HMB tourney

few more photos...

I'll second Bill's props on the Jambalaya.  Tasty!  Thanks again Bill & Chuck for all your hard work organizing the event.  Great people, great location, great food, great fishing - wait a minute, I'm getting a little carried away here!  My friend Mark and I had a great time despite the slow fishing (at least for us).  It seems like local knowledge (or at least a FF) were keys to success.  I had neither.    PP turned out to be a great spot for us newbies, who could try the ocean but retreat to the safety (and smoothness) of the harbor and still have a chance at catching a fish (although we didn't).  I too am anxious to hear the story of the sinking kayak - I saw the guy going down near the sailboat dock then bring it back to shore.  He was telling someone about it once he got to shore but I didn't catch it - all I heard was that he wanted to find the guy who organized the tourny so he could get his money back!   I'll be looking forward to more hookups with you guys at LM and HMB, so I can use my new Fish Gripper on some actual fish (tried it out on the kids last night though - works great!).


Andy

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Sounds like everyone had a great time except for the guy with the sinking Kayak?  See you all at the Elk Tournament.

John

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My day started out at 3:am with little sleep and still beer buzzed from the neighbors party that lasted past midnight. I arrived at HMB Yacht club around 5:am. with Brian G. right behind me. We got the yaks set-up and headed out with the fleet of NCKA Yakers.

As soon as I got out of the jaws of the harbor I could barley see some of the guys, through the fog, already in the chop working there way into the fishing grounds towards the Maverick. I was hesitant to follow there course and at the same time I hear Stewart on the VHF that he was going around. A few minutes latter I see him appear on my starboard side. I was going to fallow him but was afraid that if I change my course I would get broadside and capsize. So,  I just kept my bow toward the chop and headed straight to the green can and fished for an hour with just a few missed hits. Zero fish for me.

I started to feel a little sick after hearing Allen B. on the VHF describing the motion of the Ocean to Brian G. (That was good Allen and I usually never get seasick) Anyhow, I headed in after that and just hung out with Brian G. at the bar.

It was nice to see all the familiar faces and good to meet the new ones.  Hope to see all of you again in the up-coming Elk event.

Thanks again every body for the great company shared! And thanks Bill for pulling my number to win the Hobie Polarized sunglasses. :


Alex  

Had a great time, 1st time at HMB to fish. Thanks James for showing me around, The swells and the rocks freaked me out a little. But I still had a great time. It was great being around all the fellow kayakers, great BBQ and raffle.
I came home with 5 rock fish, the last one was the biggest Blue/Black? (look the same to me) I've ever caught.

I was just trying to get the birds nest out of my reel, when it slamed my swim bait.

Congrats to the winners, and Thanks to Bill and everyone for a great day.

Craigh

I started out fishing with Allen / scallen and James / Sharkbait. We paddled out of the Harbor and kept our eyes on the big waves braking on the reef line. I saw a window between the 2 boilers and Chris/cpyak joined me as we paddled through.....once we passed the reef line, we thought we were on the safe zone until we got hit by a surge of whitewater. I checked to see the dept on my FF and saw 8 FEET   We quickly paddled out that particular spot before another wave came in.

Allen and James came caught up after and we headed out for deeper water. We found a ledge that dropped from 30 to 55 feet and fished the area for about 20 minutes - no joy - so we paddled around hoping to find more drop offs. I saw a few kelp stalks in 20 ft and started casting an all black fish trap (that I had ordered from Bill) right past the stalk and retrieving it back up and down the water column. Sure enough, a fish followed my fish trap back to the yak and it had it's mouth on the paddle tail of the Ftrap. (should have put a stinger hook on the Ftrap - jmairey style) Since the fishing was slow, I decided to experiment and started to troll the black swimbait around the reefs. I managed to hook on to a nice black RF on the troll. I tried trolling for another half hour - no joy - and so I  decided to drop an iron baited with a frozen squid head and began to catch smaller RF. At the end, I just kept one good black for the BBQ.

Paddled back and saw Mike's son, Jackson -  fishing in the Harbor right next to the rockwall - he was keeping himself busy with the smaller rockfish. So I figured I'd slow troll my swimbait towards the HMB Yacht Club and hope for a Hail Mary Halibut...and all I got was a big glob of seaweed I knew then it was time to quit and enjoy the rest of the day with my comrads = eating, drinking and story telling  

Another great day spent with the NCKA crew  

Just a note to all the people that fished HMB for the first time this weekend. It is generally not that bad swell wise durng the summer months so don't let the conditions we had sour your taste for that place. That was the worse I have seen it, I think I saw mavericks break once while I was out there.

The fishing is generally better than what it was yesterday as well but I think the swell really messes with the bite there since a lot of the reefs are pretty shallow.

Since the kayak and canoe lot was full of yaksters, I parked down the road and launched from
another beach in the harbor at around 6AM.  Never fished HMB before, so I followed some
dude out of the harbor entrance and straight towards the green can.  I'm glad he knew where
he was going!  Fished for a while in the rock flats 50-60 ft for nothing.  Then moved
closer to the breakers and began to hook a few small rock fish on a diamond jig or
swim bait.  I didn't catch anything in more than 30 ft of water, seemed like the shallow
areas were where the fish were.  I caught maybe a half dozen rock fish; some of them
pretty large.  Also reeled in 1 cab on a swimbait but was too small.  Hooked into something
else that felt pretty big.  With my gaff at the ready this fish came off just beneath me
and I never got a glimpse of what it was.  Around 10:30 or so I headed back towards the
horn at the harbor entrance, was too foggy to see anything.