Western Outdoor News – Spectra White Seabass Bite Article

The Spectra and Captain Tino featured in Western Outdoor News March 30th Edition

To read the Spectra report about this trip click here…

Catalina’s seabass bite takes ‘the slide’

BY BRANDON HAYWARD/WON Staff Writer
Original Article Link: http://www.wonews.com/t-SCSaltReports_hayward_033010.aspx

LONG BEACH — After giving up an exciting start to kick off the spring season, the white seabass bite at Catalina fell flat on its face last week. Over at Clemente, the Seahorse was able to find two yellowtail on Saturday, which ratcheted that island’s spring yellowtail count up to a whopping 3 yellows.

Bait has been an issue at Catalina. Actually, it’s been a major problem. There’s been almost no live squid available — the little bit that had been around on the middle of the front dried up leading into the full moon.

The last sportboat to catch a seabass last week was the six-pack Spectra, which ran its first open party trip with Tino Valantine at the helm for 2 school-sized seabass on Wednesday.

Valantine was back at his usual gig running the Options from Thursday through Sunday, and the seabass were nowhere to be found, despite covering the entire island.

“We made that squid on the front Thursday night, but that was the last night there was bait,” said Valantine. While live squid has been tough to make, the fresh dead in the freezer has been coming in handy. “We had limits of calico bass on Sunday. Mot of it was in the dark. It was flat-out wide-open night bass fishing for the guys that stayed up. We had a couple of short seabass from the shallow water spots.”

While the counts might not reflect it, Catalina is — or was leading up to this week’s front — in pretty good shape. Valantine had 60-plus degree water for the weekend trips, and plenty of “seabass water” to fish. The water was up to 63.2 when he left in flat calm conditions Sunday afternoon.

The only exotics in the counts since the Wednesday seabass at Catalina came from the Seahorse’s trip to San Clemente Island on Saturday. The Dana Wharf overnight boat had 25- and 28-pound yellowtail latch onto the yo-yo irons.

“I saw a little bit of fish around on Saturday when we had the two, but on Sunday it was only up once and we never got on it,” said Seahorse owner/operator Tyler Elzig on a call with WON. Clemente got a lot of coverage over the weekend from the fleet from Dana Point to Long Beach. Given this season’s El Niño hype, the island has been a real letdown this spring.