Fishing Reefs for Calicos

Reefs are offshore rockpiles or rocky highspots. If the rocks break the surface they are boiler rocks, if they are found underwater and do not break the surface they are called reefs. Reefs can also be man made, the Calif Dept of Fish and Game has tried many different materials to make reefs. They have used old car and truck tires, ( they are light and strong currents pushed them away ) trolley car bodies / car bodies ( they quickly rusted away ) and the reef material of choice, giant rocks quarried at Catalina Island and barged across the channel and placed in strategic positions on the sea floor, usually in forty to eighty feet of water.

Instead of making one large reef the DFG makes several smaller ones (five and twenty in number to spread fishing pressure over a larger area ) They made many reefs in Santa Monica Bay whose bottom was mainly miles and miles of sand and mud, not very conducive to giving bass, sculpin, sheep head, rock bass, sand bass, lobsters, octopus and multitudes of other fish, mollusks and crustaceans places to live and spawn, and give the hatchlings places to hide so they are not all eaten before they are one year old. After building many reefs on the floor of the bay, it is now alive with thousands of fish where once was just mud bottoms with few fish.

There are many ways to fish these underwater rock piles, my favorite is anchoring upcurrent of them, throwing out some chum, live and chunked sardines / anchovies and wait until the fish come up the chum slick and away from the rocks. Once the fish are away from the rocks and up in the water column you can fish them with light gear and have a blast. Depending on the size of the fish I see in the chum, I will use anywhere from six to ten pound Berkley Vanish fluorocarbon mono fished on light to medium action spinning tackle, consisting of a six to seven and a half foot rod with a Shimano bait runner reel ( small size ).

I carry spare spools for the reels with fifteen and twenty pound line in case the big ones come out to play. I use spinning reels most of the time when fishing live sardines or anchovies, as
you can cast them quite far without backlashes, so common to baitcasting reels and novice fishermen. When I fish big baits I use a baitcasting outfit loaded with twenty to forty pound test mono, if the water is clear or the fish are spooky I will tie a eight foot fluorocarbon leader in the same pound test on the end of the line. Not since using straight fluorocarbon as it is very costly in the larger line sizes, and the fish is looking at the bait not eight feet up the line.

Getting the boat positioned properly is half the battle, if the boat is not directly up current / up wind the chum will not go back to the reef and you are wasting your time / chum / money. Sometimes you have to reposition the boat several times during the day due to changing currents or wind direction. Don't be lazy if your boat swings out of the optimal position your catch will go way down. I take a soda bottle and wrap it with used mono I have removed from one of my reels and tie a six ounce sinker to the end, this makes a great marker, just drop it over the side and the line unwinds and when the sinker hits the bottom the front of the bottle will point into the current. This will help you figure out where to drop the anchor.

I have six premade for forty, sixty and eighty foot depths and mark them with a water proof magic marker. Once the boat is anchored just up wind of the reef, I start chumming with chunk baits and when I see bass move up the chum line towards the surface I will start throwing some live chum into the mix. Chunk chum should be about one inch long, I keep some stainless steel shearshandy to facilitate cutting the chunks and on the way to the fishing area I have someone cut about a third of the bait into chunks and put it into a pail. A steady stream of chum keeps the fish going strong. I use a ratio of one live bait to ten chunks, each thrown at about six pcs. per minute.

If the fishing is hot I will throw a small handfull of chunks once every two minutes or so followed by three or four live baits. Once the fish are in a biting mood I will switch to a swimbait fished on a twenty pound outfit. It is cast out past the working fish and allowed to sink on a tight line through the fish, if I am getting many hits on the swimbait I will change to a larger and then larger bait still.

When the bass are full on is the time to throw the "dinosaur" ( twelve inch swimbait ) because the bass are now in a magical state of competition and caution is thrown to the wind, its "feeding frenzy time"!! During these rare feeding frenzies you may catch several of the biggest bass you will see all year. Please respect these giant slow growing and rare bass, quickly take a picture and release this magnificent creature to live and fight another day. I always have a camera close by and at the ready as I don't want to keep these incredible treasures out of the water for more than one minute. Always use a large landing net with these big babies, never use a gaff!! When you get one of these big girls, ( all large bass are females, a twelve inch male produces enough sperm to fertilize several large females ) tell someone to get the camera ready so pictures can be taken as soon as the fish comes on board and time out of the water is kept to a minimum.

