Author: Brandon Hayward

Another Season is a six-part series piggybacking on my doorstop of an article, “The Season,” in the current issue of The Bight. If you love seabass fishing, have thought about a career in outdoor writing, or considered guiding for white seabass or anything exotic, these words should set you straight. End of Offshore Season Ramblings Bites and cycles like 2014/2015 get etched into Southern California lore. Catalina’s big bluefin of early last century; the 82/83 El Nino as a whole; the fatso albacore that showed up mid-channel in the mid 80s; the giant bluefin seiners got on above the Santa…

Another Season is a six-part series piggybacking on my doorstop of an article, “The Season,” in the current issue of The Bight. If you love seabass fishing, have thought about a career in outdoor writing, or considered guiding for white seabass or anything exotic, these words should set you straight. For the Love of Seabass At the beginning of the season there was no conceiving how April to July would play out for my favorite fish. The fin bait bites at the beginning; the hustle to have live squid for every trip in June; the run up the line to…

Almost everyone wrote seabass off this season. They said it was going to be warm water, no squid, and no easy squid nest fishing. “What are you going to do this season? Fish offshore?” Went the endless one-two punches. That line of thinking made sense. There was not much kelp for the fish to hide in. No real counts coming from sportboats, nothing to really try and run for. Magazine articles talked about how there wouldn’t be much seabass this year. Threads that popped up online had everyone chime in that this wasn’t the year to catch a seabass. I…

Another Season is a six-part series piggybacking on my doorstop of an article, “The Season,” in the current issue of The Bight. If you love seabass fishing, have thought about a career in outdoor writing, or considered guiding for white seabass or anything exotic, these words should set you straight. An outdoor writer pal once said of his friend, “He’s got it bad; he loves fishing so much he can’t remember his last bite. It doesn’t matter if it’s a steelhead or a seabass.” (Spoiler: Rich Holland on Mark Gasich.) I maybe don’t have it that bad. Probably the closest…

It is said that it takes half of an ended relationship’s total length to get over it. And the time I spent with her, those four solid years, the filthy, dirty nights where we’d do our thing until the sun came up—that’ll take more than a couple of years to forget. Because of her I had the confidence to quit my job, strike out on my own, figure out who my real friends were, and spend every spring and summer night with her. Yeah, things got kinky. I shared her with my friends. Even made a little money off her.…

Kelp lines whither and die and re-form, each makeover bringing with it a new way to anchor up. Spots don’t always stay exact season to season. Fishing Kelp Beds Tips The above chunk of copy got snipped from a piece I did for the next issue of The Bight. While it didn’t fit into the long-form piece, it sums up what I think is going to be the big difference that some will see when they go back to their favorite kelp spots. The setups have changed. Kelp is non-existent at much of Catalina and Clemente. Along the coast, some…

I live in the last of Southern California’s beach cities that can be debated as being a town. Not to be confused with a city or the island, San Clemente has a unique position in the little Bight between Dana and San Mateo points. To the southeast starts Camp Pendleton, the only swath of coast below Gaviota that has the feel of old California, thanks to Camp Pendleton being a buffer zone that has kept ocean view homes and golf from connecting the counties. I knew nothing about fishing this zone nine years ago when I moved here. In fact,…

Fishing in the communal swimming pool of the three most populous counties in the United States forces a different approach to fishing; it’s the style that’s different, mainly, from the tackle and live bait receivers, to the mentalities and mindsets of the people who get and share fishing information from Los Angeles to San Diego counties. Despite southern California’s sprawl moving beyond urban, even the oldest of old timers are hard pressed to recall on-the-water times like these. The big-game fishing along the coast the past, call it six seasons, has been all-world, thanks to a confluence of events. La…