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Podcast by a Panhandle Surf Angler for all anglers of any level. We will talk weekly to guests that are anglers and also industry professionals. I want you to walk away from this podcast with some knowledge either refreshed or new for you to become a better angler. Though it will start in the Panhandle of Florida, it will be around the entire United States so we can all learn something about fishing in different regions.
Speaker 1 (00:00:00):
This episode of Finding Demo Spearfishing is being brought to you by Ninja Tackle. Go over to ninja tackle va.com and see all the great things that Matt's got going on up there in Virginia. You need rods? Hey, he's got you covered. Who knew? Yeah, that's right. You guys see it? You see me using those ninja daggers. You know I love them. The seven footer, I've got the one solid piece, but I've also got the travel rod with the case. It's gone with me numerous times. Love that Rod. You need it all the way up to 12 and maybe 13. Keep your ears open. Lots of cool stuff's still coming, but maybe if you need rigs and other pieces, hey, he's got you there. Lots of great pieces at the Ninja Tackle Shop if you're into shooting and firearms, accessories, they got you covered there too. Ninja tactical optics, accessories, add-ons, upgrades. Yeah, it's all there. Ninja tackle va.com. Go on over, get your order in today. You won't be sorry. Oh haha. Yes, it is so good to be here in your ears. Oh, I've missed y'all. I really have.
Speaker 2 (00:01:20):
Yeah, it's been
Speaker 1 (00:01:21):
Weird. This week we are jumping on the old digital plane and we are heading out west again. That's right. We're going back to Cali and we're sticking in SoCal. And for those of you know me for a long time, I do have a special place in my heart for SoCal. I spent a long time there in the Marines and enjoying myself. Yeah, it was pretty good. And we're just going a little bit north of that actually. We're heading up into the Orange County, just south of LA area here. And we're gonna be talking with American Sea Fishing. If you haven't taken a look at it on the website, it's lots of good stuff. It's all hyperlinked back here on the page. But you got American sea phishing.com on Facebook and Instagram, American Sea phishing, easy to find. Lots of cool stuff. They, Ben Ben's got some really cool things and I, I don't wanna steal his thunder with it 'cause I know I will. You know, always know me. I like to talk. I, that's why I have a podcast. So lots of cool things in there and we will get into them into the show and man, I'm just excited for that. So without flapping my gibs for too long, welcome to the show, Ben man, glad to have you here.
Speaker 3 (00:02:21):
Hey, thanks for having me on, Brian. It's a pleasure and honor to be on your podcast, man. I'm a fan. So good to meet you.
Speaker 1 (00:02:26):
It's funny how this worked out 'cause you were out fishing with Courtney from Fish Bites and I was Yeah, of course. Stalking my good friend. Like, Hey, what you doing out in Cali? I need you to go get me a Carney Saddle Burrito because you're a good friend and then while you're there I need you to stop at a couple other places and get some other food for me 'cause I can't have it. And then she told me she was fishing with you. I'm like, Ooh, ooh, can I talk to him? She's like, yeah, he knows who you are. I was like, what? He does . This was like the whole weird loop for me. And I was like, yes, I definitely want to get him on this show. So I'm very, very thankful and fortunate to have you on, man. Really, I do mean that.
Speaker 3 (00:03:00):
Oh no, the pleasure is mine. It's, it's really great. And I'm lovely to connect with someone from the other side of the coast as well, you know, a few thousand miles between us, but there's a lot of similarities and kind of the things we do and the kind of outlook we have. So it's, uh, really great to connect with a like-minded angler, I think. Yeah,
Speaker 1 (00:03:14):
That, and that's one thing I love about this podcast too. And I've realized that after doing this for, you know, well hell, I'm coming up on two years here is there, fishing is fishing, but there are so many similarities to how you fish, where you fish, what you use, how you do it. It's just minor differences for different fish and, and it can all come back together.
Speaker 3 (00:03:37):
Yeah, there's definitely some big themes which are, which are consistent through wherever you are in the world. Um, and I think I was listening to, to another podcast recently about a striper fishing guy, very wor a striper fishing guy up in the northeast on the east coast. And, um, the, the similarities, even though we're fishing in completely different water on the other side of the, of the continent really, but completely different fish, the things he was describing about the tides and so on, which were, which worked for him and the things he is found out. Um, were so similar to the things here with, even though we're completely different fisheries, um, that similarity is, is universal. So there's certain universal things in surf fishing, ensure salt water game that I think are very, very consistent wherever you're in the world. Which is kind of interesting, isn't it?
Speaker 1 (00:04:18):
It's, I mean that's one thing I love about it is, you know, you can, I can pick up from here in Florida, fly out to Cali and I can probably figure out half of it, but in reality, I mean if I come out there, I'm calling you and a couple over like Heys talk anytime, go fishing, show me how to do this. But yeah, I mean, and hell, it's the same thing over in Europe. I had a great conversation, uh, with the, oh my goodness, I've had two different ones. But Nick, uh, Nick started out, he's in Texas. Nick started out in Europe and he was just like, yeah, oh yeah, Nick may. Yep, yep. And he was just like, yeah, I mean you start like this, you can still use the exact same tips and tricks over there that you can use here. It's just different, it little nuances and it was so cool and refreshing to know that, that we can do that in this game.
Speaker 3 (00:05:00):
Yeah, it's fun, especially when like Nick and myself, you come from the kind of English British surf fishing game. Um, it's definitely a little different. It's, I wouldn't say it's harder, it's just different, a different species, but definitely some of the conditions are a little more trying, let's say, than the ones you might find here every day, which makes you much better angler. And I think when I came here, uh, there was stuff I could deal with quite easily, which maybe if I hadn't had that lovely education of learning how to dish salt water in England and around the South coast where went to college and stuff, um, if I hadn't had that, I think it would've been a lot more challenging, taking me a lot more longer to get, to get it dialed in here. So yeah, I think Nick's, Nick's said a nick. Nick does really well with his, his big surf species there and, and his company's breakaway, I'm a fan of that as well. He's lots of their products. So, um, yeah, really interesting. Uh, he has that experience as well. Yeah. And very, very good surf angle there.
Speaker 1 (00:05:50):
Well, you've already kind of dialed us into the first question here. You've dialed us back into the younger years, like you're talking about college. So let's back it up. Tell us us your story and what got you into fishing.
Speaker 3 (00:05:59):
Well, um, I think it really started for me when I was probably 19 years old. My parents are a big sailing family. Um, you know, my, you know, my whole family's been sailing for, you know, decades and decades and so water's always been a big part of my family. And I really remember very clearly when I was eight, nine years old and around that kind of age, um, being taken sailing on on our family boats and looking down in the water and, you know, seeing some fish and thinking, well that looks kind of interesting. I'm kind of a little bit more interested in what's under the water and what's above the water. Although this is very lovely. I love sailing still. Um, I was, you know, getting to think, well, what's underneath there? And then some of my friends started fishing around the same time and they were catching like trouts and stuff and you know, so I got into that a little bit.
Speaker 3 (00:06:36):
My first fish was a rainbow trout stocked rainbow trout, as I'm sure it was for lots of people on a fly though. So that's, that's a little something, something extra . Um, so, and, and that sort of started really that whole process of thinking, well this is really interesting. So there's like 10 year old me catching trout, um, and gradually working my way through the food chain. Not necessarily up the food chain at this point, but you know, where I grew up in Cambridge, England, we had a beautiful river running through the city center, the river cam and I, you know, I'd get on my bike or my parents would drop me down there or come and sit by the river with me and we catch, you know, little what probably you'd call like shiners or a little sucker fish here, you know, char and roach and d and things like that.
Speaker 3 (00:07:14):
And little perch, a yellow perch with a very similar thing, European perch. So you know, that, that sort of started me off, you know, that's me 10, 11, 12 years old then, then you find out that the local river has northern pike in it, which leads you up to the first rung in the food chain. And this again, fairly consistent throughout my fishing life while working way up that food chain . And again, my first nice predatory fish, and you probably laugh at the photo 'cause I look literally 10 or 11 years old. Um, caught this little pike on a little northern pike on a plug. I'm incredibly proud of that. And that started the pike fishing so that then I got into more of the predator fishing and at the same time I was doing a lot of tournament stuff in my kind of mid-teens. So I was fishing for my county team captain, my county team at the end.
Speaker 3 (00:07:54):
So I was a kind of in eng in America you'd be kind of state level competition. And so I've worked my way up there. I did pretty well on the, on the national stuff and you know, working out the pre predatory food chain as well. Um, you know, catching some really nice northern pike, a lot of big perch and stuff like that. Big, big shub. Um, got into Xandr and later life, which is, which is a European walleye basically. But um, but when I was going through that teenage years, um, you know, you know, doing those big competitions and that was pretty good. And you know, it was very intense. Um, it was really equipped, the European equivalent of doing like the, you know, the bass equivalent stuff. You know, it's very intense competition. Very serious guys. Um, you know, a bit of money at stake as well.
Speaker 3 (00:08:31):
So I did pretty well at that in my teens. And then pretty like a lot of people when they, when you hit your twenties and you get to college and you know, I went to college by Port Portsmouth Business School. It was a lovely, beautiful place by the sea. Um, so I did a lot of sur then, but you know, maybe you, maybe you get other interests as you get into your early twenties . But other guys might find this, you know, you know, you discover beer and girls and so fishing isn't really compatible with staying out at two in the morning in the local local nightclub. So that, so the, so the fishing for, for, for my college years was very much in the surf fishing field, but it wasn't quite as intense. It would be, you know, go out between lectures or, you know, when I had a couple of morning spare or something.
Speaker 3 (00:09:07):
Um, so that, so that was how I got into the surf game is that very early on in college, beautiful place by the, by the sea in Portsmouth on the south coast of England, catching bass flounder, which is a kind of, kind of like a halibut type fish type species, um, and place and all that kind of thing on the, on the east coast, sorry, on the South coast in Portsmouth. And also did a bit of fishing on the East coast. Like I said, my parents had a boat on the east coast, so fishing all around north and Cambridge coast. And most of the catching there unfortunately was eels and dogfish, which if you fish on the East coast, when, when you guys talk about catching Dogfish up in the northeast, I, I feel your pain , they're a pain, they are pain, they're a pain in the, but caught my fair show Dogfish.
Speaker 3 (00:09:44):
But of course some nice bass and some nice, you know, nice kind of flat fish and you know, things like that. And some nice, a lot of eels. Um, in fact my, I'm not fairly swiftly ended fishing on my dad's boat thanks to some eel encounters, which probably didn't do that, make his deck look that great. Oh no. After there was a bit of blood and eel sliming involved and some, some, some ragworms or, or lug worm, which is kind of sand worm here. So that, so that was me in most of the twenties and um, got into my twenties, I started working as a journalist and did a quite a bit of working in so publishing field and pr and got to go to some really cool places. Got to travel around places like Iceland. So tot water fishing in Iceland is phenomenal, you know, it's like how many 20 pound cod do you wanna catch a day?
