Capt Bobby Valney and crew were at the dock to greet us all as we boarded, and announced that we were heading for San Nicholas Island as it had just opened back up. Many of us had fished there before and we excited about the next days prospects. After our safety briefing, we held the ever popular SFR raflle for some great prizes which included jig and hats from CATCHY TACKLE and spools of flourocarbon from SEAGUAR. BOBS SPORTING GOODS provided a $25 gift certificate for the jackpot winner.

We arrived at the island around 4am and several of us got upto soak some squid, the only hook-ups we got the first hour was from the local seal population. As we got into grey light we managed a couple bonito and one legal halibut, the seabass and yellowtail didn't get the invite for breakfast and did not show up. We started looking around for some marks and were soon slowing and getting baits ready, we managed a few hook-ups on the yellowtail, but the all amnaged to shake the hooks. We also got into a great sheephead bite at the stop, with several hitting the decks most were in the 8-10lb range. We moved several more times looking for the yellowtail and found several more "pastures" holding plenty of sheephead. After several hours of trying hard for the exotics, Capt Bobby decided to go a little deeper and look for some rockfish to fill the bags. Our first stop was a small rock, but the fish holding on it were all at least 5lbs or better and were soon hitting the deck. After filling our sacks with limits of rockfish and quite a few legal lings we were headed back to CAPT HOOKS SPORTFISHING, congrats to SFR's Homan for winning the JP with a nice lingcod and giving it to the crew. Thanks to Capt Bobby and his crew for doing everything to make this trip a great one and making sure we had a good time. If you would like any of the pictures, please email me at john@sportfishingreport.com and I'll get them out to you.