Rain at Redondo

My friend Dan the fisherman has long said that he never catches fish in the dark or in the rain. I concur completely with these statements. Maybe it's because you don't spend enough time pounding the water in the rain? or perhaps it because it is difficult to fish in the dark? Tying hooks and fishing rigging in the dark while on a boat being tossed about by waves, add some rain and, well, fishing becomes more work than pleasure...
We of course tried it anyway... started trolling at Redondo at about 5:15am. Dan caught a small black mouth shaker pretty quick, and it was still dark, I think he had two shakers pretty fast... where there's small fish... hopefully there will be large fish as well. Fish run in schools. Big, medium and large.

Well, the water was calm, and then the rain started, thank Dan for a covered area on his boat to sit comfortably under.At about 6:30 am Dan had a nice tap, tap on his rod and then it popped off. He was on it immediately, the fish didn't fight too well, in fact it circle beneath the dark water, rain coming down. Dog fish Dan says, they circle, another friend of mine, also named Dan, calls them circle fish for this behaviour. They are basically a dead weight. Well this fish did some running, peeling line away from the boat. I remarked, that ain't no dawg fish. Dan was still uncertain, the fish didn't fight too well, just kinda hunkered down, like a big weight, Dawg fish do that, but they generally don't "run." Finally we could see it, a nice big Black mouth, I netted him and he weighed in at a nice 17 pounds. SWEET! Caught in the pouring rain no doubt!

The other Dan I mentioned earlier, Dan Nomura has a theory about this. This not catching fish in the rain. A change in Barometric pressure occurs when it rains. The fish sense or feel this and do not bite... for the first few hours of this change. Once they acclimate to the change, they're ready to go again. Well it rained yesterday and this was the second day, perhaps it is true, the fish today were acclimated. Another rainy thought to consider, when you don't catch fish in the rain the first day, what makes you want to go out again in the wetness?
There was a nice "bite" on, it lasted about an hour, we saw many fish caught by several other anglers on the water. I had a nice strike but it didn't stay hooked.
We fished until 11 am, I caught about a three pound silver, just as we were about to call it a day, I had another pop off and as I grabbed the rod, line was being peeled from the reel, the fish ran straight away from the boat and surfaced, the natural trade mark of a Coho, or silver Salmon, the fish leaped out of the water once and i noticed a deep purple blue hue before it vanished beneath the surface, hmmm, might be one f those Duwammish black mouths that fight on top of the water, as the fish got nearer he hunkered down, straight down, ah yes, the tell tale signs of a Black mouth,low and behold, a lovely 11 pound Black mouth. Sweet!
Well, now we know, you can catch fish in the rain!