Speaker 3 (00:10:26):
It's that good. Um, and Pharaoh Islands another place I fish, so Norway, um, all around France, Germany, um, all places like that. So really had a wonderful education in my twenties of being able to travel and do slightly less intense fishing. But as I sort of end of my twenties, I began to get more into that, um, more into that kind of mindset of very focused fishing, very focused on maybe more of the trophy type stuff. So got back into more of the predatory fishing, um, in Northern Pike, stu, Northern Pike type things. Um, big Xandr as well, big perch, all that kind of thing. Uh, mainly freshwater at this stage. At this stage I'm living in London, so I'm doing a lot of freshwater fishing around the Thames and you know, places like that. And then, yeah, at the time I was living and working in London, working as a journalist, um, working in pr kind of marketing type fields and doing a lot of traveling.
Speaker 3 (00:11:13):
So I was fishing places at Iceland, which is just phenomenal saltwater fishing. Um, giant coddling ling and you know, so, and fishing the Fair Islands as well, which is another phenomenal fishery. Really, really untouched by a lot of the commercial guys or, or relatively untouched and just, you know, a fish are dropped. So it's like, like if you imagine if you go rock fishing on the west coast and you go to this wonderful untouched deep water marks that they've opened up this year and you just catch big fish after big fish. That's what it's like up there. So wonderful education in terms of fishing, deep water, big fish. Um, so I did that in my twenties and then ended up working for a series of fishing magazines, angling Times Anglers, me in England. So at that time still printing physical magazines, which is really, really, which I, I absolutely love.
Speaker 3 (00:11:54):
Um, I love just picking up a bit of, you know, a really good fishing magazine and you know, really good instructional bits and pieces and I love that. Love that. Um, I think that's dying thing sadly. But um, but I had a, so I had a sort of a really nice career in that fishing magazine world of photographing lots of features, writing lots of articles and you know, how to articles about everything from freshwater, um, very light line freshwater stuff up to, you know, the heavier salt water stuff. And um, and you know, something, a really, really fun time taken to a lot of really fun places. Met a, met a, met the who's who of English and European fishing and um, and then that kind of led me into salt, into catfish guiding in Spain, which I did for a while, which is really fun guiding for these giant European world's.
Speaker 3 (00:12:35):
Catfish. You know, you are fishing for three fi, triple figure, you know, a hundred pound plus fish off the, off the shore using big live bait. So that was a really great education in targeting live fish from, from a shoreline, which comes into play later in my career. So that was, um, so that was really wonderful. And then set up, set up a, yeah, oh yeah. And so around that time, um, I met my lovely wife and my wife lives in Huntington Beach, California at the time. We met on a surf trip in England. Uh, and I was just went down the pub to meet some friends and she was there as well and one thing led to another and we hit it off and then we started dating and she was obviously living in America. I was living in England, um, working quite happily and not really expecting any great life changes.
Speaker 3 (00:13:20):
And she said to me, well, why don't you come and visit me? I live by the beach in Huntington Beach in Southern California. And obviously as well as being very keen on her, this sounded like a fantastic way to spend a few weeks. So I was like, done. I, I've done, I'll see you shortly. Um, so I came out here, um, when we were dating and I found this phenomenal fishery right on my doorstep of this beautiful Los sandy beaches full of things like surf perch, ena, leopard sharks. And so very early on, I, I took a whole load of fishing gear over with me when I came over and I left it here and did not really use much of the fresh water stuff, but ended up using all of the salt water stuff multiple times a day sometimes. Um, 'cause we just lived so close to the beach, it's so easy just to walk down.
Speaker 3 (00:14:02):
In fact, before we started recording this podcast, I just walked down for fish for an hour and you know, that's just, just a wonderful thing to be able to do. So, um, certainly so, so I say to my wife fishing a lot over here and we obviously then got married. I moved over here permanently and immediately set up my guiding business as soon as I was able to legally start a business and work over here. Um, got my green card, started my guiding business, started my tackle business shortly after and it's been about five years inhouse. So, and that's been it really. And I'm now currently running American sea fishing, um, as a guiding and outfitting business in Huntington Beach, um, orange County. And we're doing multiple surface trips every week, selling lots of tackle and helping lots of people catch fish. And so that's where I'm right now, really just end result is exactly dreams I would be, uh, five years ago, which is really great.
Speaker 1 (00:14:53):
Wow, dude, that's coming full circle though. I mean that's so cool. You started out with everything from over in Europe, you've learned so much. Different countries, different pieces, different whole different fisheries. I mean that's a lot of coastline. You look at a map, you know, for everyone looking. Yeah, there, there's some distance there. So that, that's a whole lot of different type of water too. I mean especially around Spain and France, you know. Were you on in the Atlantic side or up in the channel or were you down on the med side?
Speaker 3 (00:15:18):
Um, in Spain, I was in lands. I was fishing on the river Ebro for the um, wild catfish, which is, which was the big predatory kind of, you know, big long thing that looks like a head with a giant tail attached. Um, they're pretty fun. And then a lot of my fishing in France, um, as well as fishing on the couch south coast, sort of southwest coast, um, around the kind of s area, a little further inland as well. Did a lot of the kind of freshwater stuff there. Um, and then ended up as well doing a lot of carp fishing. And so I'm sure a lot of people are listening to this will know that car fishing in Europe is extremely big. It's kind of like bass fishing in America. Yeah. That same level of kind of ripe and money and professionalism. Um, so that's why I used to go to France a lot, used to do a lot of the big carp fishing 'cause they just grow bigger and Hungary over in France where it's little bit warmer and they got better water. Um, more conducive to growing giant kind of, you know, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80 pound plus carp, which was a big draw to us English people. If you fish for 20 pound carp your whole life and you can go over the channel and catch a 50 pounder, well that's, that's kind of a fun thing.
Speaker 1 (00:16:20):
Yeah, I can see that one for sure. Alright, so you've already answered a couple of the other questions here as we've been going. So I'm just gonna ask a, a couple different, and then we'll start getting into the knowledge pieces here. What is your favorite thing about fishing?
Speaker 3 (00:16:33):
Um, I think the satisfaction of working stuff out. I think that's a huge, huge factor. Um, being facing challenges like I did when I came over here and think, okay, well how do I catch a surf perch? Um, you know, great, that's how you catch one. How do I catch 20 in a day? Great, I've got 20 in a day. How do I now catch 20 for clients in a day? Um, and just working those things out, working out those puzzles. So I think phishing is largely a series of quite complicated puzzles that you have to piece together. Sometimes the pieces change, sometimes the pieces are missing altogether. Um, it's up to you to work it all out. So that's pretty, the thing I get most out of it is that satisfaction of working things out. And also the just a fantastic kind of, kind of just a real buzz, you know, I just love fishing. I love being out there, I love being in the sunshine like this morning, messing around in the, in the shore break, grab a couple of sand crabs, try and catch a cobina. Um, you know, it's all down you. So we answer your effort, your skill, your perseverance, whether you catch that fish or not. Nice. I think that's a great thing to be able to do.
Speaker 1 (00:17:33):
Yeah, that you made a great point there with, you know, figuring it out that that's, that's three quarters of this game is figuring it out so that Yeah. Yeah. That, that works out well. Well now that you've been here for you, like you said five years now, everything's going on that, but you've had a whole lifetime of fishing so far, what has been your favorite fish to target?
Speaker 3 (00:17:53):
Oh goodness. Okay. Well I think my favorite right now fish to target right now is either a Ena or a Spotfin Croker. Um, now Cobina people are listening who don't know the west coast surf species. Um, probably more familiar with it as a croker species. So if you have an east coast whiting is not dissimilar and they're kind of like if a whiting, if a whiting had babies with a bonefish, that's kind of how they behave. Yeah, they're kind of, they kind of love that shallow water. They're really fast moving, they're fairly, fairly picky about what they eat. Um, but they will come in, swim around super shallow water, you can sight fish for them. They love that skinny kind of surf zone. And um, I think they're really, really fun. There's some really good fishing with them right now. Um, you know, catching multiple decent sized ones every day, you know, in the kind of 1520 inch category, which is a really fun fight on like gear in the surf.
Speaker 3 (00:18:41):
So that's probably my current favorite. Um, my all time favorite fish, which I think is maybe something you might wanna touch on later on is possibly an a primer, which is something I caught in, in, um, in the, on the Amazon in Columbia, south America. Um, so that's probably the most spectacular fish I've seen or caught. Um, but here definitely called bina. Think another one of my, another one of my really favorite species on the west coast is the leopard sharks. Um, we're extremely lucky in Orange County. We have probably one of the best leopard shark fisheries in the world and they congregate here in large numbers in the summer, which is about right now. And I think they're one of the most fascinating shark species. They tend to live in this ridiculous surf zone you look at, you look at where I fish them and you just think, nah, you know, you're never gonna catch one.
Speaker 3 (00:19:23):
They're like four foot of foaming white water, but you do. And they love that zone. And you know, if you fish 200 jars further out, probably you're never gonna catch one. You fish right in that journey zone or just behind the white water and you know, we, my best day for those is 10 over 15 inches in a day. So, and I think a 50 inch leopard shark on the west coast is one of the most spectacularly beautiful and almost like a piece of art. So obviously very careful catch and release for those. Um, but they're probably one of my favorite fish as well. And in a way that was kind of a fish that led me start my guiding services. I worked some things out very early on for those and had a lot of success, um, in my first kind of few months of fishing here. And then built a guiding service based on the fact that I could take people to catch this very unique, very beautiful shark species and, um, kinda show 'em how it's done as well, you know, show 'em how to catch and release them pretty, pretty effectively. And, um, that's how my guiding service started really is the leopard shark. So that's probably is my favorite species for that reason.
Speaker 1 (00:20:17):
It's a beautiful fish too. I mean, if you guys haven't seen one, if you head over to, uh, the website of american sea fishing.com, you're actually, it's actually gonna be one of the cover pictures. So it's really a beautiful fish just watch. And it, I think it's really cool that you catch those. Uh, so you've done a lot of this other one. Here's a weird question for you then. What is a bucket list fish for you to catch?
Speaker 3 (00:20:40):
Um, I think right now I would like a really, really big thresher. I've had a few thresher, um, but I think a really, really big one would be a really spectacular thing to see an encounter. Um, so there's that. Also I have on my very high on my list of things to catch off the beach. And also a lot of my things, a lot of my fishing is done through the guise of fishing and land-based fishing. So I think a lot of my satisfaction comes from working at how to catch these larger fish from the beach. You know, I'm not floating around a boat, I've got any electronics, I have to work it on myself. So I think working out how to catch these larger species like the big thres. Um, and my next one on my list is definitely something like a white sea bass.
Speaker 3 (00:21:19):
So they're a big croker species again, but they're seriously big, you know, the 50, 60, 70 pounds. Um, and there are ones that are regularly spearfished, fairly close to shore that are in that kind of ballpark 50, 60 pound fish. So I think that's gonna be this summer I feel like's gonna be a really good one for, for those and I for the next, um, for the next few weeks. I think that'd be a good target. Also, the strike bass fishing weirdly in southern California has absolutely exploded this year. It was something that was on my ra radar. I was working for Western Outdoor News last year. We had a lot of reports, people saying, you know, actually there's, we're catching em regularly, we're just keeping it quiet. And there is a legitimate striper bite now in southern California. Um, you know, I've caught a couple, I've had one up in Marina up in Montserrat Bay a few weeks ago, which is, you know, striper territory.
