Monterey Cannery Row/CGJ 11.1.11

After being stuck on land for 2 weeks to be exact, I couldn't take it anymore and had to get salty. Coincidentally, Ryan and his brother Terence had Tuesday off and wanted to see if we could hookup for some fishing. It's been a very long time that I fished with Ryan; he and I used to fish regularly together once (or twice a week lol  ) I was looking forward to fishing with him and Terence.

Although Tuesday is my day-off, I couldn't start early as I'd like since I had technicians servicing the fire smoke beam alarms at the shop in the morning. Since we couldn't start early, we decided we were gonna do some chilling fishing in Monterey. Around 10am I pick the brothers up, and by 10:30am we are paddling outta the CGJ.

Armed with light tackle setup (20lb pp on medium action bass rods for carolina rig/swimbait and medium light spinning rod with 8-15lb mono for fishing with bait), we start to work on the jetty. 3rd cast in my carolina rig gets chomped on, and I wait to load up before I set the hook. Unfortunately, my anxiety got the best of me as I miss setting the hook. Reel my line back in to see that the newly plastic bait had massive lingcod bite marks punctured throughout  Several more casts in the same general area couldn't entice the lingcod to come out and bite again.

Paddled to a different area of the jetty and decided to pull out the swimbait with 1.5 oz weedless jig head setup and started working the kelps/rocks with that setup for an hour. During that time, I was only able to pull out a fat healthy 22"/23"er. Pretty cool thing was to see that ling puke up a couple baby barracudas as well as baby octopus. After a bried moment of admiration, the ling was set back to the waters.

After playing with several rods with different setups, I decided to pull out the lighter spinning setup. Drop after drop, cast after cast, I was pulling out baby blues rockfish and nice striped perch that had my rod bending over and peeling a little drag. All this with giggles and a big smile on my face  I forgot how much fun it is to fish with the light tackle setup!!

After couple hours of messing around at the jetty, we decided to explore the kelp beds around cannery row. I was able to mark some quality fish over a small structure and decided to drop my spinning setup down. 1st drop down a fish takes the bait and swims straight into the kelp canopy. After patiently playing with the fish, I was able to pull out a nice 14.5" perch.



In the same kelp/structure, I hooked up with another fish that gave a very good fight. As I pulled it up to the surface I initially thought I caught a juvenile lingcod. Instead, I pulled out a fish that looked to be some kind of mutated greenling. It's a lil different than the ones I've caught many times before and need everyone's input to ID.

I apologize for the quality of the pic.; it's my scratched-up iphone inside a waterproof case.
Anyways, the fish totally looks like a greenling with its face and shape of its body. The difference I noticed was that its scales were slimy rather than the rough small scales I'm used to on the greenling. Also missing were the spotted dots seen on greenlings. Tbh, its slimy body and patterns remind me more of monkeyface prickleback. Lastly, the tail section is somewhat different than what I'm used to on greenlings. Other than these things, I would have guessed it was some sort of kelp greenling. After taking a pic and its measurements, I released it back.






We continued c&ring scores of fish, keeping just a handful of perch for our families. As time closely approached 5:00pm, we decided to call it a day. It's been such a long time since I fished with both Ryan and Terence. Sometimes I get caught up in the madness of kayak fishing, always pushing myself to the extreme limits and sometimes forgetting just to "take it easy." Yesterday was a good reminder of that; it was great fishing with them!

You werent kidding about the shitty pic! ...Glad you and the others were able to get out! Gonna have A fish/ab fry in the next day or so hit me up!

sometimes you just need to let "fun" be the priority of the day.

 Nice report and nice assortment of fish!

WTG Daniel! NIce big striped perch dude. Big AOTY points there bro. Congrats on getting out and making a statement man!

Nice size Perches!  Thanks for the report and pictures Daniel.

Way to stop and smell the greenlings.     I'm glad you got out for a good time with your good bro's.   

Dude, thanks I've been doing a lot of what you wrote about: just taking fishin too seriously, forgetting about the important things, which always ain't fish to hand.

Bout time you hit the salt Brother!!!  WTFGS!!!  easy is fun!!!  I always look forward to your posts Bro...lot's of info and lot's of GOOD EASY TIMES!!!   love light tackle and so do the fishies!!!  Keep it coming!!! just don't make it another 2 weeks withdrawls Suk!!!

Thanks for the report and pictures Daniel. Yeah, it's been a while since I've seen you three specially Terence. WTG on the perch bro. Looking forward to fishing with you guys again soon.

Jedmo

Nailed it brother, so often we forget that catching bluegill on a bobber is a blast, and sometimes lots of action is better than the one trophy fish.

WTG on the big perch Daniel! And Thanks for the report too. jim

Thanks everyone for the kind words, much love and respect to y'all It was nice to fish again with my hometown friends. But I'm also miss fishing with many of you too, hopefully I'll be able to hookup with y'all before the year ends. We'll have lotsa fun!

Btw, thanks to SinCoast (for lending your extra yak to Ryan and for identifying the mystery fish). I found out that big greenling turned out to be a giant kelpfish. Giant it was! I thought I just had some more major AOTY pts upgrade lol 

Anyways, definitely fun times!!

Now that's some fishing! See you soon bro.

Sounds fun!  Reading this made me remember the joys of perch fishing in Humboldt Bay.  Nice kelpfish too!  How deep is it around that jetty Daniel? 

Glad you got out for some action.  Fishing has been good the last few weeks.