Fishing Tips: Fishing for Calico Bass

This is especially true in the ocean. One of my favorite fish in So. California is the Calico bass, looks just like a freshwater bass, and eats all the same lures. I have caught them on crankbaits, plastic lures, worms, lizards, creature baits, and most all other soft plastic bass baits jigs, topwater lures, and the list goes on and on.

I grew up fishing for largemouth in Oklahoma, and Georgia, and then when I moved to Calif in the early 60's, I continued my love affair with them. I fished the pro bass circuit for 5 years in the early 80's, and ran a profitable bass guiding business for about 15 years. In the early 80's I got my USCG Captains License, and started doing more and more saltwater charters, that's when I discovered calicos would eat all the standard bass baits I had in my freshwater tackle boxes. Boy, I was in heaven! Unlike freshwater, you could easily catch 50 to 100 calicos in a day's fishing, most of which were released.

Even before catch and release was popular in the ocean, I insisted my clients release all bass over 5 lbs and most of my regulars had a 3 lb ceiling. There were lots of large calicos then, but it seemed such a shame to kill a large slow growing trophy, just to eat it. These were special fish that could be caught several times and give a special thrill to many people before someone harvested them. This was especially true in Santa Monica Bay, where the fishing pressure was intense. There were up to twenty party boats at times, ( 55 to 75 ft boats that carried 30 to 50 passengers ) and many small 16 to 30 ft private boats that plied the bays waters. In those days you could easily catch many calicos over 5 lbs in a days fishing. At some of the offshore islands with their vast kelp forests, the numbers of large bass was amazing, but I noticed the numbers of big bass was steadily going down in the bay.

I threw the "frog" ( mackerel ) to the edge of the kelp, and he ran back under the canopy. The skipper had told me, " every 10 feet or so stop him by putting your thumb down on the spool, when you can't stop him with your thumb, that's a big bass, put the reel in gear, and when the rod starts to bend, "HIT HIM HARD!"

I put my thumb on the spool, and the frog stopped, I could feel him shaking at the end of the line, suddenly the line started going out again, I pressed harder on the spool and the line kept going out. I put the reel in gear and swung hard to set the hook, the rod only got about halfway up before it was pulled violently down to the waters edge, and I could not seem to raise it.

Now I was in a real tug of war with a very large fish who did not want to come out of his kelp Forest. "WIND, WIND" yelled the skipper,"PULL HARD!!"

I was winding and pulling for all I was worth, and more line seemed to be going out than coming in. I had caught many calicos in the four to seven lb range, and nothing had come close to pulling this hard. Now I knew why the skipper wanted me to use forty pound test, the fish kept getting hung on the kelp stringers that kept the kelp anchored to the bottom. Long story short, I finally got my "calico" in, but it wasn't a "calico" it was a forty one pound white sea bass. I was hooked on big baits!

I spent many trips fishing big baits under the kelp, and was always amazed when a four pound bass ate a one pound mackerel. Some days we caught 15 or 20 bass over 6 lbs on the "frogs!"

The hardest part was not hooking the fish but getting them out of the kelp forest they lived in, as soon as you hooked one they would run for the bottom, and the rocks that were always present. Many broke you off in the rocks, or got stuck in the V's the kelp made where it branched off.

Your line would go in the V as the fish ran for the bottom, and as you wound him up would get his mouth stuck behind the V and you could not pull him past it.