Speaker 3 (00:22:08):
But here we are down in southern California, 70 degree water. Um, you know, blue skies is not what you can think of, stripe bass fishing. So a really, really big striper would be absolutely awesome. In fact, this week it's a gron run, which maybe we can go into that bit a bit later on what that means, kinda like a mullet run, but on a west coast style. And the stripers are definitely gonna be reacting to that. So I think tonight and tomorrow night might be my chance for a really big striper. So maybe by the time you this podcast is out, might have, might have another photo for you.
Speaker 1 (00:22:38):
Do have So jealous, jealous that you guys are getting stripers down south now. That's so cool. It's crazy, isn't
Speaker 3 (00:22:42):
It? You, you'd never think when I moved here you'd never, I've never heard of a striper being caught here because they're so under the radar and they all kept quiet. Um, but it's become more and more obvious that there's quite a few round and there's definitely some spots as well. There's some techniques, but it's kind of a weird thing to be stood on a beach at, you know, midnight casting a giant plug into the surf here. Yeah. Doesn't, it doesn't feel right at all. But you need to be like monsta or something for that .
Speaker 1 (00:23:06):
Yeah. You would think. Yeah, that I think it's really great and you know, like you said, the water temperature and there's been some cool changes for the movement. So yeah, the gron run. I I can get it. Everything you were talking about right there, I'm smiling thinking about, I'm like, yeah, you're gonna have some good runs. Alright, so let me ask you this last question in this category and then we'll move right into the knowledge pieces here. What has been your favorite fishing memory?
Speaker 3 (00:23:26):
Um, I think we touched on earlier actually, which is catching, catching an our primer in Yeah. In Columbia. Yep. Um, and there's, there's a, there's a little story behind that which kinda maybe adds a bit of context and cool, I had one of those lovely, one of those times when, you know, a single man. So I could only do whatever I wanted and, or, or to a certain extent. Anyway, . So I got on a plane to spend Christmas in Columbia with my cousin in South America. And I remember getting on this crazy plane ride. It was on this clearly ex-military Russian airline with a giant kind of interior sort of thing. They used transport tanks, but they just subbed a few seats in it. So that was one of the legs of the flight involved like three planes to get down to this tiny little village.
Speaker 3 (00:24:03):
Um, involved an epic ride in a very, very old Land rover, which kept on overheating, um, landslides, military checkpoints, which weren't necessarily the official military ones. Um, a lot of people waving guns around, but pretty safe. Anyway, um, we had, we had some good local guides and eventually happening upon a small lagoon in a village where I managed to catch after losing a very large one, um, a quite large ayer kind of seven, eight foot ayer, um, in the kind of two to 300 pound category. And caught on spinning gear from all gear that I carried on my back from England to this ri of nowhere in the middle of jungle. And that was probably my favorite fishing memory in a way. That's kind of where it all started going wrong a little bit, sort of, oh this is catching giant fish off the land is really, really fun, especially if it's in a hot place. And it's kind of interesting. So that's kind of sparked a few thought processes, which maybe led to the catfish guiding, which maybe led to maybe more of the sharky stuff here. So that's probably my favorite fishing memory is catching, you know, stuff like that. Giant, giant ara primer, beautiful ancient predatory fish, um, on, on relatively modest gear, um, in a very, very cool place. Hmm.
Speaker 1 (00:25:15):
And traveling with it. So that's like a triple win right there. Yeah,
Speaker 3 (00:25:18):
Definitely, definitely traveling , it's definitely, definitely traveling with a backpack and a bunch of rods and nothing else. There's no, no, no, you know, no higher car or anything, so.
Speaker 1 (00:25:27):
Well, well that's been great. So let's go ahead. I mean actually it's been 25 minutes. This is the perfect time. We're just gonna transition right into the education right after we rock into the old bait check because you need to check your bait people you need to,
Speaker 1 (00:25:45):
It is your first paycheck of the episode. Make sure you bring in that line, double check all your stuff, make sure it's good because you know, if it's not, nothing's hit you, you gotta change it up. And that's important. You can't just use the same thing over and over, man. Something's gotta give. So change it up, maybe move it there. Hopefully you've caught your limit already. That'd be awesome in the first 20 minutes. That's never a bad day. This paycheck is being brought to you by Ds. Custom tackle DSS custom tackle Delaware surf fishing. Yep, that's who that is. They have a lot of great things in the shops for you to order and get all sorts of, I mean, hell, what do you need? You need floats. He's got 'em. You need rigs. Done. Want some prettied ones? Old berry, old BSS aging down there.
Speaker 1 (00:26:21):
I love my buddy Barry. His gear, his rigs, all the sand f fleece set up with the glow in the dark style, ready to rock and roll, easy to order. Maybe you need some other kind of jigs, anything like that. Definitely got you covered worldwide shipping, all those pieces put together and keep your eye out. There's some new cool stuff coming out here pretty soon and I can't blow it because I promised him I wouldn't say anything. So dss custom tackle.com, take a look at the website, get your stuffed in, get out there fishing. So now that we're moving into the knowledge piece, here we go. Alright man, so this is for you personally and you've done a lot of this stuff obviously in your life. Uh, let's move into the fishing trips, tricks and knowledge. How do you plan your fishing trips out there?
Speaker 3 (00:26:58):
Uh, I think first of all, the operative weather is plan. So I'm a big planner in regards to where I fish and when I fish and really I have, um, you know, days marks in my diary months in advance. And the way I'm able to do that is I use a bunch of apps, um, mainly based around tides and moon cycles, which obviously kind of the same thing. Um, but ma largely based around that. And also you've got the added spice of the gron run. So just briefly for any listeners, you haven't experienced a gron run, I dunno what that is. Basically every two weeks when the tide is up, uh, hitting, hitting a kind of spring tide or a peak tidal cycle in those little little kind of peaks of the, of the tide height, um, the gron, which is a very small kind of smelt type fish, little bait fish runs at the beach, wants to lay its eggs right at that point, at that high tide, at that high tide when the high tide's about kind of 1112 at night, um, has three or four nights where they run at the beach, lay the eggs right at the top of the surf line in a little hole and then use the retreating water to go back down.
Speaker 3 (00:27:56):
And then when the water comes back up two weeks later, the eggs or, or the gron has evolved to the point where when the eggs next touch water and are moved around, they instantly hatch into tiny gr gron and they, they swim. And so that happens every two weeks from about march through to September. And what that creates is a very odd fake situation where you go from having, you know, bunch of sand crabs and the usual kind of maybe some sardines and some macro offshore, maybe some other smelt inshore, you have this massive bait fish turn up. So it really creates a very strange situation for the predatory fish where they're very, very keyed in on that bait fish. Um, when I read about mullet runs and the East coast and places like that, I imagine, you know, you might have the similar challenge where the predatory fish are very, very keyed in on those runs.
Speaker 3 (00:28:39):
Um, and they're not really too much in, too interested in anything else. So that's definitely a factor this week when I'm planning trips. So if I use example of this week how I'm planning trips, um, for example, I've got a client on Wednesday, um, and we are right in the middle of a grandon run, but I'm not gonna fish for predatory fish on Wednesday. I'm fishing for more of the non predatory fish like the Corina, the surf perch and so on. So they're less affected by the granule. So that's, so, so really as a, in a nutshell, how I'm planning my trips, um, or how I'm planning when I go, when I go fishing here is the first thing I'm gonna do look at is the tide. Um, I want, ideally I want water moving when I'm gonna be fishing. So I don't wanna be starting right on the high or right on the low.
Speaker 3 (00:29:17):
I really want, you know, I'm talking about specifically about fishing with clients. I want a really busy, you know, three, four fun hours and I'm probably gonna fish just after that high to kick just after the high tide. For example, if I wanna fish an outgoing tide, and we do have some really, really odd ties here. Um, you know, some days it goes out for 8, 9, 10 hours, other days it comes in for two hours. You have some really odd type situations. Um, but if I just use example of maybe a tide that goes in for six hours now for six hours, kind of like maybe more of the east coast tides, um, you know, ideally I'd be looking to fish maybe an hour after that high tide, get that peak water movement of that. Whereas water's really pushing out. And I find for the inshore species here, that is just absolute money.
Speaker 3 (00:29:57):
They love that water moving in or out. Um, they love significant tidal movements here, most of the fishing way. Um, so that's the first thing I'm doing is I'm looking at the tides. Second thing I'm looking at is that tides in relation to the moon cycle about the gron runs. Am I gonna be fishing on a G gron run? If so, that's a problem if I'm fishing predatory fish. 'cause a lot of that peak activity probably occurs very, very, um, early in the morning at sort of 2, 3, 4 in the morning. As that tide turns around that those massive gron get washed out. Imagine all the spent g gron being washed out to see, you know, those sharks and those rays just absolutely hoover them up. But it's sort of really on social fishing time. So I tend not to target my shark and my predatory fishing sessions in those times when there's gonna be a lot of other bait fish in the water at very odd times.
Speaker 3 (00:30:42):
Um, but when that grunge run ends, it finishes, uh, I think Saturday. Um, so Sunday, Monday I have, or it'll probably have dissipated by Saturday. So it'll probably have a peak Wednesday, Thursday, less on Friday, even less than Saturday. And by sat Sunday Monday things are back relatively back to normal. So I'm gonna be taking some clients shark fishing on Sunday night and Monday night. And how I plan that session is again to look at the tides and now I've got a high tide, uh, early, early evening. So as that water turns around, I'm gonna have that lovely peak time of lot of water moving just after the tide's going in or out and a solar change as well. So a bit of sun going down or some coming up. Um, maybe a bit of lunar activity as well. Maybe a, maybe a moon underfoot or moon overhead or some something, something similar, um, which has generated that title force.
Speaker 3 (00:31:28):
Um, that is one I'm gonna be shark fishing. So, um, and the way I use a lot, I, I use a lot of apps. So I love, I love data-driven apps. Um, in fact if I look at my phone now, I have probably the ones I'm gonna be using right now are, there's an app called Epic, which I use for surf fishing, um, planning around the surf. And that gives you a reading of Killer Jjo reading for the waves, which then translates into how much current and the size and power of the wave. And I find if I've got a reading of under 200 kilojoules, that's gonna be a really nice day to go fishing under a hundred is like beautiful blue sky, you know, blue water, flat, calm, kind of relatively lake like conditions. You know, you probably use a real small sinker and it'd be lovely a fish would be coming in close.
