The Logbook, page 3
California sheephead: how the reef's red-and-black wrasse lives and changes sex
Every sheephead starts life as a female, and the biggest become the red-and-black males that hold a stretch of reef. What that means for where you fish and what you keep.
California halibut: drifting live bait and bouncing swimbaits
Halibut lie in the sand and wait. Drift speed, the Carolina and sliding sinker rigs, swimbait leadheads and why you should never pump a halibut to the boat.
Cabezon on the shallow reef: where they hide and how to get one out
A crab-eating sculpin that lives in the surge, guards its nest through winter and carries poisonous roe. How to find cabezon on the shallow rock and get one out.
Bonito in Southern California: the boom years, the bust and the breakwater bite
From more than a million fish in a good 1960s year to a record low in 1999: what the records show about bonito, what moves them, and how to fish them now.
Barred sand bass and the summer spawn: where they gather and why the bite turns on
Every July the sand bass leave their home reefs and pile onto the flats. Here is what they are doing out there, why the bite comes in bursts, and why the spawn is smaller than it was.
Albacore in Southern California: the fish that built the fleet, and where it went
Canned in San Pedro in 1903, chased by a hundred party boats by the 1950s, all but gone from the San Diego counts by the 2000s. The longfin's century off this coast.
Yellowfin or bluefin? How to tell Southern California tuna apart
Long pectoral or short? The fins, body shape and one cleaning table check that settle the yellowfin versus bluefin argument on the boat.
Dorado season in Southern California: when they show and when they leave
Dorado season is not a date, it is a water temperature. When the fish usually reach the Bight, where they show first, and what October tells you.
How SoCal crews catch marlin: sight-casting, trolling and the release
Most local marlin are spotted before they are hooked. Reading the fish, the mackerel, the tackle, the trolling spread and the release.
Catalina, the Tuna Club and the birth of rod-and-reel marlin fishing
The Tuna Club of Avalon set the rules of big-game sport fishing in 1898. How Catalina's marlin went from harpoons and weigh slips to tags and releases.
When and where marlin show up off Southern California
The Bight is the northern edge of the marlin's range. Here is what decades of catch records say about the season, the water and the banks.
Fall bluefin in Southern California: the tuna that stays
When the yellowfin leave, the bluefin often do not. Where they hold in the fall, how they show themselves, and why they are so hard to get to eat.