The rest of the day was only done catching perch small and large. Towards the end of the day I caught a small to medium sized shiner perch and sent him out on the rod with my new reel and let him swim around for a while. After about twenty minutes in the water I started to reel in the Shiner to replace it with a Bullhead that one of the other people let us have (we let them have the perch we got) after about 25-30 cranks it got noticeably heavier. I thought that it was just seaweed, but when I got it in it had a BIG bite out of its side just missing my 3/0 Owner hook. I let the Bullhead out to no avail. We left shortly after. Had a great day there and that pier is quickly becoming my favorite.
P.S. I did catch some small mystery fish. This time I took some pictures. I’ll post them later too see if anyone can I.D. Good Luck and Tight Lines, Fish Fool
Spiny Dogfish
Date: February 27, 2002; To: PFIC Message Board; From: Ken Jones; Subject: Elephant Rock Pier—Tiburon
Fished the pier this morning from 8 to 10 using pile worms and ghost shrimp as bait. An absolutely BEAUTIFUL day!
Results: 2 Cabezon, 2 Striped Seaperch, 2 Brown Irish Lord, 1 Blue Rockfish, 1 Kelp Rockfish, 1 Kelp Greenling, 1 Blackperch, 6 Rock Crabs, 1 Kelp Crab, 1 Dungeness Crab (all crabs caught on the fishing line).
Nothing over a pound and a half; all of the fish except for the blackperch caught in the same hole of the rock that supports the pier; and all caught on worms except for the blackperch.
It was nice variety but none of the fish were big. As mentioned, almost all of the fish were taken in the same spot that, with the current running at a fairly rapid rate, required constantly reeling in the line and repositioning the bait. The pier basically sits over a rock and the fish like to hang in the crevices of the rock. Unfortunately most anglers simply cast out away from the rock. By the way, although this can be an excellent pier from which to fish for jacksmelt OR sharks/rays, none were in evidence today. One lady was trying for jacksmelt but not getting any hits. The schools are either around or they’re not—it’s hit and miss. As for the sharks/rays, that’s a better nighttime proposition.
I was a little surprised by the number of crabs that hung on the line until reaching the pier. More normal is to have them drop off on the way up. And, I’d forgotten how strong the pincers of a kelp crab can be. I got a little careless and my left hand provided an appealing target. Ouch!
White Seaperch
Date: April 18, 2002; To: PFIC Message Board; From: bigfootsf; Subject: Elephant Rock Pier
I used to work in Tiburon; my ex-boss still does. This morning, I took the morning ferry over to Tiburon to work with him a little bit on a project. Anticipating some afternoon fishing at Elephant Rock, I took my full fishing kit, including my brand new Ugly Stik Tiger 7′ spinner loaded with 15 lb. test. I also brought along a half dozen pile worms I had bought at Hi’s the day before, as well as a dozen or so frozen anchovies.
I wrapped up my meeting around noon and grabbed a sandwich and a box of Junior Mints for lunch at the local supermarket deli. I sat by the water and ate, and when I finally made it out to Elephant Rock it was 1pm. I figured I would fish for about four hours on the incoming tide (the high was at six), then catch the ferry back to downtown San Francisco. Thinking I’d have a shot at some lingcod, rockfish, and greenling, I rigged up a Pucci catfish/pier hook and leader kit I had purchased the day before. I rigged the small hook on the bottom of the rig and baited it with a bit of pile worm, and rigged a large hook on top, baited with a whole anchovy. I put a 1 1/4 ounce sinker on the end of the arrangement, and it was ready to go.
I stuck to the left side of the pier, casting in the direction of the Caprice restaurant, thinking about rockfish, but too skittish about breaking a window with my sinker to cast close enough to the pilings holding the restaurant up over the sea. After losing a few anchovies to the violent yanking of the 1 1/4 oz. sinker, I scaled down to a 1 oz. sinker, and that seemed to help quite a bit. Once I was sure my bait was getting out there without being yanked off, I settled down and waited.
After a few minutes, I started getting gentle taps on my line. The tip of the rod would shake slightly, but the punch line, a violent shaking indicating a fish was on the line, never came. Then finally it did. Once I was confident I had a fish hooked up, I reeled it in and discovered that I had caught a little shiner perch, no more than 4” long. It was unhooked and returned to the sea. I got several other tiny bites, all of which seemed to be hitting the pile worms. The next time I baited my rig, I cut an anchovy into thirds, hooked the middle third, and cast the rig about thirty feet out, roughly speaking between the restaurant pilings and the boat harbor at Angel Island.
I waited. I held the rod for a while, but when nothing seemed to be going on, I set it down on the railing. I looked over my shoulder at the man on the rocks tossing a hair-raiser. He wasn’t having much luck. I wondered what he was trying to catch. I thought it was maybe too soon for striped bass.
Time passed. I was alone on the pier. It was a beautiful day, and the sea was calm. No wind. Wind seems to come late to Elephant Rock; it seems to be partially sheltered from the sea winds by Sausalito and the Tiburon peninsula. Anyway, that’s just my guess. A few cormorants paddled in the distance.
Suddenly, the tip of my rod buckled. Then it buckled again, harder. I lunged for it, picked it up, and felt it twitching and lurching forward, towards the sea. I whipped the rod backward to set the hook, and while doing so looked at the tip of the rod, and in the distance, in my peripheral vision, saw a fish jump. A flash of what I thought was a white belly and it was gone, back underneath the waves.