Please release all bass over four pounds as they are already six to eight years old and are the prime spawners, futures generations of fish and fishermen depend on it!!!!
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Lures for Calico Bass (2/2)

Although calicos can be caught on many different types of lures, there are a few that stand out above the rest. For fishing shallow water the shad type single tail is one of the best. They come in all colors of the rainbow and sizes from three to twelve inches in size. Colors are basicly used by lure company's to get you to buy more than you need, ninety percent of the time I use lime green, rootbeer ( brown ) and rainbow trout. I know there are no rainbow trout in the ocean, but bass just eat rainbow trout colored swimbaits with gusto. Early in the year I use three to four inch models and later in the year when bait fish are larger I go with five to six inch baits.

Any time you are in a hot bite, throw a larger bait and you will catch larger fish. If the bite is really strong and you are catching many three to six pound fish, that is the time to try a eight to twelve inch swimbait. You won't catch as many bass but the ones you catch could be huge. I have caught many bass from seven to ten pounds on these super large swimbaits, remember big fish big bait. One of the best places to fish the large baits is around boiler rocks.

A boiler rock is a rock that sticks out of the water and the waves boil around them. It can either be an offshore reef or a rocky shoreline, usually found around offshore islands where the waves crash into the island. You want to throw right up against the rock and let the bait sink into the boiling water, keep the reel in gear and have the rod tip at about the nine o-clock position.
These boiler rock bass are in this shallow water for one thing, to eat! There is no mistaking the hit of a boiler rock calico, they try to take the rod right out of your hands. When you feel the hit just wind the reel fast until the rod bends down then pull as hard as you can to pull the fish away from his rocky lair, the fish must be short pumped hard and fast or he will rock you and break you off in the rocks. You will lose lots of fish and lots of lures in this kind of fishing but you will also catch some of the biggest bass of your life.

I use a heavy seven to eight foot rod with a quality baitcasting reel loaded with forty to fifty pound test line. This is true mano a mano fishing, and if you don't have the heavy line you will lose most of the rounds. Back in the seventies and eighties I fished Santa Cruz Island and it had miles and miles of boiler rocks and they were loaded with extra large calicos, if I had kept the ten largest fish most days I could have easily had seventy to eighty pound limits ( ten fish ) but even back then I did not keep any calicos over four pounds. I had many days when we caught forty to fifty calicos over five pounds and only quit fishing the boilers because everyone on the boat had "feeble arm", then the gillnetters moved in around the islands and that spelled doom for the fantastic calico bass fishing.

You can still catch quite a few four to six pound bass this way but the really big bass are few and far between. WARNING: This is a dangerous type of fishing as it is best when the waves are three to four feet and it should not be attempted by inexperienced skippers, one small mistake in judging the waves and your boat could end up on the rocks! When fishing like this always have a person at the helm with the motors running, ready to pull away from the rocks at a moments notice as a larger set of waves to six to eight feet is always a possibility. I usually slowly back the boat in to casting distance and let the anglers on the stern make their casts to the boilers, when someone yelled "fish on" I quickly put the boat in gear and used the boat to pull the big fish away from the rocks, our fish count went up and our lost lures went down with this strategy.
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Lures for Calico Bass (1/2)

Calico bass eat much the same lures you would use for freshwater bass, I have used all my freshwater lures and caught fish on all of them, some are better than others, but they all catch calicos. Depending on the type of structure/area you are fishing, lure choice is basically the same as freshwater bass in the same type of area. For fishing breakwaters parallel to the rocks my old favorite comes up again, the Bagley DB3 in chartreuse and white really shines, early and late in the day, calicos will really clobber the DB3.