Speaker 3 (00:32:10):
And then as we come up that kilojoules scale, which is something I'm very much looking at, if I'm thinking, okay, well there's a bit of surf coming in, I'm looking up that kilojoule scale on an app like the Epic app. And as that hits 3, 4, 500 kilojoules, there's no way I'd be fishing in that, an open ocean that would be very, very messy. A lot of water moving giant waves, you know, 3, 4, 5, 6 s sw foot swells. Um, and the will not tolerate that mostly. However, if you go up north a little bit, some of that surf perch and the stripers for example, they really don't mine that big, big swell, but you don't mind a lot of water moving but come down here and species like the Corina are gonna back off and they're gonna find a nice harbor or somewhere nice, nice and easy to, to hang out.
Speaker 3 (00:32:49):
Um, so this, so this will serve stuff really and tide and the tides as well. Um, obviously those apps are obviously gonna serve you up the tide times as well. So I'm gonna use those a lot. I'm gonna look at the tide heights and start to work out. Um, one thing I've got into recently is tidal coefficients and I've really have noticed a strong trend of certain species, like a very low tidal coefficient, which means there's a low difference between the high tide and the low tide. So that would create a situation where there's not a lot of water moving. Certain species really seem to like that other species seem to like they're very high tide or coefficient. I find those ones tend to be ones that feed a lot by smell in sense. So the sharky species, they appreciate a lot of water moving for long periods of time that allows 'em to swim up the cent trail and find a bait or a, a fish or a bleeding thing that they wanna eat very easily and they can really sense that from a long way away.
Speaker 3 (00:33:37):
So a consistent tidal movement over a long period of time with a really strong movement and a relatively small surf is gonna be perfect for something like a leopard shark or a soup fin shark or a bat ray here. So, um, so I know it's a a little bit complicated and there's a lot of data and boring stuff, but you know, a lot of the time I'm looking at those surf, um, the surf forecast, the moon tide forecast, correlating that with the grandon runs to make sure I'm not gonna be fishing in the middle of one of those. And, um, I, I think that's about it really. I can't really think of too many more factors that I build into that equation. Um, maybe water temperature as well. Water temperature right now is really nice, 70 68 ish, 70 degrees in Southern California. But if, for example, we had a big swell came from up north and it dumped a lot of cold water up upwell a lot of cold water and that water temperature went down to say 62, um, which does happen occasionally, then I might be planning to fish maybe more of the surf perch type species and maybe more of a soup fin shark than a leopard shark which likes warm water or the coa, which also likes really warm water.
Speaker 3 (00:34:38):
Um, so I think that's, that's about it really. I, you know, I like data, I like, you know exactly what tides on the fish and obviously that type of data is available to you years in advance. So I could say to you next year, my what dates I'm gonna be fishing for Corina in July, no problem at all. And I like planning that process. And in fact, one of the things I think that people don't do very well and can really mess themselves up, really screw themselves over in doing is not planning. Um, you know, I, I've got a few clients who just starting out and they might say, well, look Ben, I I can't understand why I didn't catch a fish while I went fishing yesterday. And it was 2:00 PM in the afternoon where the wind was really high, the surf, the surf was big, the beach was really crowded, there was no tidal movement, it was right on the high tide and I didn't catch anything at all.
Speaker 3 (00:35:21):
And all of this information was readily available to you several days in advance. So you could have known about this and you could have maybe said, well, but instead I, instead of fishing at two in the afternoon and I'm gonna fish at five in the six in the afternoon, it's that tide turns around and I know there's gonna be water moving then. So that's the sort of process I go through, um, if, if when I'm taking bookings or trying to target specific dates for species. So I'm looking at all that data and using the kind of experience I've gained and um, and correlating those two things for what is gonna be the best day to go fishing,
Speaker 1 (00:35:52):
Man. I mean you have just given a ton of great information, but there's two I really wanted to bring up and one of them is kilojoules. Um, granted I look at the map on the day or I look at the surf and I'm like, all right, what's the height I never thought to look at energy? And you're bringing that part up. That's something I don't think a lot of people, I mean there may be some people that know that and they're like, shh, don't say anything, but you know, that sort of thing. It matters because the amount of energy matters about how they're fishing, where the rip currents are, how they're gonna be hanging out by them, how they're gonna be playing it. But that piece right there is really cool and an app, I mean epic app, I'm gonna look that up today for sure. That that's a really cool piece. So thank you for sharing that one. And yeah, you know, like you said, Cali's got a different tide and push. It's kinda like how we are here. We got one tie today, which is cool, but you know, with the, with the Co
Speaker 3 (00:36:42):
In six hours out, six hours,
Speaker 1 (00:36:44):
no in, in 12 out 12, we, we only get one tide here in the Gulf of Mexico, which is really, really bizarre. And it uh, it messes up some of our friends that come in from out of town, they're like, well when's high Tide? We're like, it doesn't matter. Like, no, it totally matters . It doesn't matter. Trust us. Look at the coefficient. Look at, and that's the one I wanted to say next is the coefficient of the water movement, how it moves, where it's moving, that really plays a good factor. It's not necessarily a tide for us here, it's more about how much water is going, where's it going, how's it going? Um, and that's huge. That's another great piece for people to look at when they really want because you are right, data is key and we have so much technology in this little device that we hold in our hands while we're doing poop reading.
Speaker 1 (00:37:27):
I mean there's so much knowledge that's right there at your fingertips. It's just a matter of knowing what piece of knowledge to use and the fact that you are planning six months out knowing, okay, I know where I'm gonna be with this, this, and this. And then you're doing the shorter of like, okay, I'm coming up on the day. I know what I need to look for now for these. That's huge and all that plays together. So thank you for putting that all out there. That was really, really phenomenal knowledge and really, really helpful. So just
Speaker 3 (00:37:53):
A bit more on that killer jewel thing actually. 'cause I think there's some more stuff there, which I'm very happy to share. Yeah, go for it. So, so really on my scale I've got on a mental scale on that killer jewel rating of West Coast surfacing. And the moment, or or just last week, right, it was under a hundred kilojoules and that was beautiful. It was like flat, calm, beautiful, calm conditions, loads of cobina loads and loads of sand crabs, like thick beds of both. So that was great. This today is kind of 200 kilojoules. Um, and it's definitely noticeable. The current is more significant that how that kilojoule rating plays out into real world fishing. I often find it is the waves will be roughly the same size case. So like difference between like a one foot wave and a two foot wave. There's not gonna be huge amount of surf moving, but if that's a two foot wave with 200 kilojoules of power as opposed to a two foot wave, one foot, 100 kilojoules of power, that's quite a different scenario.
Speaker 3 (00:38:41):
And there was definitely this morning there's a lot more current, you know, I was bouncing that sinker down, I was three quarter ounces to the sinker this morning. That thing was bouncing down the current, no problem at all. I was still getting bit, still getting bites, no problem at all. But it was kind of borderline if maybe a, maybe a ounce sinker would've been a little bit more suitable if I'd been guiding this this morning. So, um, so that's kind of 200, 300 kilojoules when it starts to get to that 4, 5, 600 kilojoules when I've been fishing up in the north, northern bits of California, kind of like a Montserrat Bay for example, 4 0 500 kilojoules up there. It looks kind of mean and nasty, but it's pretty standard 'cause there's such a high energy coastline, um, that it's just how it is most of the time and officially obviously evolved to feed in that conditions.
Speaker 3 (00:39:21):
The sand crabs seem bigger presumably because it's easier if you're a big sand crab to dig and swim and do what you need to do and heavy surf conditions. Um, so, so yeah, so that, so that's a little heads up on what kilojoules you should be looking for. And also Surfline website I noticed has recently has introduced a kilojoule rating, which doesn't really seem to be too good, but consistently the epic kilojoule um, rating if of a local spot is the most consistent thing I find in terms of telling me exactly what I'm gonna be fishing in front of when I arrive at the beach.
Speaker 1 (00:39:53):
That's really good stuff. Perfect put. So now we've knocked into the fishing your planning piece and you, you've given all these ones. Now that comes into the real fun part because a lot of people have this problem when they start talking about it is how do you select your spot? You're gonna fish
Speaker 3 (00:40:09):
. Well what, what do you wanna catch with my first question? Ah,
Speaker 1 (00:40:12):
There it is right there, . Yeah,
Speaker 3 (00:40:15):
Because that, I mean it's fascinating here you have such localized species that, for example, a walleye surf perch, which is one of the 20 or so surf perch species. Um, I will never catch that more than a hundred or 200 meters away from rocks. You know, if I'm more than 200 meters, I'll literally never catch one. If I'm next to some rocks, probably every 2, 3, 4 surf patch will be a walleye surf patch. Um, but it is that specific, you know, and a bar surf patch all over. But then if you go to maybe more of the rocky beaches, you'll find really some very strange um, things like the black perch, the rubber lip perch and you know, the, even the sheephead, the the inshore rockfish species. But you could be 200 meters away from a sandy beach holding Corina. Um, so again, so the so not so they're really trying to answer the question in the spot is very definite on depending on what you wanna catch and knowing what environment that fish almost precisely what bait that fish is trying to eat, um, and where that bait lives and what that bait does will probably lead you to finding the right spot.
Speaker 3 (00:41:15):
Um, at the moment our fishing on the west coast here in California fishing for a lot, a lot for Corina and that is a very shallow surf beach species. They like those shallow sandy peaches. They like swimming up in kind of a foot two foot of water eating as many sand crabs or sand fleas as they can get their mouth on round. And then just backing off as that water backs off and just repeat the process until presumably they've eaten so much they just have to go and, I dunno, have a little quiet, quiet time somewhere. 'cause I've been catching ones that are so fat, it's completely insane. They, they've probably doubled in weight, you know, I was catching really skinny ones in kind of may april time that you know, we're like ly weigh pound and a half and the same fish now probably weighs over two pounds.
Speaker 3 (00:41:53):
Absolutely stuff with sand crabs. So, um, so, so I get a bit of knowledge about what you're trying to target and relate that to where you can actually fish 'cause a lot of marine protected areas in California. A lot of areas that are a little harder to find. So knowing your spots and getting a kind of repertoire of spots. And actually this might go back to a session planning thing where you say what's your favorite spot to go fishing? Well I want the one that's gonna work best on that tide and those conditions. So I have spots that I would target if it's very large surf, you know, I might, I might wanna fish in one of those more enclosed areas. So if you can think of surf fishing in LA and Orange County, you've got for example Long Beach which has a lot of kind of water kinda stony jetties which create a much calmer inshore kind of surf zone.
Speaker 3 (00:42:37):
Or you might go half a mile the other way and fish in completely open beach. Like something like a sunset Ston Newport, which if the surf hits it, it's just gonna hit it and that's nothing to stop it. So, um, so yeah, so having some various spots that work on different surf heights 'cause obviously we do have some significant swell heights here occasionally and that that can be a big factor. Um, so really the , I don't wanna fudge it and without not giving any specific information, but it really is what do you, what do you wanna catch? 'cause there's, they've all got their own things they wanna do. They've all got their own kind of bait things they wanna eat and their own behaviors and their own parameters of things they're happy to feed in. So understanding that leads you to the then know what spot to fishing.
