Malibu Pier July 18th

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Time: 8am to 4:00pm
Bait: Live smelt
Rigs: Dropper loop and flylined bait
Catch: 15" Calico, 13.5" calico, two 17" halibut, one short WSB
Water: Dirty with lots of kelp and lots of current
Weather: Hot and sunny

Got there around 8am, guys next to me were fishing some good sized perch. One just told me he lost a huge WSB. Begin to setup and the guy next has two reels go off. One rig was a small perch, one rig was large perch. Large perch rig, the fish throws the hook. Small perch leads to about a 21" wsb. We could see a school of 15 WSB breezing the pier. Some were quite huge. I tried throwing flylined smelt at them but they turned their noses at it. Afterwords I caught a couple of nice calico's(Gave them away). The school of WSB kept breezing through till mid afternoon. So i'm watching this school go past and I notice 3 three wsb break off and start chasing a smelt on the surface. The smelt even jumps out of the water but it wasn't quick enough to get away from the wsb. Thats when I notice that my rod is bendo and the smelt they were chasing was my flylined bait. Tried to set the hook, must yanked the smelt out of the wsb's mouth. Afterwords I had wsb hit a dropper looped smelt but it was very short. Also caught a couple 17" halibut and had a couple racked baits.

Other people's catches: Short WSB, yellow fin croaker, small shark, thornback

Pictures too follow.
BTW, it was reported that a guy caught a 20 pound wsb last week.