Re: fishing the santa barbara channel
That depends on what kind of fish you want to catch! Halibut, thresher, lincod, rockfish, perch (man they taste nasty), sandab, corbina, barracuda, yellowfin, bonito... SB has a pretty diverse species list, and some of them are protected. If you get caught taking a broomtail grouper, they can get you for a couple thousand bucks and take all of your gear, so make sure to check the regs and get an ID book if you don't know what you are going to catch. If you are just getting into boat fishing, a good place to start is Canby reef. Its about .25 mile out just in front of Leadbetter so the advantage is that you can make it there from the harbor in less than 5 minutes. This time of year, it seems like there are more guys going out for lobster than fishing, but I have been going with live mackerel or sardines. I'm sure you have heard of "bounce balling" for halibut, and that is defintely something to try but I haven't seen a whole lot of people coming in with big flatties this time of year. If you make it out to any of the mid channel spots, I have heard that people have had good luck with live squid. I'm pretty sure the tuna aren't around anymore up here anymore so you will have to wait until next year to go after them... Other than that, people are probably going to be kind of reluctant to give up their secret spots, but check out this list and search the coordinates on google earth:
http://www.fishingnetwork.net/socal/gps1.htm
I'm going up by point conception at 5AM tomorrow to check out a new spot that I picked out on google earth... We are probably just going to do a 2-3 hour drift with half of our gear on live bait and the other half working plastic. I'll send you a pic if we come back with anything heavy.
