The June Gloom Protocol: Lost Gear, Pulled Hamstrings, and the Zen of Tubing the Marina

I pulled my hamstring the other day trying to nutmeg the dog with a fútbol move—a completely undignified injury, the details of which do not matter. The true weight of my stupidity didn’t hit me until about 0600 Saturday, when I was desperately kicking my ass toward the main channel in the dark against the tide and the current.

The sky looked exactly like the opening frame of a noir film: heavy, gray, and shrouded in coastal gloom. All that was missing was a washed up PI investigating the mysterious disappearance of a Shimano Stradic and Phenix rod.

Meanwhile, my entire left leg was a column of pure, annoying burn.

But I couldn’t care less.

I had figured this place out.

The Gear Whore’s Redemption

Every time I stop before making my first cast into the channel, I have the same conversation with myself:

“You said you weren’t kicking allllllllll the way out here first thing in the morning.” Yet, there I am. Every. Time.

The kick out is about a mile and a half. It takes roughly ninety minutes of steady kicking. Which is unfortunate, because every ten yards there’s another stretch of water that looks fishier than the place you’re actually trying to get to.

It’s hard to kick past fishy-looking water. Harder still when you’ve got confidence baits tied on and high percentage pockets are staring at you like a neon THROW HERE👇sign.

But once my brain makes up its mind, that’s it.

The GPS waypoint gets punched in. No pit stops. No snacks. No sightseeing. No casting.

Just a slow, deliberate trudge. You may as well put horse blinkers on me.

Part of the motivation was that I was rolling with a brand-new setup.

Last weekend, my Stradic C2500S and Phenix M1 decided they’d rather live on the bottom of the marina than in my float tube. There wasn’t even a dramatic moment. No splash. No heroic dive attempt. Somewhere between Point A and Point B, the rod and reel had decided to join the local marina structure.

I really need a better rod-retention system. My current design was apparently inspired by the Titanic.

So I did what every responsible tackle addict would do:

I bought two new setups. Because apparently losing one outfit means replacing it with two.

(Fishing Math)

The New Weaponry

While my new Stradic 2500S (not the C) gets shipped out from overseas, I was content on breaking out the new casting rig. The rod is a Shimano Zodias B 7’2″ MH, and the thing is ridiculous. The CI4+ reel seat, the carbon monocoque handle, the overall balance—it all feels incredibly refined.

What really stands out is the sensitivity.

This rod tells on everybody.

You feel every pebble, every shell, every patch of grass, and every stray wrapper some asshole tossed overboard. The carbon handle acts like an acoustic amplifier for bites. A couple times I nearly set the hook because the butt of the rod rubbed against my float tube.

The reel is a Shimano Tranx 150 in an 8.1:1 gear ratio spooled with straight 14-pound Sunline Shooter. No micro gearing here, straight HEG.

You can’t really get away with braid and leader in this marina unless you enjoy retying your leader knot every other fish. Razor-sharp mussels and braid do not coexist peacefully. Ask me how I know.

The upgrade from my ancient 2005 Chronarch 100B is staggering. It felt like going from an NES straight to a PlayStation back in college. On previous trips, I’d occasionally find myself winding frantically while trying to kick away from structure and inventing new curse words. With the 8.1 ratio, I can lose focus, admire a yacht, do a pssp pssp pssp at somebody’s cat, spend precious seconds yelling “oh shit” and still recover slack instantly.

Because my fat ass sat on my Costa 580Gs during our last club tournament at Lake Skinner, I also spent the day testing a pair of Smith Guide’s Choice sunglasses. They handled June Gloom perfectly. That Polarchromic Ignitor lens is nuts. It’s like Transition lenses, but for low light fishing conditions. For seventy-nine bucks on Clearance, they’re good enough that I’m already considering buying another pair so I can sit on those too.

(Which is exactly the sort of financial decision-making that has resulted in me owning more fishing rods than pants).

Parallel Lines and the Strike Zone

I’ve also realized that even though the biggest advantage of a float tube is stealth, geometry is not far behind.

A year ago, fishing from shore, my bait spent maybe ten percent of its life in the strike zone before crossing rocks, changing angles, or hanging itself up.

From a float tube, I can position myself parallel to the structure and keep the bait in productive water for nearly the entire retrieve.

Instead of crossing the strike zone, I’m living in it. The fish have no choice but to stare at my offering like if I was on a bass boat with Forward Facing Sonar.

