Fishing Cod Inside Mexican Waters Near San Diego
With rockfish being closed in California waters until April, we decided to go about 12 miles from the bay around San Diego into Mexican Waters to load up on delicious cod. It’s nice to be able to fish on both sides of the border when something’s closed on the California side. Mexico also has higher limits for certain species of rockfish like Vermilion. We can keep five in Mexico and only two in California when it is open to fish.
Rockfish live anywhere on the bottom from 100 feet or deeper. With that in mind, we are always bottom fishing for these types of fish. Most of my spots are anywhere between 200 and 400 feet, but I try to fish as shallow as possible to minimize reeling them up. Sometimes they are biting deeper and sometimes shallower, depends on the outing and time of year. Bottom fishing consist of a two-hook set up where we can fish two different baits all the way on the bottom with a lead weight to get us down there.
Today, we used swim baits and sardines as our bait.
Bottom fishing for rockfish is normally a very productive way to catch a lot of fish. We like to bounce around to all our different spots until we find one that is biting the best. Then, we bang out that spot until we load up on fish. Sometimes it takes some searching, and sometimes the rock we left a few days before is instantly biting. That's fishing.
On this trip, we had limits of
Vermilion rockfish
and Junior had a blast catching fish on his first time on the ocean. He was beyond excited about every fish she pulled over the side. It’s so rewarding to see kids so stoked on fishing!
We had beautiful weather in January as it normally is here in San Diego. It’s almost always a good day to get on the water. I guess that's life with a San Diego Fishing charter.
The most popular knot that we use for rock fishing is the dropper loop knot. It makes it very easy to pop the hooks off in the event of a tangle which does happen often. When four or more people have their lines off the boat, it's nice to fish straight down to the bottom. We start with light weights and go heavier if we have a very high drift speed in order to stay down.
Call Fish Further Charters if you'd like to get in on some cod fishing action around the San Diego area!
RECENT FISHING REPORTS AROUND SAN DIEGO, ca
