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REPORT (Pic/text heavy): 3 Day Extravaganza - Southern Big Sur

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TheKeeneroo:
This ended up being fun to recap, so it turned out lengthy.

Daniel (from LA) and I had been planning this trip for over a month and put a ton of footwork into research. We reviewed miles of coastline via google satellite view and street view looking for any little cliff trail to the water, anything that looked sheltered from a NW swell, any sign of beach access to lesser dived spots. We perused countless forum posts and blogs about the area and watched hours of you tube videos to see if there were any clues on spots to dive. The weekend was finally coming, the swell had been down all week and we had high hopes. However, last minute, the wind was forecasted for up to 40kt gusts (4-7ft wind waves on top of the 6ft short interval swell) and bad visibility reports came from all over Monterey and Carmel for 2 week prior. We had no idea what to expect but were committed and the risk was calculated.

David (aka Zboyovsky) was able to get off of work a couple hours early so he got to me in Pacific Grove by 6p. We loaded up his truck (with newly installed fancy camper shell) with boxes full of gear, food and clothes. Daniel (aka Danstro) was already on his way in the RV from Tehachapi and schedule to arrive an hour before us at the pin drop location down in southern Big Sur (no service down there so we had to coordinate our meeting turn out). We finally arrived well after dark, unloaded, got the gear ready and drew straws for who got the small couch bed then put a movie on and tried to relax.

For basically sleeping at the top of the trail, we sure didn't get an early start. We hiked down a treacherously steep trail, scrambled over a field of wet boulders and finally timed the swell to get out in the water. Visibility was a disappointing 10ft and the 6ft swells at 9 seconds were fast and surgey. We must have tried to relax a little too well the night before because I was awfully forgetful morning of. I left my Dramamine on the table and left my dive light on the shore… so I swam back to salvage my light. The vis was good enough to hunt, but the surge and swell was bad. I yaked repeatedly in record time – but kept on diving of course, because… #salty. Unfortunately, chumming didn't bring in the fishies. I covered a ton of ground and was surprised by how great the structure was for how few fish there were in these vacant 3 and 4 bedroom ocean "apartments". There were huge swim through caves, perfect for lingzillas, but no one was home… anywhere – I even checked the closets (small cracks inside the cave)! So we mainly stuck to big blues, black and yellows and kelpies. Danstro had a goal of LOTS of fish and ended up getting his first ling while popping other RF. Right away the competitive nature came out because we decided biggest ling would win the weekend. I was motivated. We hiked back up the grueling mountain, ate, rehydrated and cleaned fish.

Pretty exhausted all ready, we rallied for Dive 2 – I definitely joined the Dramamine party this time. We started around 3p and was not too far from the previous trail but in a different cove. This one was longer but a bit less steep. The ocean laid down which was awesome and the visibility was still bad but huntable. I was stoked though, David let me borrow his Pathos open pro 60 since I am buying one from Matt soon. That is a sweet gun for hunting in all the caves, crevices and holes. There was an abundance of blues and kelpies in the midwater but surprisingly little on the bottom other than your typical black and yellows. We were all diving solid drops with great bottom time - definitely started to get in the groove of things. Toward the end of the sun light, I was stalking a big blue - swam up behind a thick kelp stock out of its vision, took aim for a somewhat longshot for the 60 and right as I was about to pull the trigger, something big came into the corner of my view. I saw a huge male perch. I went to aim at that instead, but following just behind him was an even huger female perch. Without hesitation, I stoned her. I am so glad I captured that whole thing on video. She ended up being a PIG of a fish at 4.5# and 20" (enough to take first place in the perch category of DOTY by 1.5"). On the way back in, I forgot to turn off my GoPro from filming and got a nice 25min clip of a surface swim and getting eaten by waves. I got a total of 6 fish on this dive since I had 4 from before. Everyone came out with a solid haul despite the surprisingly unfishy cove. Daniel and I were the last ones out, and he comes up to me as we're nearing the shore and says, "hey, I got this awesome fish, but I'm not sure what it is…" it turned out to be a really nice vermillion. Lucky duck. We talked about not shooting something unless you know what it is. Utterly drained, we hiked out, we cleaned fish, tried to rinse the gear with a little pressurized water bottle hose thing, hung the gear to dry in the night air, ate microwave burritos because we were too tired to cook fish and prayed no malicious people wanted to steal hanging gear. (Random side note: David had never seen so many stars in his life). Finally we were ready to get our relax on - I succeeded in falling asleep before the movie started.