I use my trolling motor to parallel the breakwater and cast the DB3 right up against the rocks in the white water area caused by the breaking waves, this is where the larger calicos like to hang out to prey on hapless bait fish caught in the powerful wave action. The calicos being big and strong can easily overcome the effects of the waves and make easy meals of small fish caught up in the breaking waves. After the DB3 lands next to the rocks, I start a stop and go retrieve to mimic a bait fish thrown about in the powerful currents next to the rocks, these breakwater bass really smash a crank bait hard, you have to use heavy tackle and forty pound test line and have your drag cinched down as tight as you can get it, this is the calicos home court and he knows every nook and cranny and if you give him a foot he will get in behind a rock and you might as well say good by to a five dollar crank bait, as the line will break before you pull the bass from his hole.

The best time to fish with the DB3 is on an incoming tide through high tide and the first hour of the outgoing tide. The outside of the wall, as the breakwater is called, is usually the best place
to fish but you can also catch fish on the inside when the wind and waves make it to dangerous to fish the outside. Always use caution when fishing the wallas many very large boats are always going in and out and their passing makes very large waves that if you aren't being watchful can push your boat into the rocks in a heartbeat, always wear your life preserver at all time when fishing the wall on the outside or inside. Even on the inside there are lots of large fast moving boats going by a mile away, and you may suddenly be hit with a very large wake that can throw you out of the boat. Don't fish the wall unless your boat is in tip top shape and always starts right up, first time every time.

Make sure all your running lights are in good working order and you have at least two large volume bilge pumps that work, I have almost been swamped several times when large wakes came out of nowhere and hit me broadside, you need to remove water quickly before it does any damage to your motoror electrical systems in the motor area. I usually fish with three people in the boat, two fishing and one watching out for large wakes or waves. The lookout sits in the drivers seat where he can see a wave or wake coming and quickly start the motor as he shouts "wave" and turns the bow into the oncoming threat as this is the best way to take a wave is head on. We usually change watches every every fifteen minutes and with three guys you watch for fifteen minutes and fish for a half hour.
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Calico Bass Secrets part 2

The single hook surface iron works great thrown in channels in the kelp, but when the current is running and the kelp is laying just under the surface in the current, this is the best time to catch calicos on iron. The lure can be cast way back over the kelp beds and the bass will follow it and blast it as it passes over the holes in the kelp. Another great lure for this is the five inch floating Rapala in the mackerel pattern, I remove the two treble hooks and attach a single 6/0 Owner hook to the rear split ring with the hook point facing up. With this lure you can cast back into kelp beds and the lure runs only a few inches deep, when you come to a hole in the kelp stop your retrieve and just wiggle the lure in place for a couple of seconds ( little one inch pulls on the rod tip does this ) then resume the retrieve.

A good strategy for this kind of fishing is to anchor the boat just to the outside of the kelp in a spot where you have many channels to cast to, always fish the channels first because it is much
easier to get the fish to the boat through an open channel in the kelp. Only fish back into the kelp beds as a last resort when the fish refuse to hit in the channels. Usually before I begin casting I will spend about five minutes tossing live and dead chum into the surrounding kelp beds, this will usually get the fish in a feeding mood. After running from the launch site to the area you intend to fish about ten percent of your live bait will have died, I clean them all out of the bait tank and cut them in three or four pieces, then I take two or three packages of frozen squid and cut them in three pieces and put them in a pail with the cut baitfish, now you have lots of chunk bait to chum.

Throw out a couple of handfuls of chunks then five or six live baits, this will really stretch your live bait. Now just throw single chunks to channels in the kelp and occasionally a single live bait. By now you should see bass feeding on the chunks or chasing the live chum, when you see fish flash on the chum or bust a fleeing sardine on the surface immediately cast the iron past where you saw the fish and reel it by the fish and hang on, as these fish will try to rip the rod from right out of your hands.

I usually make a cast , then throw a couple of live chum, then make another cast. After I cast the surface lures, I will switch to plastics, a four to six inch green or brown bait is my personal favorite. Look into the water and try to see the bait the fish are eating, try to match the color and size of the bait in the water. Nine times out of ten I will use the green swimbait as the calicos just eat it up!