Speaker 1 (00:43:21):
Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. And for those of you that are, I know 'cause my brain's doing this, it, my brain's in constant analyze and think mode. So like the , that whole piece of knowing the area and getting to know the zones. There's so many different species that you can target there at any given point in time. You know, you just nailed it. Uh, if I'm gonna fire after this, I gotta go for that. You you, there's always a give and take. You have to know these ones. And had you not, you know, listened to something like this, you may never have known that. But I mean, that piece right there, the knowledge piece that you have gained over this time and you're sharing with us is key. And it's gonna help somebody catch some really great fish that maybe they've been struggling and they didn't realize that. So knowledge is gonna get you through. And so that's great stuff. Um, we've been going for, oh geez, 45 something. So we we're time, we're due. So it's time for another paycheck.
Speaker 1 (00:44:15):
It is the second paycheck of the episode. Hopefully you caught a bunch of fish and everything is going just fine because that's what we hope for in here. We want you guys to catch. And if you haven't caught yet, maybe it's time to switch spots. Yeah, maybe it's almost an hour, but hey, you can go one more. You never know. Give it a little change. Look around everything Ben just told you might be something worth thinking of. What am I targeting? How am I doing it? And is everything the right method for this? Maybe it is, maybe it's not. But hopefully you know, this paycheck is being brought to you by the kids Can Fish foundation, kids can fish.net. Great organization, getting kids out fishing and just learning about the sport. Cast nets, how to surf fish. They've done other clinics, uh, about different types of fishing, how to do it.
Speaker 1 (00:44:56):
It's great stuff. All the donations that they get from you and us out here, it goes back into these camps. It helps some kid learn about fishing. Not only that are they, they're going home with gear. That way it's not just a learn and go. Now they have the stuff and they're gonna become better. And they're the next generation here that's gonna keep up with fishing. So you really help them out. Don't forget they got the SSI running the Bulls tournament out of St. Simons Island, Georgia. I will be there with several other of my cohorts in our area. We look forward to seeing everybody. But you go over to kids can fish.net, you can sign up for that. And again, all your donations make this possible. More tackle boxes, less X boxes. It is good stuff. So we've talked about these pieces. Now you've kind of, I don't actually, I won't say kind of you did, you've nailed so many things about talking about spots. So you've already nailed tides and moon phases. But let's talk about this because I know that you, you guys do it a little bit different out on the West Coast. You're not just set rig fishing, there's different types out there. You're throwing lures, you're throwing plugs, you're throwing different ones. So let's talk about that. When it comes to, uh, the fishing piece, what type of bait are you using for types of species and what is your primary push?
Speaker 3 (00:46:11):
Well, um, if I think about what we're fishing for right now is a good place to start. Um, so the main p the main suring pate right now is sand crabs. Um, sand fleas. And I think it looks like your sand fleas in Florida are pretty, or on the east coast, not sorry, um, where you are pretty big, aren't they? They're, they look, they look a little chunkier than that .
Speaker 1 (00:46:30):
They can't, I mean, I prefer the olive size personally. I mean you can grab the monsters. Interesting. But I like the olive size one to me has been, that's an all catcher. So I mean whitening, pompano, red, red drum, black drum, uh, hell, you know, they'll all eat the sand flea. It doesn't matter. You know, they, but the smaller ones, like if you were specifically targeting Pompano, I'd say go with an olive size, uh, size sand flea. If you were trying to catch a permit, the monster one and you just wanted only the bigs, yeah, I'd say, Hey, throw a big one. But yeah, I mean sizes are a little bit, and you guys are, we're pretty relatively close from what I remember seeing on the couple of pictures.
Speaker 3 (00:47:01):
Yeah. Okay. Interesting. Interesting. But I mean that, so that's probably the first bait is we've used most of the year round when we can find them, which is from about April, April may through, it's about Christmas time, is the sand crabs. Um, and very specifically, and this year I've really dialed into using more of the softgel sand crabs. And I really would tra through a lot of sand crabs. Um, you know, 40, 50 hundreds, whatever it takes to get a handful of the softshell hook bait sand crabs. And for the Corina for the last few weeks, that has been the absolute money bait. And maybe, um, rere or listeners who aren't quite familiar with the soft shell sand crab, um, it is this crab that's going through the molting stage. So crab gets bigger like a shed, uh, snake sheds its skin, it sheds its shell and grows a little bigger.
Speaker 3 (00:47:46):
And when they're shedding their skin, they have this kind of off color, it's like a translucent kind of, um, almost sandy color. So you, so when you see a normal sand crab, it's kind of kinda like whites and browns and grays and it's quite hard. And when a, um, when it's shedding its skin, they feel a little rubbery. They're a little less mobile. So often you'll find them trying to dig and not really being very successful 'cause they're digging spikers made of rubber now as opposed to made of presumably bone. And um, so, so that's been the money bait. Um, for me for this, you see this year there's been a a soft she sand crabb very specifically. Um, one lot medium-sized soft shell sand crab, like you said, an olive size one is about right, even smaller. Happy to use anything around fingernail size.
Speaker 3 (00:48:26):
But using one of those with two tiny, tiny soft shell, hard shell sand crabs sandwiched either side of it. So it's like a soft shell sand crabb burger, um, with a, with a better size eight hook with, with just one tiny hard shell crab, the soft shell. And then one more tiny hard shell. And that keeps the soft crab on there. But you get all the visual enticement, presumably they're, they're triggered by the slightly different color. Maybe there's a different descent as well. Um, somehow they, they know that that's a softshell sand crab and that's gonna be a very easy meal. And that's just been the money bait for everything. We've got everything on those on the, on, on the west coast here. But I've got everything from bonefish to um, to leopard sharks to bat rays to um, uh, what do I catch? I called a Spanish mackerel on a sand crabb the other day for a client.
Speaker 3 (00:49:13):
Um, and also all the normal surf perch, all the croker, they absolutely love sand crab. So if you get your head round catching sand crabs, getting a good, good amount of those, not, not of course breaking the rather silly 50 crab, 50 sand crab possession rule that they've introduced. Um, which seems a little problematic for some people but in know anyway. But if you get a handful of softshell ones, um, keep 'em in your top pocket, use those as hook baits. That's gonna be the best surface bait you can use in the summer in California for everything. Um, everything wants to eat those including halibut. Weirdly, I've got quite a few big halibut on bouncing decent sized sand crabs, soft shell sand crabs around. So they definitely like those as well. Um, and working way up the fufu chain a little bit. Um, in terms of croker, uh, we've just hit peak croker season and for this I love this 'cause it makes my life very easy 'cause the fish bites, which I'm sure you guys are familiar with, you used a lot over there that really kicks into gear around now.
Speaker 3 (00:50:07):
So I can now hit, hit, hit the beach. All I need to take for bait wise is scoop to catch sun crabs and a bag fish bites. Um, specifically the three flavors we use here. The three scents are the sand flea, um, the easy sand flea, the blood worm, the bag of worms and the easy clam. Those are the three which are absolutely brilliant baits here. And you can just turn up to a beach, get a double dropper loop circle, hook rig, chuck it out with a, with a two ounce wired surf sinker on there. And on base dropper loops all you can have is one soft shell sand crab if possible or a hard shell size of your thumbnail and a ball similar size but a fish bites. Um, even if the sand crab gets plucked off by one of the little tiny perch that's absolutely teaming on the beach here, you're still gonna have that fish bites.
Speaker 3 (00:50:53):
And I think most of the time it's the fish bites that gets the bite. Um, the croker, particularly the elephant croker and spotfin and they love that. The visual aspect of that, of the sand free one in particular, that's probably my favorite one, is the sand tree. So for Croker that works really well. Um, so and working with free chain a little bit further, get to the sharky stuff. And the best shark bait undoubtedly is fresh mackerel. So you go and catch fresh mackerel p pretty easily here. Um, any of the piers have them in the summer and you probably would need, you know, 10 to 20 fresh McElroy to have a really good day 'cause you're gonna have to deal with a lot of stingrays, a lot of baby rays, a lot of smaller kind of um, kind of critters are interested in that as well.
Speaker 3 (00:51:31):
And um, and that's just the money bake for leopard sharks. Super thin sharks, fresh, fresh sharks. Um, also we have smaller smooth hound sharks. We have the big shovel nose, guitar fish, so things like that. I absolutely love the fresh bait, fresh mackerel even better than a fresh macker is fresh bonito, obviously it's a little bigger so you might have to do some um, interesting butchery to get that to be a kind of reasonable size leopard shark bait. But um, all about that scent, all about that blood in the water, all about those dissolving amino acids in the fresh blood that go straight into that shark's sensory system. And they some that sent trail and eat the bait. Um, so I think that's probably the three things I would fish for. If I had so three baits all year round for fish on the West coast, it'd be sand crabs with a strong preference for soft trail sand crab, um, fish bites for probably most of the things.
Speaker 3 (00:52:16):
Fish bites seems to catch everything. Um, all of the smaller sharky species listening to like that as well, which is kind of fun. In fact, I noticed our friend Courtney from Fish Bites when she was on our West coast trip here a few weeks ago. She was using the squid flavor, the ready cut squid chunks for the rockfish, which is kind of interesting 'cause you're fishing in, you know, 3, 4, 5, 600 feet of water for a, for those, for those deep water fish. And normally you're using squid and you come back with the squid juice cut all over your hands. It's kind of disgusting. Um, she was catching them on the ready cut squid strips, so that's really interesting. You know, it's clearly a bait that has some, uh, has some potential here. So yeah. So yeah, so in summary, those are the three bites I'm using all the time is the crabs, the um, fish bites, the fresh mackerel if you to add to that as well.
Speaker 3 (00:53:01):
I might also say that the sand worms are those kind of fresh sand worms from the, from the tackle shop. The ones with the legs and the teeth, they're called like five different things here. They're called pile worms, sand worms, lug worms, blood worms, whatever. They're the ones with legs and teeth. Um, and if those are really good, but you've gotta cut it into relatively small chunks 'cause otherwise you'll just miss every single bite and you get the, the worm torn off the hook. So little one to two inch chunks work really well for that. In fact, that's my favorite thing. Fishing with kids, surf fishing with kids here. But I just wanna catch like 20 surf perch. Um, a little one inch chunks of sand worm on a size eight hook on a Carolina rig chopped into the shore break. We'll catch them as many perch as they wanna catch.
Speaker 3 (00:53:36):
Um, and beyond that also go shrimp as well. So we have have the um, you know, fresh coast shrimp is available here and may tackle shops and you can pump them as well. And that's a really, really good big cor bea baits. They're very specific big, um, west coast cor be bait big, really good spot fin bait as well. And um, I think that's about it. I think a lot of people tend to use or mistakes bait wise people make here, uh, is they tend to use frozen baits. So a lot of frozen mackerel and squid and that's really not the optimal thing. Frozen squid is kind of okay, but it's kind of messy. It's expensive, it's hard to keep frozen. And once that whole lot's defrosted and it's like soggy, soggy ush in the bottom of your bag, I think they, I think its usefulness is largely gone by then if you refreeze that. I don't think that's a great bait. So, um, so a lot of my bait recommendations would be based around fresh local bait. You could turn up to the beach right now with no bait at all. Just a scoop, like a literally get a past sieve from your kitchen scoop out I sand crabs, get 50 sand crabs, get the three four soft cellers. That's the best hook bait you can use right now.