Day 2, we drove even further south to scope a few spots. About 30 minutes of driving later, we got to a spot that looked like it had epic structure from our research, and we thought we saw a trial on the satellite view. We were stoked to finally arrive and see the amazing pinnacles, thick kelp and little swell, however, it was nothing but cliffs with no beach access. We drove 20 min back north to a place that seemed mildly interesting from the research, but upon arrival, looked great. It was a long hike south on the nothing-but-boulder shoreline with really big waves crashing up to 100 yards out. Our legs were already sore and tired from the day before, but we found a water entrance that looked like had the smallest waves with a bit of a rip tide (which is great for getting out to the fishing zones). We still got pummeled by waves on the way out but no yard sales, thankfully. We made it passed the breakers and to our dismay, the visibility was only about 4'. We kept going out to sea. It was a mission of a surface swim but the boogie floats made getting over seaweed much easier. The water went from brown to blue, but we didn't have a reference for visibility this far out. Daniel did a drop to see how deep we were, and came back up smiling. He said visibility was fantastic. So we tied up the boards and started our dives. They were deep drops so we stuck to the buddy system for most of the day. My first drop was into a school of a billion blues and blacks, only they weren't the Carmel size, they were beasts! It didn't matter which one you shot, they were all big. We were all at 100% on the stoke meter. I was SO bummed when I found out my GoPro memory card was full after 2 drops… it literally stopped right as I was about to pull the trigger on a huge blue. Oh well, Daniel still had his rolling. I can't begin to explain how cool it was to be under huge columns and roofs of kelp with insane 30' visibility. I also can't explain how vis went from 4' to almost 10x that in a matter of yards. I decided to save some room on my belt for bottom dives and stopped shooting the big fish in a barrel in hopes of finding something lurking in a cave. I laid down on a rock overlooking several holes and just waited to see what might be below. I didn't see anything, so right as I was pushing off the rock, I saw a face looking at me just to my left. A big curious ling had poked his head out of a rock and wanted to know what I was doing, so I showed him. Stoned. Just a couple drops after that, I was swimming over a big boulder, and right on the backside a huge black fish came out from behind it. It was alone and obviously came from the bottom, so I was surprised that when I shot it, it was just a huge loner black. It turned ghost white for about 10 minutes and then turned black again – I'd never seen that drastic of a color change. Anyone else see that before? Initially we wanted to do 2 dives per day, but we ended up liking this spot so much that we spent several more hours here and just skipped lunch. It was great. The swim back in, however, was not. The swell had picked up and the waves were definitely surfable. David lucked out and boogie boarded all the way back in without incident. It took me several waves to come in and ended up inhaling a bunch of ocean trying to keep my board from flipping. The tide had risen too so the boulder walk back was way harder and we had to time the waves to keep from getting washed back out to sea. David was not so lucky this time. He got pummeled and lost his goggles.
We spent the next 2 hours cleaning fish and once we were finally done with everything, we drove north to eat at ragged point inn. A proper meal was devoured. We got back to the RV, introduced David to relaxing with a tobacco pipe and enjoyed the evening.

Instead of diving Monday, we decided to drive back super early to clean gear and get ready for work on Tuesday. It was an amazing trip with a ton of memories. We are all water logged and half loopy but would do it again in a heartbeat. Daniel ended the weekend with the best fish (Verm), I got biggest Ling and David got the best shot (I witnessed him line up a shot from an unbelievable distance and nail the very fish I was aiming at – a really epic shot)… he also got best sunburn. We all ended with huge bags of fillets and Daniel's goal was accomplished – at least 60lbs of fish. Our wives, co-workers and neighbors will be delighted for all the fish to eat in the next few days. A couple last thoughts: Why did we find no sheepsheads? I already got my 13lber in PG but I was quietly hoping for a bigger one. I was diving deep and looking often. I only saw 1 small female. Also, why do forecasts blow it so bad? 40kt wind? Yeah right! A gentle breeze at best. And I'm curious why we didn't see many lings? Are they more of a northern/colder water fish in general? Anyways, I hope you enjoyed the recap and I hope you enjoy the photos below (in no particular order). Video footage to come.

yatzmail@yahoo.com:
Thank you for a recap and sharing of your adventures.

LoletaEric:
This report has the excellence that this site is based on.  Out of sight, bro.  I felt like I was there without even looking at the photos.  Descriptions of the decisions you made to keep diving instead of doing a later dive and to drive home the last day instead of doing another round - great stuff, and what the sport is about.  Really a great writeup. 

Saucyangler89:
Looks like a great time!! good job fellas and awesome story!!

TheKeeneroo:
Thanks for taking the time to read!

Do you have any thoughts on why lings were so scarce down there?

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