If you haven't caught any fish after ten minutes move to a new spot and start again. The first thing I look for in a kelp bed to fish is the presence of seagulls, or turns in the area, this indicates fish are chasing bait to the surface, or I may see cormorants diving, this tells me bait fish are in the area. I always prefer to fish areas with gulls and terns diving or sitting on the water as this tells me there must be fish present to chase bait to the surface. Cormorants just tell me there
is bait but maybe no fish. If there are no gulls I will fish the spot with Cormorants before a spot with no birds unless I know from experience that this paticular kelp bed holds calicos.

The calicos when active are usually suspended in the top third of the water column, and are actively chasing bait, this is where you want to use a 1/4 or 3/8 oz. lead head on your swim bait as this will let it sink slower and keep it in the strike zone longer. When the fish are inactive and holding near the bottom a 3/4 to 1oz lead head needs to be used to get past the unproductive upper water and down to the bottom where the fish are holding.

When the fish do not seem to want to eat the artificial lures a whole squid on a 1oz white leadhead sometimes seems to be just what they want. When fishing this rig during slow times, be sure to give the fish time to get the whole squid and leadhead in his mouth before setting the hook. When fishing squid as opposed to plastic on the jig, you must set the hook hard as you may need to penetrate a balled up squid as well as the fish's bony mouth. Always use premium leadheads with laser sharp wide gap hooks, you will double your catches with these super sharp hooks.
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Calico Bass Secrets

Calico bass are to me are one of the ultimate light tackle game fish here on California's west coast. They are found in good numbers south of Point Conception about midway down the Mexican coast of Baja on the Pacific side, and there are good populations around the offshore islands in that area.

I used to take my 4X4 Suburban down the coast of Baja with an eighteen foot aluminum skiff on the roof and a fifteen HP outboard for go. It had the large sand wheels on the back so it could be rolled over the sand and into the surf. I knew several places where large rocky points stuck out into the ocean and there was calm water behind them where launching the skiff was pretty
easy. My basic tackle was a med-heavy casting rod seven and a half feet long with a Newell 220 size reel loaded with twenty to twentyfive pound Trilene line for fishing plastic and bait fishing with squid. My other rod was a eight foot jig stick with a Jigmaster fast retrieve reel for throwing surface iron. Back then plastic lures were basically limited to scampi's the twin tail plastic that started the ocean plastic revolution.

Now there are hundreds of plastics on the market, but back then the bass loved the scampi in green or rootbeer color. There were no laser sharp hooks so we sharpened the ones we had.
The general plan was to drift the edge of the kelp and cast into pockets in the kelp, leadheads hung up to often so we put the scampi on a freshwater hook with a wire weedguard and put a half ounce bullet sinker in front of the scampi and pegged it up against the hook with a toothpick pushed into the hole in the sinker and broken off, with this weedless rig we could cast it back
into the kelp Forest and reel it across the top of the kelp and stop it in holes in the kelp and let it sink, we caught some huge bass that way, sometimes the bass would explode up throught the kelp and hit the scampi as it was being reeled over the kelp, super exciting! This still works well today as most fishermen fish the edges and miss the large wary bass that live way back in the kelp.

Most of your hits come as the lure is sinking, once it hits the bottom I quickly reel it back in and make another cast. The shad single tail baits so popular now work well on the wind so cast it out let it sink then wind it back to the boat. In summer a faster speed gets more hits but in colder water the best plan is to cast it out let it sink then slowly hop it along the bottom all the way back to the boat. When fishing is slow and always in cold water add a squid strip or head to the hook, this results in many more hits and the fish will hold on much longer giving you plenty of time to set the hook. Don't set at the first tap, let the fish bend the rod down before you set the hook and you will double the number of hookups. When clients ask me how hard to set the hook, I cast out put the rod in a rod holder and when the rod is bent double I pick it up and reel it in, "that hard" I say. With the new laser sharp hooks, just let the fish pull the rod tip down and wind the reel quickly and you will miss fewer fish.

