Shapeshifter give me a email at turnleft24@aol.com my wife and myself fish the surf in oceanside all of time. We have a spot that we fish most of the time and seem to catch fish most of the time. We would be happy to meet you and the family out there sometime and show you what we have learned throught trial and error. One tip that Lisa found is that the perch and corbina both love the Riverside crawfish plastic lures. You get them at Walmart and they are about 1 1/2 inchs long and they come in Red or Natural and they both seem to work fine with the Red maybe catching more fish. We fish them on 6 pound line with a flourocarbon leader and pick the sinker depending on the surf. We use enough weight to get down to the bottom but still allow the bait to drift around in the surge.
Again shoot me off a email and lets hook up sometime.
Steve