching a fish.
Trial and error.
Error and fish.
