Taste the Rainbow (RPT: w Pics)

Pics below.

What an excellent weekend. Spent all Saturday filming at the aquarium on a segment being produced about handicapped kids getting to "Scuba dive" in the aquarium tide pool then got to go on a date (just the 2 of us) for the first time since Bella was born almost 5 months ago! On Sunday, I had a super short window after church to dive, clean fish, make ceviche and show up to a potluck at 4. I knew huge fish probably weren't in my cards and I needed enough meat to make a hefty portion of ceviche. I typically only take 2-3 fish on a given dive, but knew I'd have to go for more today, especially if I didn't find any lunkers. So I decided to charge a local spot instead of going down to N. Sur. Been a while since I dove it, mainly because of how far of a surface swim it is and how deep you have to go to hit bottom, but I'm REALLY glad I did.

First, as I was pulling up, there was another dude solo diving. I asked what his plan for diving (depth, time frame etc) was, and we thought it would make both of our SOs happy if we didn't dive solo. He wasn't familiar with the area, so I pointed us out to sea and we were greeted with decent sized rollers and pretty poor visibility. Not a problem! Where we were diving was super fishy. My carbon fins are being cleaned and reglued so I broke out my plastics and man I forgot how hard you have to kick with those things! The surface swim alone was pretty tiring. My very first drop after catching my breath, I dove down, couldn't see, couldn't see, couldn't see then finally some structure started to appear. I landed right on a nice little crack and at the bottom was an unmistakable fish! One I had hoped to see, but had not yet seen in the wild - a Lipstick Bass (aka Treefish)!!!  I did what any reasonable, sustainably minded diver would do, and shot it in the face.  Then a rather admirably sized olive was swimming in a school of blues - sleepy time - brain to belly. A rather poorly camouflaged cabezon was sitting out on top of a couple rocks, so with full lungs, I unbanded one of the bands, and gave him the night night spear. Next, a curious kelpie basically swam up to me and put itself on the spear. The last fish, was the unfortunate one. I can't be the only one who dives into a school of blues, takes his sweet time finding the biggest one on the outskirts of the school, and shoots it only to discover it's actually pretty small. Darn optical illusions.

It was about that time that I knew I was needing to head in, so I swim over to my new buddy Joe P. to inform him that we're actually on pretty good structure (lots of tall pinnacles) for sheephead, so keep an eye out. Right as I get up to him he starts hollering about shooting a sheephead but it was stuck in a cave on the bottom. I swam down, dislodged it and he reeled up a really admirable female. He hollered even louder when he saw the size. It as probably in the 12-15# range (24") which is great for that area. I knew that if the female got that big, there had to be a bigger male, so I did a couple more drops to no avail. The wind was strong, the vis was bad, and the waves were building, so we called it and went back in.

I was 4/5 on stone shots yesterday and came home with a rainbow of a stringer. Cleaned the fish asap, blanched them, chopped a ton of veggies for ceviche, jumped in the shower, helped get the wife and bebe ready, and off we went to a great evening of food and friends. What a weekend!







I didn't want to spot burn the only 1/2 way decent dive spot near my house, so I tried to take the photo in hopes you don't recognize any landmarks. 

Hey, I know that snowy point ! 

Nice looking stringer. Very cool to see a treefish !

Hey, I know that snowy point ! 

Nice looking stringer. Very cool to see a treefish !

Nothing like a winter snow in Monterey to bring out the lipstick bass! =P

Wow great dive!  And I really enjoyed the read thanks!