Speaker 1 (00:54:39):
Yeah, I can't go wrong there. And the fish bite stuff. Pe I love that you brought up that because I, it's one of my favorite things to do if like, if I go out on a party boat and you know, they're giving you out all the squid stuff and all the ma all those chunky bits, I'm like, yeah, it's cool, I'll throw it on one hook and then I'll throw a piece of fish bites on the bottom. I'm like, what are you using? I'm like, don't worry, you'll see. And it's every time it's like, look, you may get my squid , but I'm gonna get you 'cause you're gonna come back for that another flavor and I'm gonna get you. So yeah, those, those squid chunks do wonderful when you're doing drop fishing that that's some good times right there. Um, do you know,
Speaker 3 (00:55:11):
One thing just very briefly, Brian, I'm touching on that. Uh, this is one thing that really why I ended up using fish bites a lot is because when I, when of my, in my previous, when I lived in England, I say worked for a big carp fishing tackle brand and one of the things they used to do was do a lot of underwater filming and it was extremely obvious that a lot of fish have the or bait in its mouth before one gets hooked. And I suspect that's probably the same when you fish bait and wake surf fishing. Um, and I think a lot of the times by the time you actually get a bite, it's kind of the last one, the last unlucky one rather than the first one that's come up to the bait. So if you have a bait that's very durable and stays on there for multiple bites or multiple attempts at eating the bait, particularly on that deep water stuff, that's obviously gonna be a big factor and you're catching a fish.
Speaker 3 (00:55:52):
'cause if your bait's will gone after five minutes and you're still on the drift or whatever, then you aren't gonna catch anything are you? So that informs a lot of my fishing is that lovely, that lovely experience of seeing those underwater footage of fish multiple times, having a bait in its mouth and not wanting, not quite eating it, but then thinking, okay, well how does that work here by have a sand crab on my head? Well that's great, but if I fish at bait and weight style and I've the fifth fish to come along, um, past my bait, well this, the second one got the sand crab, so there's nothing left on there for that that, but if it's still got the fish bites on there and I know that's a really great bait, then I'm gonna catch that fish. So that's a really interesting thing. The way I think about that is, you know, you want something that stays on the hook for a decent amount of time and that fish bites really takes the box for me at ngo.
Speaker 1 (00:56:35):
Oh, it absolutely does. I mean I'm, I use it here constantly. It's one of my, it's, it is my bait of choice and I am on team fish bites. You guys all know that, that listen to this show. You guys know I'm all on it, but I, I've never, I never question when I have a fish bite on. I'm like, I'm good. You can take everything else. It'll eat, somebody will eat this, something will get it and I will What's
Speaker 3 (00:56:55):
What's your killer flavor? What's your killer scent over? So
Speaker 1 (00:56:57):
For, uh, for here the sand fleet always works great. Um, the clam works pretty good. I've had great luck with that. My personal, if I'm leaving the house, I'm leaving with two flavors. I'm leaving with my electric chicken crab and uh, then I'm more than likely bringing, I'll probably bring green shrimp, uh, as well and occasionally I'll bring the, or definitely the sand flee that's obvious. But yeah, sand flee f crab and shrimp. So three, not two, I'll bring those three to my, those are my primary and they all work really well.
Speaker 3 (00:57:32):
Excellent. And just little chunks on a circle hook. Yep. Yeah,
Speaker 1 (00:57:34):
I'll use normally a one knot or a size six hook. It depends on the day. Um, but uh, I'll use a one off more often than not. Um, and then I'll put on a thumbnail size cut. I normally cut mine into diamonds. Uh, it's just something I saw once and I was like, Hey, well that looks cool. I'll make a shape. I
Speaker 3 (00:57:49):
Like cutting my, I like getting my little legs. Yeah,
Speaker 1 (00:57:51):
Yeah. Oh yeah, I've heard about that. Yeah, you do a little tail cut. I've heard great things about that one. Um, you can really design 'em to do just about anything. And they're durable. They will hold on and hold on and hold on and you know, until the point where all you've got left is a mesh and it's like, all right, cool. Then you just pop and go. 'cause I mean I've done, good lord I've had days where a piece of fish bites will last me, I don't know, 10, 15 fish and then I have to change it, you know, they've already slurped it off or something like that, you know. And then there's other days where I just, something happened. I got in touch with a bunch of little peckers of that nail at it and then it's gone in 15 minutes either way.
Speaker 1 (00:58:27):
You know, I love that I have it on a double because it's double the scent in the water so you can get one. But I'm still eeking scent out and I'm bringing something closer in to go, Hey, what is that? Oh, I want to eat that. And that's one thing I love about fish bites is that it is, it's just going to eek it out. It's the same thing with like their fight club system for their inshore stuff. I love that because I can throw it out. I'm leaking, I'm leaking that scent in the water as I'm retrieving the, uh, retrieving the lure, throw it back out, you know, different patterns. Hey, I'm still leaking. Scent, scent is so important and I, I can't emphasize that enough to people. And I keep telling 'em like presentation's one thing, scent is another,
Speaker 3 (00:59:00):
The quality of your scent as well. If it's, if your scent is coming from some, some junky yeah. Twice frozen piece of squid that you've had in the bottom of your freezer for the last year and you just wheeled out 'cause you decided to go fishing that day, that's really not too, too good for us. Yeah. Whereas I think of the, when, whenever we use Benito, which I think is probably one of the ultimate surf fishing baits, but the sharks, the, the interests that beneath I guess is completely insane. Like everything wants to eat it. All of the rays almost like wraps in a cage with a bit of cheese. They're just like bang on it that everything wants to eat it. So it's, it's this crazy how different the reaction of the fish to the different centras. 'cause you might think, okay, well is a fish, a fish just wants to eat everything that it can get its mouth wrapped. And I don't think that's the case at all. I think that they can be selective. Um, and they react to you really good fresh amino acids dissolved in the water, in the form of blood and whatever fish bait is or squid or squid juice. Um, but it has to be fresh. Yeah. Or very, very recently properly frozen like blast frozen.
Speaker 1 (01:00:04):
Yeah. And I think a lot of fish are kind of like humans too in the same one. And I know this, if somebody's gonna be like, no you're wrong, but that's okay. I can be wrong. I'm okay with that. But in the same one, you know, some fish are gonna smell stuff and be like us like, oh hell no, I want nothing to do with that. I don't, I don't get away from everything that's around that, you know, scent makes a difference. And if there is no scent, you know, they're still not gonna like, what, what is this that I don't want that. There's nothing there.
Speaker 3 (01:00:27):
Bloody certain ones don't seem to be that fu I definitely the stingrays and the the skates here don't seem to be incredibly fuss. You could use some really junky frozen stuff and still still catch, um, still catch you a decent amount of skates and rays. But if I think to the leopard sharks as being a really great education in that, um, when we first started fishing for the leopard shark season squid, great. Maybe if you're really lucky, you maybe won every other session. And then we switched that around to fresh mackerel, um, with a bigger fresh bait and it changed that to four or five in a session as opposed to one every other session. Right. And that's the difference. That was the difference. The only difference was the quality and the size of the bait that we
Speaker 1 (01:01:03):
Used. Makes sense. Definitely does. Well now we've been talking about that one. So let's do into the, uh, these last couple questions in this one. Then we'll start getting into your shopping guiding business here. What do you do if you're gonna go fish in a brand new place that you've never been before?
Speaker 3 (01:01:18):
Yeah. Best thing I'm gonna do is go ask, ask somebody who knows more than me about that spot . I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm open to being really humble about what I don't know. And I think that's important. 'cause if you rock up something like, well, I, I know exactly how this is gonna play out. Um, may maybe you do okay, but it's much better to say find the local tackle shop. That's probably the best thing. Find the guy in your local tackle shop. You know, I've got a couple of local tackle shops here. When I first came over, they were really helpful, but I'm gonna specifically name them chalk bait. There's a local chopping Huntington Beach. They were amazing. Um, really, really helpful guys. Always just wanna help you catch some fish. So dial into that would be my first thought is to find the local tackle shop because obviously you're saying in, in their interest for you to catch fish and they're gonna tell you the local spots they want you to go back and they want you to come back into the shop the next day to get more, more bait and tell 'em how many fish you caught.
Speaker 3 (01:02:05):
So that, and also you're supporting the local tackle shop as well. So that's another bonus thing. But it's my first thing. And you know, we had a, we did a road trip up to the central coast, um, a few weeks ago up to Marina. And the first thing I did was call the local tackle shop and they gave me some such great advice about what I should be using and you know, as opposed to just doing what I thought would work down here, um, you know, they, the stuff they told me and there was, you know, some minor tactical tweaks, which might have, I might have worked out after a day or two, but they told me and I put a heads up and something and got a whole bunch of fish watched faster than I would've done. So getting, getting into that local knowledge is really important.
Speaker 3 (01:02:39):
Obviously hire a local guide, um, , slightly biased opinion, but if you come into Orange County, gimme a shout. I'll happily do the same job for you, um, as that local taco shop telling you where to go and what helping you being, being infused in helping you catch fish. Um, I think there's also some value in like the local social media groups. There's obviously a lot of Facebook groups, there's a lot of ones in California like west coast surf fishing, California surf hangers and they're okay. But I think some of the, some of the stuff on there is a little like , I'm not such a huge fan of that social media aspect of um, people blowing a lot, burning a lot of spots and you know, telling other people where to go fishing and stuff. I think the best thing you can do is just to work it out for yourself.
Speaker 3 (01:03:21):
Um, you learn in that process, you will learn so much more. You become such a better angler. Whereas I think some of that becomes quite instant almost. Well where'd you catch that fish? Great. I'm just gonna go down there tomorrow and maybe I'll catch up. But if you've gone through a process of planning and looking at maps and researching your target species and you a you're probably gonna have a better session because you haven't just jumped to whatever someone else has got done. And also you're gonna learn a lot more. So long term in the same process I've had to go through of learning fi the fishery and learning species and their preferences long term, that's gonna really pay you dividends. I think so. So yeah. So if I was gonna go somewhere local, I'd probably, you know, Brian, if I was going to where you are, I'd I'd, I'd hit you up.
Speaker 3 (01:04:01):
I'd be like, Hey Brian, what's working right now? What do I need to tell me? Your exact combo you would take down to the beach to catch loads of fish right now. And I would replicate that exactly to be honest to the, to the near to the nearest book size pound braid or whatever, you know, that that that kind of matching what really works. Yeah. Not, not and being humble and looking at that local network and getting, getting a network of people who are interested in telling you what really works as opposed to some snarky Facebook guy who probably doesn't want to tell you what really is going on.
