Lingcod

[lamb]

Legit thread.

Lingcod loves rocky bottom. You generally find them where you find rockfish. Or where there are rocks. Lingcod is very aggressive and likes bigger bait. I’ve caught them on sardine, macs, bigger heavy jigs too. They’re fun to catch; they hit pretty hard, and kick gooood right after hooked. They can even pull some drag the first few wiggles if you don’t have it crazy tight. Then it’s press elevator button up with descent weight. Mark the spot where you ever hook one; you’ll likely be able to find more when you come back, whenever you come back.

There are internet wisdoms that claim they love sand dabs. I tried a few times, but never caught one on the dab, so it’s internet wisdom for me.

What I know is that they seem to love octopus! We recently had two that came up puking descent size octopus.

Originally Posted by steveooo

... This one was just plain 'ol dumb.

I don’t know Steve… C’mon, there’s been kelp there in Dana, no? Kelp grows on rocks.

We’ve had the same thing happen; we recently started hanging them as by-catch looking for halibut by the kelp in couple of places along LJ kelp.

The other day father of a friend who loves fishing was visiting from overseas, so I went back to one of those places to see if those few lings we caught as by-catch where just that. 60-70 ft, in the kelp. Kind of hard to fish on the bottom, pretty thick kelp, but can be done if no drift early in the morning. We had pretty good action – Brown Rockfish (shallow water), calicos, even reds. The best of all, we kept pulling lings – 3 over 24”, and 4-5 that were barely less than 24”.



At the time, I didn’t read Larry’s post with a reminder for everyone that DFG dropped the keeper ling size down to 22”, so we helped the environment by sending a number of legals (as of present regs) down to the bottom.

Last weekend I had one real nice size - 28”, and it was one of those with blue meat. I forgot to take a pic on the boat, but I got one “before the pan” – the chunk below is form a “normal” color ling.



South La Jolla kelp in 60-70ft is where we’ve been doing good on lingcod lately. You probably can too. On a day without swell like it’s been lately, you can get there on the kayak if you launch from Tourmaline. DO BE CAREFUL - with any swell, that is a tough surf launch.

As of Jan 1 2012, that area will be within South LJ MPA, no more fishing there. I will miss fishing that place. Sunrise over PB