One of the most fun ways to fish for calicos is on the surface iron, I prefer the single hook model surface iron, the single hook is easier to release fish from as opposed to treble hooks and do much less damage to the fish. I take pliers and pinch the barb down about ninety percent and it easily comes out of the fishes mouth and does no damage at all. My favorite colors are wounded
soldier ( a dull military green with a red head ) and mackerel, though color rarely makes any difference, once the color is worn off the jig it still catches bass. The secret is to take a rubber band, loop it on the line ring on the front of the lure then stretch it back and hook it under the barb on the hook, this makes it totally weedless, you can cast it way back in the kelp without fear of getting hung up.

I use forty pound test for this fishing, as you will hook some real monsters back in the kelp and you need the heavy line to get them out. Also you will catch some really big white sea bass on the iron. There is nothing quite like seeing a large fish explode through the kelp to eat your lure as it is running right on top of the kelp. Yeeeeeeeeeee Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!
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Calico Bass

Calico bass are probably my favorite saltwater fish of all, they look just like a freshwater bass, can be caught on all the same lures, are strong fighters and taste great! Back in the late sixties and early seventy's the calicos were caught by the thousands during the spring to fall time period, by party boats and small boat anglers.

I had my introduction to the calico on my uncle Ed's boat in 1962, when my family came to California to visit my moms sister. Uncle Ed was married to my Dad's sister and was an awesome saltwater fisherman. He soon invited us to go fishing with him. He had what was at the time a state of the art island skiff. It was a wooden open skiff with twin fifty horsepower merc's. It had a trashcan bait tank that kept one scoop of anchovies alive for most of the day, though the bass at that time didn't care if the bait was dead or alive. Ed's boat made it to Catalina Island in about an hour and soon after arriving we were anchored in West Cove on the west end of the island.

There was kelp everywhere and the water was very clear, you could see the bottom in thirty feet of water. About half of the anchovies had perished on the trip over, and my Uncle fished most of the dead ones out of the bait tank and started tossing them out behind the boat and we watched them slowly sink in the clear water, suddenly hundreds of calicos came out of the kelp forests and started eating the chum my Uncle had thrown out. We quickly baited up with live anchovies and cast them out where the bass were feeding on the chum, instant hookups! We were catching two to four pound bass as fast as we could cast out a bait, boy, I was in heaven.

Then my Uncle picked up a eight foot heavy rod with much heavier line and cast out a large iron lure into a channel in the kelp, seconds later he was winding in a very large calico of six to eight pounds. He caught several more large bass in the next few minutes, then asked me if I would like to try it, would I like to try it? Hell yes, I would! My Uncle handed me the rod and I aimed a cast in the general direction he was casting and gave a mighty heave, and instantly got the mother of all backlashes. My Uncle laughed and laughed, and then put the rod away as it would take hours to get the backlash out. We fished for several more hours, and caught many, many calicos, most of which we let go. This was a concept I was unused to, In Georgia we kept all the fish we caught as the limits were very liberal, and letting fish go was new to me.

My Uncle explained that although there seamed to be unlimited amounts of fish there were much less than when he first started fishing twenty years ago. This always stuck with me, and I always let most of the fish I caught go to live and fight another day. Now I see the wisdom in my uncle's words as the calico bass stocks are down to twenty percent of what they were in the 60's, as are most of the other game fish stocks. The majority of the ten percenters ( the ten percent of the fishermen that catch ninety percent of the fish ) release most of the calicos they catch, at least all of the big ones.

Most of my regulars that fish with me regulary have been doing that for twenty five years, we keep several one to two pound calicos for a great tasting meal of fresh bass yuuummmmmmmmy! There are few fish that can match the mouth watering goodness of the calico bass.
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Fish Report for Friday June 17, 2007

Today I had a charter with 4 persons aboard, plus myself. We fished the rockfish early in the morning and by 11 am we had many nice reds ( 3 to6lbs. ) and an assortment of other colorful, and tasty rockfish. In the early afternoon we fished for calico bass and did real well, with 5 fish over 4lbs. ( released ) and 21 keepers plus dozens of shorts, less than 13 inches, but still fun to catch. We also had sand bass, rock bass, mackerel, a shorthalibut and some blacksmith perch. All in all a very successful day, the guys were kept busy catching fish and enjoying a beautiful day on Santa Monica Bay.
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