Speaker 1 (01:04:33):
a sad truth right there. All right, well that, so we'll we'll nail this last one here 'cause you already took care of the other two questions and then we'll move into guiding business. How do you adjust your tactics for phishing when the bite isn't on fire? Um,
Speaker 3 (01:04:44):
I think I've had a, I've had some really funds, funds fun sessions this year, but it's definitely a little patchy early season, which we're just getting out of now. And um, and the one thing I've learned is fish for what's in front of you. Don't try and be too clever. Don't try and break the world record or smash the I G F A line class record every time you go out fish for what's in front of you. So, um, so, so early season I'm definitely using a lot more blood worm, sand worm type baits things with a little fresh bla fresh scent in there. And I'm looking at catching more surf perch when the water temperature's pretty low. And, um, you, you know, using, using good quality fresh baits like that might cost me a little bit more money, but I happily pay 10 bucks to catch a whole load of fish in a day.
Speaker 3 (01:05:24):
And so using those fresh baits that the fish are dialed into, um, and then as it gets warmer and warmer as the, as the season progresses, um, and my species become more into the kind of croker sharky kind of territory, I'm using more of like sand crabby type baits and more of, more of the other kind of, um, yeah, more, more fresh baits as the, as the season progresses and we getting some easy, easy availability of those baits. Um, another thing that I use all year round here that works really well is those Berkeley gulp sand worms. So the famous two inch camo nears sand worm is the one you want the gulp sand worm and you wanna rig that. Um, in fact the way I've been rigging that the last year or two years is to really tear that in a half almost maybe it's like two thirds of a bait, it's like an inch, inch and a half and just fish that in exactly the same way as you might rig like a little crappy or a pan fish bait, you know, just thread it up a size one or two hook and fish that as a, you're just reeling trying to catch like a trout or something similar to that.
Speaker 3 (01:06:17):
And that's just worked back through the shore break and a short Carolina ring and um, that catches seemingly everything. So, so yeah, so my winters more artificial baits maybe more grubs, more of the Berkeley sand worms, maybe more of the real sand worms for the bait for the perch. And then around kind of springtime, the crabs get busier and the the CRO could get busier, the fresh Mac will come in and the sharks follow them. So it's start tends to get dialed into that a little bit. It tends to spend more time and piers catching bait and running around on shore breaks, scooping out sand crabs in the summer and winter. It's much more like open a packet of sand worms. Off I go.
Speaker 1 (01:06:53):
Okay, cool. Well now that we've nailed all that education piece, let's move into the fun one. But before we do that, let's knock the last bait check out and we can get all the way into the fun questions here.
Speaker 1 (01:07:09):
Here's the final paycheck of the episode. Hopefully you've caught a bunch of fish and it's been a great day for you out there and maybe, you know, hey, maybe you went home already and you're just listening to in the car. That's great stuff. The final paycheck is being brought to you by the sinker guy. Go over to the sinker guy.com and look at everything at chip's got going on in the sinker guy garage. There's a lot more things in there than there were last year. Oh yeah, lots of things. So you still got plenty of great rigs. The Bruno rig always catching great fish. We don't talk about Bruno, maybe you need to get your hands on some terminal tackles scissors pliers. Well, a couple things like that. Beads, he's got the sinker guy, method hooks, you got 'em in there for you. Lots of great things over there.
Speaker 1 (01:07:45):
So go over to the cra guy.com, take a look at all the good things, quick shipping, great customer service, always a good product to be working with right there. Oh man. So we've been really nailing on the education piece here and now we're gonna move into your guiding business now from when I've learned online here, you kind of have a double, a double win here and you open it up in beginning of the episode you run a guide charter, but also a tackle shop. All this is all combined online. So let's talk about the guiding piece. What got you to decide? I want a guide?
Speaker 3 (01:08:16):
Well, I think it's something that I've always wanted to do from a very early age. Um, definitely from that kind of early fishing age, I've always had a, always really enjoyed taking people fishing and helping a friend catch a fish, for example, or just, you know, enjoying that experience. So, so no, so, you know, as I could have worked my way through a twenties and thirties, um, I did a little bit of catfish guiding. I did a little bit of, um, kind of educational fresh water stuff with like fishing clubs when I lived in England. And so I decided a little bit of guiding and kind of educational fishing experience. And um, but when, but when I first came over here and I was first dating my wife, you know, very early on it was kind of clear that I, if we were gonna make this work, I'd end up living over here.
Speaker 3 (01:08:56):
So I very much took a view of, okay, well I'm gonna come over here, we're just just dating right now, but ultimately if this works out between us, I'm gonna be living over here. I'm gonna need, I'm gonna need a job. The best job I could possibly think of ever having over here is to be a efficient guide. So my very focused very early on was how do I make this work as a business? How do I get the knowledge and skills and information I need to, to make this work as a guiding business eventually when I'm able to start a business here? So I started working down that process of working things out, have a lot of logs, a lot of, a lot of, you know, lists of things and, um, things that work and things that don't. I, I look a lot of, spent a lot of time looking at all those kind of tidy stuff and that then lead me to work some things out.
Speaker 3 (01:09:41):
And as soon as I began to work some things out, um, around that time, I also was lovely. US government gave my green card, the, the ability to work and start a business in America after I got moved here and got married. And um, so as soon as I had that green card bang registered my business, started my L L C business in California, um, started guiding people that summer for leopard sharks. Um, and then just grew the business. So that summer it was leopard sharks. Yeah, so that winter started the surf hutch fishing, the moffa surf patch fishing, the Molet Surf Patch Masterclass as we called it then. And that's then expanded into the more of the tuition based things, which is probably a lot of my business in the summer is helping, you know, uh, families with, with young people and maybe couples and single people, um, who just wanna learn how to surf fish, wanna see, see how it works and get all the information in the sort of knowledge that I've gained over the last, for the last few years.
Speaker 3 (01:10:28):
Um, we also produce a kind of info sheet as well, which has been really successful this year, almost like a cheat sheet. Um, and so that's been something I've, I've, you know, again, we've talked a lot about the educational side of what I do and learning that, learning how the West coast fishery works and then translating that into the kind of guiding and then also producing these kind of info sheets, which is a very kind of, um, kind of like almost my guiding knowledge to distill down into two a four sides is what I describe it to my clients. And it has all of the stuff that we've, you know, a summary of what we've been discussing about all the tides, the baits and all that kind of stuff. Really everything I think they need to know to help 'em catch the whole load of fish.
Speaker 3 (01:11:04):
So, um, so that's kind of something really successful element of the guiding business. Um, also the shark fishing is something that we still do as well. Uh, the leopard sharks, um, soup fin sharks just started to get into guiding for the maybe the more thresher type stuff, which is really interesting proposition. Some of the bigger sharks off the beach are definitely, um, a bit more challenging of, of, of, of the west coast here. But, uh, but they're there and they're pretty, pretty interesting when you get one. So, um, so that's kind of how I got into the guiding stuff here is, you know, starting off with that lovely process of learning how things, everything works, but very early on thinking this is gonna be, this could be a really cool business for me if I move here and then I move here. And I just carried on really guiding and building that business and helping people catch fish.
Speaker 3 (01:11:45):
And really that's how, how I thought about that business very early on is how can I help people catch fish? 'cause if I help them catch a fish, the rest is easy, isn't it? They, they will, of course they'll wanna put me for a second session or they'll tell their friends about me, um, or they'll buy my tackle. Um, so so that's it really. So yeah, based on largely the idea of how can I help people have the same really great experience that I had catching lots of fish early on here and being just so stoked and so enthused about getting my first, I know first cool bean or my first spot film or my first leopard shark and just being blown away. So that's always in my mind that little moments work, got those really cool fish and seeing them have the same moment is, that's kind of what, what leads me to carry on guiding really. I just love it. I love that process.
Speaker 1 (01:12:28):
Yeah, the tug is the drug man. It gets you every time. So what goes, what comes with going on a trip with you?
Speaker 3 (01:12:35):
Um, well I try and make it as easy as possible for my clients. So first of all, every, it's all inclusive so they, they don't need to bring any tackle, any bait, anything like that they can just turn up. Um, and they can just have as much interaction as they want or as least little interaction. Um, in terms of the fishing, which specifically what I was talking about, the interaction is you can obviously go surf here. We could cover five miles a beach with a pair of light line rods and catch loads of corp in a surf perch, that kind of thing. And it could be a very physical busy day. You know, you're standing in that shore break all the time. Um, you know, it's a really fun, visceral experience. I have people who after that they just look at me and go, well that was a blast.
Speaker 3 (01:13:12):
You know, there's so much going on, so many, so many, um, so many things that you have to take care of and look at and you know, the, what's the surf doing? Where am I standing? What's that wave doing? What's my bait doing if my, if I got a bite, you know, there's, there's 20 different things you gotta look out for. So there's that le element to it, which I really enjoy of the roving the kind of hunting aspect, um, of the surf perch and the cobina type fishing. And then also I do much more sedate trips, which will be more of a, maybe more b what we call bait and weight fishing, which are, you know, getting the log rods out. And I've just got a really corny surf cart actually. I've got a really, um, got one of those lovely massive amount aluminum trucks with huge grippy sand wheels.
Speaker 3 (01:13:50):
So I've put off getting for ages, I've always been the kind of guy who's like, well, I'm gonna be a lot more mobile with my backpack and a couple of rods, but I, I now need to carry decent amount of chairs and all that kind of stuff to do these trips. To the point where, where, well I might as well just get a surf cart now. So I've got this massive great big, beautiful aluminum welded surf cart, um, which we'll be going to use for the beit and weight weight surf trips. So that's gonna be more orientated towards like, for, for example, the Spotfin Croker, the elephant croker, the leopard sharks, it's all bait and weight stuff, you know, we're using those lovely fresh baits, creating the centras and these big outgoing tides. Um, getting out there early in the morning running, you know, 2, 3, 4 rods, having nice groups of people, you know, I love fishing with families and kind of, you know, groups of friends and so on.
Speaker 3 (01:14:31):
Um, so that's, that's another, another, that's another aspect, another kind of type of trip I do. Um, and again, it's all very easy. Most of that involves just hanging out, just sitting, sitting down and waiting for one of those rods to start going. Um, also the kids love catching sand crabs, so you know, often it's a case of the adults are sat there watching the rods and the kids are off playing with sand crabb, seeing who can get the biggest sand crabb or something. Um, so that's, and then the other type of trip I do is obviously the sharky stuff and that's often more evening orientated. So we're looking for maybe a really big tidal shift right as that sun goes down. Um, I've got some really nice shark trips lined up for next week. Got one of my lovely regular clients up in Los Angeles and we're gonna be fishing for leopards soup, fin, those kinda sharks off the beach.
Speaker 3 (01:15:15):
And we've got, I think high tides kinda six 7:00 PM but as that water turns around and starts pumping out, uh, we're gonna be sitting on that beach with, you know, 2, 3, 4 rods. We're running fresh baits for the le the leopard sharks and so on. Um, so that's it really. So I do kind of three, four different types of trip. Um, obviously very educational based. Um, I try and make it as easy for my clients as possible, but I would say allow them to do as much as they want to get involved. Um, they can go right from being this light line surf guy who's just standing in the shore break casting, doing everything themselves to just sitting back and waiting for them, me to give them a rod when they've got a decent shark on the end.
