Postcard from California: still tiny

Hello Friends,

Late arvo update: managed to find some little waves at Sands beach just west of Isla Vista. It was only an hour or so before sunset, but there were some glassy little waist to chest high things coming in every now and then. Finally got a chance to try the 6’8″ 7S super fish. Worked very well too. Just the thing for relatively gutless conditions. Weird thing is that I didn’t see any tar on the beach. In the old days there was always heaps of the stuff from the natural seeps just offshore. But apparently all the oil pumping has decreased it quite a bit. So now you know!

Sunday surf prospects for Sydney don’t look to fabulous – but they look better than where I am. However, more of that in a moment. Wind is out of the north in Sydney at around 10 kts as I write this, but the forecast from the Bureau is “N/NE 15/20 knots, increasing to NE 20/25 knots during the afternoon.Sea: 1.5 to 2 metres, rising to 2 to 2.5 metres during the afternoon.Swell: SE/E 1 to 1.5 metres.” So, more junky short-period stuff in the waist to a bit above range most places I reckon. You’d want to be fairly desperate to get wet.

Outlook seems to be for more or less of the same across the next few days in Sydney. Up the coast looks more hopeful for size, but the wind could be an issue. The models seem to be pointing toward a gradual improvement from about midweek as the NE windswell builds up.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the ocean, you’re missing a whole lot of nothin’ in SoCal. There are storms out in the Gulf of Alaska, but the angle is just too steep to get into this coastline. I just had a look at the beach an hour or so ago at a spot called Campus point, and there was just about zip. You might be able to get a mal to glide along, but my new 7S fishy would be pretty marginal. I’m hoping there might be a slight improvement this afternoon… but, it doesn’t seem very likely. Ah well, so it goes.

Have yourself a top old day!