Enter the Uni

I tied on a Yamamoto Uni for most of the day. Every fish I caught on it was a solid one. No foot long fish here. More importantly, they were absolutely choking it. And most importantly, the hookup ratio was 100%. Every fish that ate it stayed pinned.

I did discover one weakness in the way I rig the bait.

If you accidentally cast around a mooring rope and slowly retrieve the Uni over it, the exact instant the bait pendulums over the rope, the hook can slide right out of the tungsten weight’s eyelet.

Poof. There goes your bait, straight to the bottom of the marina and yet another $20 sacrifice to the marina gods.

Next time I’ll probably thread the hook through the body of the Uni, though I hate giving up the free-sliding action.

Even so, the setup survived seven fish, including a five-minute cage match with a small bat ray that bent my Gamakatsu hook and snapped one of the titanium weed guards. The situation rapidly deteriorated into one of those exercises where every available option seemed capable of ending with an emergency room copay. Naturally, my pliers were stored in a compartment located directly behind my ass. What followed was an embarrassing display of flexibility, problem-solving, and self-preservation that somehow ended with both me and the ray swimming away under our own power.

The Accidental Pattern

The best discoveries in fishing are usually mistakes.

During a routine dock pitch, I started burning the Uni back to the tube so I could make another cast. With that 8.1 gear ratio, the bait was absolutely flying through the water column when my rod suddenly loaded up. The fish hit so hard it a strike nearly ripped the rod from my hand.

A complete accident.

I duplicated the retrieve. Another fish. Then another. Then another.

The pattern was simple: Let the bait settle to the bottom. Rip it upward with a few fast turns of the handle all the way back to the tube. Or, rip it for a few feet, let it flutter back down. They either annihilated it during the burn or crushed it on the fall.

But, the bigger eye-opener came from a shit cast.

I accidentally landed the Uni on top of a thick canopy of that green and red vegetation growing along one of the docks. Rather than reeling in and making another cast, I slowly dragged the Uni across the top. The moment it broke free from the canopy and dropped two or three inches below the surface, a fish absolutely detonated on it, causing a huge boil in the salad next to the dock. It was almost like a saltwater frog blowup. That bite happened instantly. It was one of those moments that completely changes the way you look at a piece of structure and fish behavior. Those fish aren’t always glued to the bottom. A lot of them are suspended under those docks, waiting for something vulnerable to fall through the ceiling.

The Locals

The morning itself was a grind. And a ‘grind’ out here means 20 bites, and ‘only’ 10 fish.

The wind and current had entered into some strange agreement where facing into the breeze would send me backwards towards the basins at Mach 2, while turning around and lazily kicking once or twice somehow left me perfectly stationary along the jetty rocks. It didn’t really matter since the quality fish didn’t really show themselves until the afternoon kick back toward the launch when the HHW (Higher High Water) tide came in.

I started catching solid two-pounders along the outside edge of the yacht line and settled into that familiar rhythm that only develops after spending countless hours in the same stretch of water. A few 2.5s found themselves in the mix.

Over time, you become part of the scenery at this place. Jay and his wife waved from their deck. A little farther down, Antoinette and her dog Bella offered their usual greeting. Jose, the scuba diver that works on the underside of people’s yachts said hello. Even the wildlife seemed too content to be bothered.

We’ve all become waterborne neighbors connected by nothing more than fog, docks, and shared geography.

Gratitude and Southern California

As I drifted through the afternoon gray skies, I felt a profound sense of gratitude.

I thought about the absurd luxury of this place, and I’m not talking about the multi-million dollar yachts and this marina. I was thinking about the luxury of living in Southern California.

Southern California spoils us. Think about it. A person can spend the morning hiking into the East Fork of the San Gabriels chasing native trout on dry flies, drive down the 605 and stick a few bass at Santa Fe Dam, then continue on the 605 down the coast and spend the afternoon sitting in an inflatable float tube catching spotted bay bass on high-end Japanese plastics.

All within a couple of hours of each other.

By the time I reached the beach, my hamstring was sore and my calf was still complaining about the cramp from the week before. Age is funny that way.

The fish taught me a few things. The harbor taught me a few more.

Most fishing trips end with a handful of answers and a longer list of questions. This one was no different.

Somewhere during eight hours of kicking around in the fog, I figured out a couple things I’d been getting wrong.

Every once in a while, a place stops being water and starts making sense.

And when that happens, every miserable kick suddenly feels like a bargain.

And next weekend is our club tournament at Pyramid Lake, where I’ll spend eight hours drop shotting for what will almost certainly be the most uneventful eight pounds of my life.

I already miss the harbor.