Speaker 1 (01:15:51):
Your trip sounds fun. I already want to go .
Speaker 3 (01:15:54):
It's fun. I I'm talking about it. I wanna go fishing now.
Speaker 1 (01:15:57):
Yep, I understand. Believe me, I totally do. So, uh, what do you, I mean this one's gonna be loaded 'cause I, you kind of answered it earlier when we were talking there, but we'll, we'll ask it again. What do you normally target when you're out on your charters?
Speaker 3 (01:16:11):
Um, I normally target whatever I think is gonna be most fun. So at the moment, um, is definitely the cobina are the busiest fish right now. They're the biggest fish. They're gonna smoke a load of drag when they pick up that bait, they're gonna, they're gonna be fun. Um, if I think back to maybe my most fun session the last few weeks, which was last week, um, with my client who had really done very little fishing and on the second surf fishing track session. So the first one we had a very tuition orientated surf fishing session and the second one we just went all out to catch as many fish as possible and we got probably one of the biggest corino I've guided for well over 22 inches. Um, which is really, really nice fish. And that was incredible experience for us because his seeing him play that fish on the beach, um, uh, he was probably on that thing for like 10 minutes on relatively like line six pound line in fairly chunky surf.
Speaker 3 (01:16:59):
So this thing's going up and down the beach behaving like a bonefish, zipping in and out of the surf line and you know, we are on that thing and his, his, when we got that fish on the beach, we just had a hug. You know, we just had one of those moments where it was just like, wow, that was a blast. I am so glad we got that on the beach though, . 'cause it was just a blast. And those, those kind of moments are those moments of just like those ecstatic moments of when you've got the thing you've really, really, really wanted to get. And then maybe it's a really, really cool big one or maybe it's just a really pretty one, it's like a leopard shark, maybe it's just a beautifully marked one or maybe it's just their first 50 inch fish or something like that. Having those, those highlights, seeing those smiles is definitely um, something that really, really gets, gets me going in terms of making me wanna go fishing.
Speaker 1 (01:17:41):
Perfect. What uh, how is running a charter different than running your basic normal fishing day?
Speaker 3 (01:17:49):
Um, I, it depends what sort of charter it's, because if I'm just doing the light line stuff, there's not a huge amount of difference. I'm just still carrying a really small pack. I'm using the same kind of light setups as a, for example, I went fishing this morning before we did this podcast and I just went to a bit of called fishing down at Newport and I took basically the same gear as I take from my guiding clients. So I really don't have any special gear, I don't have like a special high-end set of gear that I use just myself. I, you know, I like using stuff that my clients use that way I know it works. I want people to go and use the stuff that I will use and work I know works every day on my sessions and it's not cheap stuff. It's pretty nice, some of it, but it's not, you know, I'm not using like a van style and like a custom, you know, thousand dollar combo. You know, we're using two, three, $400 combos and that's pretty, um, pretty, pretty indicative of what most of my gear is affordable, but nice affordable stuff.
Speaker 1 (01:18:43):
Yeah, I, oh yeah, I'm gonna go ahead and start a fight uh, I am one that mean I, you don't need the 300, you don't need the thousand dollars piece of gear, you just need the gear that works and that's okay. Yeah, you just take your time with it and it will all come together. It always does. So
Speaker 3 (01:19:00):
The only thing I'd say about that is definitely the re for the surface game and the specifically about the light line stuff because I think when, when the bait and white stuff you real is generally not anywhere near the sand, right? It's pretty, pretty easy to keep it sand free. Definitely the light line stuff I really have, I want the most ceiling technology I can afford in a reel at that, uh, for, uh, for the, the most I can afford really because that really matters when you're running around a beach and I know so you get a nice corino and you put your reel on on the ground on her kit, the next wave comes along and fills in full of sand. Well that's a problem. know. So that's happen happened a few times. So I like, I like a little nicer play reel for for maybe for the light line stuff but weirdly for the bait and weight stuff, for the heavier stuff, you know, $200 surf reel is gonna be just
Speaker 1 (01:19:44):
Fine. Yeah, makes sense right there. Alright, so what is the area that you service for your charters?
Speaker 3 (01:19:51):
Um, I service most of Southern California, but specifically Los Angeles County and Orange County. My main areas of operation. So I'm right in the middle of Orange County really and within an hour's drive I can hit every single beach in Orange County and almost every single beach in LA County. Um, I can do trips up to Malibu. So I've done a few trips up to Malibu, which is kind of fun. I've a few, a few kind of, uh, let's say relatively well off, um, slightly famous musician clients. So you live up in Malibu who wanna do regular trips up there. So I've regularly go up there, do a little early morning joints up to fishers, lovely rocky beaches and um, help some interesting people, catch some interesting fish off there. So that's, that's my general area is most of Southern California. Um, San Diego's in my area but it's a little further out so yeah, that's great. Happy to go down there if I will. Specific request, but it's not somewhere I'm able to scout with scout a lot and I like knowing exactly where I'm fishing and I like being able to scout somewhere the day or team beforehand so I know what I'm in for when I fish with a client.
Speaker 1 (01:20:49):
Yeah, that rundown. I five, you know, 4 0 5 or actually for you. Yeah. Oh
Speaker 3 (01:20:54):
No,
Speaker 1 (01:20:54):
not, not a good time. Not, not for that rundown south that, that's gonna take you a minute. Not to mention to get home .
Speaker 3 (01:20:59):
It's fine at five in the morning, four or five in the morning. It's fine. Yeah, coming back at midday not C great.
Speaker 1 (01:21:04):
Yeah, no, no, definitely not . So how do you tailor your trips to your customers? You kind of talked a little bit about it.
Speaker 3 (01:21:11):
Yeah, and I guess I have two types of customers really. It's, the first one is the kind of regular guy who I know pretty well and maybe wants to come fishing every two months or something or every month. And um, so those guys, you know, obviously you get to know them and you get to know what, what works for them and what their skill level is and you know, I've got a whole range of guys who from the, from the sort of guy who just wants someone there to wrangle his fish for him and maybe undo a few tangles and get his bait and make sure he's in the right spot and he's fishing on the right side and stuff and the rest of it, it's all down to him, right? He's gonna deal with the casting or the reeling. So I've got a few guys like that and that's always really fun, you know, you're able to then put them in places which maybe you have some more interesting fish and target some different species.
Speaker 3 (01:21:49):
Once you know they have some skills and you know that they're not, you're not gonna put 'em in situations where they wouldn't have a great result. You know, if they just wouldn't able to play the fish correctly and lost it in a bunch of rocks pretty fast, well not too great. But once you know that, so I, I guess, I guess in a nutshell, finding the type of trip that's gonna match their skill level for the regular guys. And then also I have a lot of, you know, new, new customers. So people who might be here on holiday or maybe have just got into surf fishing and have Googled me and say, okay, well I wanna learn how to surf so then I'm gonna make it as easy as possible for them. I wanna catch the most amount of fish in the shortest amount of time.
Speaker 3 (01:22:22):
So if I think of I do a four hour ion, I wanna have two hours of really fun fishing, maybe two or three hours where we catch a whole bunch of fish and then maybe as that tide bottoms out or as the tide hits high tide and that bite just tapers off a little bit, that's when we'll sit and we'll go through all the relatively boring stuff, you know, like how to tie this rig and how to set this up and how to catch a sand crab and you know how to do all those kind of 10 things that may be a little skills that aren't directly related to fishing but will help you catch the fish. So I guess that's how I tailor my trips, you know, two different ways. Um, if it regular guys, what do you wanna catch? Great, let's do that.
Speaker 3 (01:22:57):
I've got a great plan and you know, I've got, for example, on Wednesday I've got a regular customer and I know that there's a little bit of swell arounds, but there's a really, really good little spot which always seems to hold a big few big Corina. So I'm gonna take him there and I kinda know he can fish a little bit so he is not gonna be left just looking at an empty spool of line. Um, 'cause the fish is just spoiled him or something so he's gonna be, you know, okay, so yeah, so that's it. So I matched the, I try and match the fish to their skill level, the fishing to the skill level as closely as possible. So it's maximum of fun. I want it to be fun.
Speaker 1 (01:23:31):
It's gonna be, I can already tell it's gonna be so that that works. . Alright,
Speaker 3 (01:23:34):
So I like fun, good, good energy as well. I like that there's a bit of a cliche, it's bit of a cheesy thing to about I want good attitudes, good energy, um, I want good, good good vibes I think is probably a good way to say it.
Speaker 1 (01:23:47):
, hey those are important. I don't care what anybody says, that stuff matters.
Speaker 3 (01:23:52):
Pretty fine. Attitude is everything, isn't it? So
Speaker 1 (01:23:54):
It is, it is. Um, how do people book a trip with you or look up going on a charter? Well,
Speaker 3 (01:23:59):
There's a couple of different ways. Um, obviously you can find me, find my website. I also am happy to receive phone calls, text messages, WhatsApp messages. And ideally I like to be booked in as, as much notice as possible. That way I can really pick those prime tides that I've got marked off in my diary and say, okay, great, you wanna come? So we, so you know, see you might say, okay, I wanna come in Sept in September and I'm on holiday for a week in September in Orange County and you gimme a week's worth of dates to to go at and I'll give you the absolute prime pristine date to fish on that, on that period. And that does make a big difference. You know, the being able to cherry pick those dates and those, those those nice periods, um, definitely is a big factor in targeting the larger fish like the big leopards and the bigger corvina.
Speaker 3 (01:24:46):
Um, but also I can do trips most days so, you know, really very short notice with the amount of bait and the amount of fish around at the moment. It's a lovely scenario where if you someone to phone me up say, Hey, can I go fishing tomorrow? Like yeah, sure. Um, but most of the time I like people to be booked several weeks out that way I can plan it, I can plan, you know, life stuff as well. So I'm, you know, you might have the same challenges, right? If you sit on a beach for six hours, someone else has gotta take care of the dog, someone else's, you know, my my wife's a teacher and you know, she has frequently as period where, you know, she might have um, just a crazy workload and I might need to help out, help her out with some home stuff. So planning around life stuff as well is a big factor, but mostly my planning process, um, you know, of of, of that helping people get booked in is I wanna book you into the best possible fishing day within that, within the time you are here. And that's it. I just wanna catch loads of fish
Speaker 1 (01:25:37):
. Perfect. Definitely. So a funny happenstance here, uh, and I'm sorry that the episode just quickly cut off, but Ben and I had a weird technical difficulty that, uh, caused the episode to get cut short, but it actually worked out pretty well because right after that we got back in touch and We finished up the rest of the podcast. However, , there is so much information in episode number two that I had to, uh, make it a second one on its own. I couldn't just keep it as it was. So, hey, uh, just tune in next week because it's even more information as it goes on. You've listening to fun and Demo spearfishing. Thanks so much for being here. I appreciate you. Always fun talking with you. Hopefully this episode helped you. If it did, share it on out there. Tune in next week for part two of this episode. Uh, I'm outta here.