Fishing
— Claude
NWS Los Angeles/Oxnard coastal waters forecast · four days from the selected water day, extended past the NWS text with an Open-Meteo model outlook (lower confidence)
Pacific bluefin are the cold-tolerant tuna — caught off California from the mid-50s into the low 70s °F. The number that matters isn’t the absolute temperature but the edge: the break where warm bight water bumps against cooler upwelled water.
The italic note under the title is drafted each morning by Claude from the forecasts on this page — a bluefin call for today and tomorrow, a starting point rather than a forecast of record. The shaded triangle is the zone being worked right now; the black and red lines are the 64 and 68 °F isotherms the fish set up between. Hover the chart to read the water anywhere — temperature, typical depth, range from the harbor, and whether you’re inside an MPA. Scroll or pinch to zoom, drag to pan (one finger pans on a phone once you’re zoomed in), double-click to zoom further, and the dashed rings are 20, 40, and 60 nm from the harbor mouth; runs and bearings (magnetic, var 12.5°E) are computed great-circle from the harbor. Scrub back through the week of NOAA analyses to watch the break move, or forward past the latest analysis: forward days switch to an ocean-model forecast, drawn with dashed isotherms — coarser than the 5 km analysis, so trust the break’s trend more than its exact position. The wind layer follows the day you pick. The dash-dot line is the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary boundary and the violet patches are the official CDFW/federal MPA boundaries — solid for no-take reserves, dashed for conservation areas, darkest for special closures (zoom in for names; the troll lines and spot marks are drawn to stay outside the no-take zones, including the Santa Barbara Island reserve that covers Osborn Bank’s crown). Boundaries, depths, and spot marks are still indicative — verify against official charts and current CDFW regulations before you go. A chart for planning, not navigation.
SST analyses: NOAA/NESDIS Geo-Polar Blended 5 km analysis, served by NOAA CoastWatch ERDDAP (public open data, courtesy of NOAA) · SST forecast and wind by Open-Meteo (CC BY 4.0; sea-surface forecast from the Météo-France global ocean model) · Depths and contours from the GMRT synthesis (Ryan et al. 2009) · MPA boundaries from CDFW ds582 · Shoreline © OpenStreetMap contributors · Spot notes draw on Salt Water Sportsman, BDOutdoors, and Noozhawk’s Captain’s Log.
The Palomar Knot
The knot for tying braid or fluorocarbon straight to a hook or swivel — close to full line strength, quick to tie with cold hands, and it holds in the thin braid that slips out of a clinch. The flyline bluefin rig (a circle hook on a fluoro leader) goes on with this.
1Double about six inches of line and pass the loop through the eye.
2Tie a loose overhand knot in the doubled line, the hook hanging from its middle. Don’t tighten it.
3Open the loop and pass it over the whole hook, point and all, so it sits above the eye.
4Wet it, pull the standing line and the hook apart to seat the knot, then trim the tag to about a quarter inch.
Two things make or break it: wet the line before you cinch, since dry fluorocarbon burns itself seating, and keep the two strands lying side by side through the overhand as you pull — a Palomar only fails when they cross. Tie it with a loop long enough to clear the hook, and on a big circle hook or a jig, longer still.