Ok, I posted last week asking if anyone wanted to join my buddy and I in a little surf perch fishing in Santa Barbara on Sunday 4/6. Well, you guys really missed out. We fished the incoming high tide for about an hour, and we ended up with like 10-12 perch each, thats about one every 5 minutes!

It was pretty awesome, and one of us had a fish on at any given moment, sometimes we had double hookups. All were about 8-10 inches, and my buddy got a couple that were about 10-12 inches. Not monsters, but nice quality. All fish were released. I'll try to post photos when my buddy emails them to me.

Here's some tips that we found worked well, and they've been posted by people in the past. But to reiterate:

1) Structure. If you can identify rocks or channels in the sand during low tide, fishing those spots during a high tide will pay off. All of our fish came near rocks that the high tide covered up. I guess the perch hang out waiting for the surf to dislodge food from the rocks.

2) Stink up your grubs. My friend wasn't getting as many bites until he put on some Smelly Jelly. After that, he got all 12 of his fish in about 40 minutes.

3) Don't set the hook. With the perch, I got more hookups by just continuing the retrieve, whereas I farmed them when I tried to set the hook.

4) Cast at a slight angle. We both seemed to get bit more when we were retrieving at a 60-degree angle to the beach, rather than casting out straight in front of us, which would be perpendicular to the beach. This might have something to do with the flow of the surf as it actually has some side-to-side movement to it.

5) Carolina rig is the way to go. Had some success rigging the hook through the nose of the grub rather than threading it all the way through. That was a suggestion by Fongster, good idea!

Thats a barnie's guide to surf fishing. Surf fishing is so much fun, I'm just stoked to be out there!

** tight lines make all my troubles go away **