Seems like the cold water slow down is a little late this year. In 2019 and 2020, February was really cold and slow and by late March the kayak and boat fishing had picked up a bit. This year, the recent weeks of heavy rain and strong winds have been giving the fish lock jaw. Even the Penguin Banks shallow bottom fish bite has been slow. Hopefully we’re near the end of the heavy rain and wind storms and the water begins to warm. The inshore fishing has been slow since the Fall and with no bait schools around, continues to be a tough nut to crack.

To gather more data, I went out to our regular big fish / big shark spot on the South Shore and nothing big was around except a lonely gray whale that kept giving me the tail. Live moana just had their guts eaten, probably by hage, and all the frozen opelu were pulled off by predators not big enough to take the hooks. I switched to fishing the shallower fish marks with cut bait and caught brown hage and some smallish weke nono, but even that bite was very slow.

The bait the hage were throwing up did keep some 14 inch lai around me, but even they were too smart to get hooked. Water temp was 74 degrees at the start and 76 mid day. Summer temps are 10 degrees hotter than that.

At least all this rain will be good for the plants and estuaries.