There was a screeching noise I had heard before in the past, but never so close. I realized it was my own reel and it was letting out a lot of line. The fish was making a run for it, seemingly in the direction of the East Bay, specifically Richmond. I looked down and saw the point at which the line enters the water move quickly away from me.
Throughout the entire run, I was reeling in line. And yet the fish was still getting away from me. Whatever it was. I figured it wasn’t a halibut. I really had no idea what it was, it was a total mystery. I had never fought a lingcod or a greenling before.
The run stopped, and I continued reeling. I tightened the drag a bit, and just as I did so, the fish started running again. At first I thought I’d just let the fish run, not even fight it, and when he stopped again reel in the line. I was beginning to calm down and think logically, after the initial surprise and shock that some kind of powerful fish was on my line. (The biggest fish I had ever caught from shore had been a sixteen-inch trout.) This time, however, it ran in the direction of the restaurant and apartment pilings. I became alarmed, realizing that if the line got wrapped around the pilings, I could be in a lot of trouble. I cranked hard and fought to slow the fish down. He stopped just short of the pilings. Relieved, I continued cranking.
The fish continued to fight, but I sensed it was running out of gas. I kept cranking, trying to bring the fish close to the surface so I could get a good look at it. It took a while, but I finally brought it up to the surface. I saw a gray head, a spiny dorsal fin, and horizontal gray and black lines running the length of the body. Oh god, striped bass. I looked at it again. Definitely legal.
I had to figure out how to land the fish. Elephant Rock is a short pier, and from the street to the rock itself is only about thirty feet, but the walkway is an ADA compliant ramp that runs for a good deal better than that, doubling back on itself to provide a gentle, wheelchair-friendly slope. I had to get the fish towards the rocks under the pier, and then somehow land it. I quickly pocketed my Shimano pliers and began to gently pull the fish from the left side of the pier to the right, towards shore.
In the meantime, the fish had other ideas. Twice it took off on another run, once trying to go underneath the pier itself. In the meantime I was distracted by the problem of how to land the fish. Fortunately, the fish was tired and the runs were short-lived. If it had had enough energy left to make a decent effort of it, I could have lost it then.
It was more or less at this moment that the thought entered into my mind: I don’t have a striper tag on my license.
Oh no. Oh, no. I couldn’t believe it. My aging grandmother had bought me a fishing license for Christmas, and hadn’t thought to also get me a striper tag. I had bought tags the previous two years hoping to catch a striped bass, and never did. Now…the irony hit me as though someone had slapped me in the face with the fish itself. I struggled to think of some way I could get around not having a tag. That mental run-through of options lasted about two seconds. There were none.
The fish had to be let go. Well, that’s the way it goes. In the meantime, I still have to land it. The tide hadn’t yet started to really come in and the wind was still down, and looking down at the rocky shore below, I hit upon the idea of just beaching the fish from above and then climbing down the rocks and releasing it. So I did. I dragged the fish into a half-ring of rocks that seemed kind of calm, and dragged the front half of the fish up on the shore. Then I let out more line and started to race up the ADA-compliant ramp. I got halfway and left the rod there, notching it in a break in the railing.
A man in sunglasses looked at me, grinning, and said, “That looks like just about the nicest fish I’ve seen brought out of there.”
“I don’t have a striper tag. I have to let it go.” I said. I could tell my voice was almost pleading, as if seeking an answer from him. I scrambled down the rocks and under the pier, following the fishing line with my hand. It got caught on the rock. I pushed on anyway. If the fish tried to run again, the line was pinned and would hold it.
The fish was floating on its side in the water, drifting and swaying with the current. It was beautiful. It looked like a weapon, metallic and sleek. Nothing but power underneath the hood. But the eyes, although there was no expression in them, the eyes remind me it was an animal. An animal that, at least today, I wasn’t going to kill. Well, that’s the way it goes. This way, we both go home happy and dream about how the rematch is going to go.
Right away I could see that the size 2 bait hook was in the crook of its mouth, and that a simple twist of the pliers would free it. As I approached it it splashed as if to get away, but I pulled it back in close and gently removed the hook. I was reminded how “hard” a striper’s mouth is, something my father told me a long time ago, back when he thought I would catch a striped bass a lot sooner than I actually did.
The striper did not, sensing freedom, make a quick bolt for the open ocean. In fact, it did nothing at all. The fish was obviously exhausted. I touched it and gently pushed it away from shore. The receding wave action pulled it backward towards the ocean, and it turned around and started moving away under it’s own power. Two seconds later, it was gone.
I sat back on a rock covered with drying seaweed and let out a tremendous sigh. The adrenaline stopped pumping and my shoulders collapsed. The tension and excitement left my body and a warm feeling of contentment took its place. I had caught my first legal striped bass. I slowly clambered back up the rocks, retrieving my line by hand, fouling it so badly I would spend ten minutes trying to straighten it out before cutting the whole munged section out entirely. But I did not care, and I did not stop smiling for the next three hours.
Buffalo Sculpin
Date: May 26, 2002; To: PFIC Message Board; From: bigfootsf; Subject: Elephant Rock, Sunday