Made it to Cal. Pt for about 7AM. Dozens of trailers in the parking lot.
To my dismay, no live bait today as the fresh water apparently ran all the shrimp off and actually killed a vat of live shrimp they had on hand. I took my sack of "recently" live shrimp and moved on.
Buddy and I poked our head into turners to see the chocolate milk and headed straight to black lake. The water looked much better, but was still fresh-fresh. Like drinking water from a bottle fresh. Since I don't know of any black lake "hot spots" or defined reefs, we fished around several of the cuts on the north side. Managed to pick up a few trout here and there using shrimp tipped plastics, with two keepers in the mix. After bouncing around there for a bit, we decided to make the long run to west cove to see if there was better action, or at least saltier water.
We saw a few other boats fishing the south shore at west cove. We couldn't pick up a bite other than what I expect was small catfish or croakers on the reefs. We did manage to pick up a few reds in and around west pass mostly slinging dead shrimp on a jig head.
With all that done, we ended up beating the south bank of the lake to almost finish a two man limit of reds before the end of the day. Ended up with 9 reds, 2 black drum, 2 specs, one flounder, and an 11 gallon gas bill. Not quite the ice chest overflowing with specks I was aiming for...
I've done worse.