I have a flip and stow style and I'm having a hard time getting leverage to raise my sailing rudder. It's almost twice the surface area of the stock rudder and that even had a lot of resistance. It's at the point where my lever is bending when I engage it and that's without forward momentum which is even worse. Any retrofitting tips for this issue? Thanks in advance.
                          CoS

do any of you use them? I'd like to see how you have them mounted and am curious how they're working out for you. I've been fishing out of the kelp in the fog the last three times I've gone out. A friend gave me a reflector, but he suggested that I mount it like six feet high out of  a rod holder. Kind of awkward and high CG that way. I would like to mount it bow or stern and was hoping that it would still work right off the deck. I'm going to get a light too. thanks                            CoS

rough draft...any thoughts on braking? not really any major hills from home to the water and it's only nine blocks but I don't want that tank slamming into my tire while I'm stopping for traffic.  I'm trying to keep it budget...
                                  thanks     CoS

this is off our local board. it's not my story, but it's a classic. i'll post the rest when it's up


As we run north to the fishing grounds, which will be crashing with Atun, I lather myself with a bottled concoction that promises to keep me safe from the searing Baja sun. As we arrive and slide up next to the 50 other miscellaneous boats, pangas, cruisers, and other hydro conveyances that arrived before us, I notice one thing. There are bent rods everywhere. The deck hand throws a handful of bait and pins a sardine to the hook I had carefully tied the night before and flips it over the side. I let the bait free spool out in the area where the other bait was thrown and carefully thumb the spool leaving just enough tension to prevent a backlash. I can feel the action of the bait and just as I am getting used to the electric pulsing of the sardine, I feel it. Frantic action of the bait, followed by the absence of electric bait pulse, the line starts to peel from the reel. I am compelled to jerk the rod, but know with the circle hook at the end that this will result in immediate disappointment. So I wait. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Slide the drag forward to the stop and lift the rod. Hook up. The line starts to peel from the reel and I know that I am on as the fish makes the first run. This comes with the realization that it is not a big yellow fin and something smaller. As I bring the fish closer to the boat I realize that it is only a 10 pound Bonita with the heart of a 40 pound yellow fin. He is quickly released and I drop down for another try. Same story, POW, immediate hook up and another Bonita. This is followed by several others, and the realization comes that we are on a wide open cat food bite. Having lost all my cats in the road in years past, I decide to outsmart them. I will put on some weight and get below the Bonita to the large yellow fin that I know are lurking below. 3 ounces ought to get this bait down there below the Boneheads. I send it down and miraculously get through the assault of Boneheads breaking around the boat. As I wait for the big yellow fin to pick up the bait on the way down I watch the line roll off of my favorite Avet 2 speed reel. The blue anodized frame seems to fit nicely with the color of the surrounding sea. Then all of the sudden the line stops. What is this? Maybe the World record yellow fin has just taken my bait and getting ready to make his first run. I wait and there is nothing. What is this, a bottom to a sea where there are tuna biting? Not possible? Back home in the Albacore bite we never hit the bottom with bait. Hmmm. Just as I realize that there is actually a bottom in the Sea of Cortez, where the giant tuna live and the billfish are a nuisance, I feel a little something messing with my friend the sardine. Okay, my lucky day, I’m sure one of those huge black sea bass that I have seen plastered all over the walls of the fishing stores and heard stories of epic battles with 300 pounders, has picked up the bait. So I wait, knowing that a quick jerk of the circle hook will snatch the bait from the monsters’ mouth, I wait. I do bring the action to the attention of the fools who jeered me for running back to the room to retrieve this rod. I then proceed to getting ready to shame these fools with setting the hook on the world record black sea bass and as I tension the rod I forget one thing. The special concoction that is protecting me from the sun has also reduced the friction on the forearm where I wedge this fish killer that some call a rod. As I pull and watch the rod bend with the weight of the monster of the deep, I feel the slipping of the rod from under my forearm. I watch in amazement as the rod takes flight into the morning air. I realize that no part of my body is touching my favorite rod as it vaults through the air with my new Avet 2 speed reel attached. I am also aware that the fish on the other end is a world record fish. I, with much less grace than the rod, launch myself into the air in pursuit of the rod and the world record fish. At 0930 hours on 16August, 2007, I successfully achieved weightlessness over the Sea of Cortez. Not so much can be said for my trusty rod with the Avet 2 speed reel, which is laden with 300 pounds of black sea bass and approaching terminal velocity as it splashes down into the deep blue water.
To be continued…

Finally got the weather to run south for some bottom fishing. So much wind I forgot about even going south. Epic weather all day though. Fishing was a little slow for that area, but still with quality fish. Ended up with near limits for four of us, with six lings and two cabbies on top. Released one ling that went over 40" easy and caught several reds that were as wide as they were long.

Launched at 8 at Spooners and went out to about 50' and dropped my Megabait about five feet and stopped it to check my drag and I got in a wide open black and blue bite for about ten minutes. Some of the best quality fish I've seen of either two species around here. Released all but one black, because of gill damage and that fish was about 3lbs. Could have limited with nice fish in half hour easy. Figured if the bite was good there then the reds and lings could be on too. So I worked out to about 100' and started dragging the big swimbait for a few with nothing. Then I see this tight little surface bait ball and wound up and threw my iron in it and wammo about 20' down... got to my leader and saw a nice red blur then gone. I set the hook so hard on that fish. Maybee too hard.  Threw back in the same spot and ended up gettin about a 4lbs. red out of it then the baitball disapeared and so did the fish. Pretty fun fishing reds baja style though. I worked that area with the swimbait and the iron for awhile with lots of random fish, but no reds or lings. Got a small olive to the boat with a mean bite mark on it. I didn't even feel it happen, but that was probably a pretty fatty ling though. On the way in I peddled and cast and retrieved the megabait in front of me all the way to the cove and caught fish almost every cast.  It was pretty classic on the light rod. Fun day and nobody else out? Windy by noon. Siesta by one.
                          CoS

My boat came in Wednesday and I didn't get a chance to fish till Friday after work. The conditions weren't great for open ocean, so I decided to try the backbay (Morro Bay). The launch is 5 minutes from my house in Los Osos and I've never fished the backbay!? There's been some scratchy flatty fishing there this year, so I figured that or bat rays and leopard sharks. Didn't try the sabiki, but there was tons of nice sized chovies. I heard that guys haven't been able to sabiki them up so I just dragged a small swimbait. I was just slow trolling the swimbait near the bottom and letting it back down to bump the mud every once in awhile and after about fifteen minutes I felt a little weight and some life on the end of it. I gave it a big hook set and  ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ........ZZZZZ....ZZZzzzzzz... Good thing I had my drag light, because it ran the oposite direction my tip was pointed. Behind me and to the right. I turned my boat to it and went for a good ten minute ride back and forth across the harbor and by the time I got it to the boat I was in the middle of the oyster farm! It was a solid sized bat ray (15lbs?) foul hooked in the shoulder. It was pissed! Took me five minutes to get my jig back.  I'd never handled a ray before and wasn't sure what kind of defense mechanisms they have. Pretty much just hard to grab.  No photos for that though.
     Then Saturday morning a friend and I launched at Spooners in Los Osos at about 8, because the fog's been pretty thick. By the time we got lines in the conditions were sweet. A lite south wind with a good south drift.  Fishing was pretty slow most of the morning. Got one small red and gophers on the iron and nothing on the 7" swimbait. Then some local kids showed up and fished the same area and started banging the reds on dead squid. I don't usually use dead bait for rockfish, but it was money that day. So I just kept fishing my trusty swimbait hard and WHAMMO!  Nice long fight in about 100 FOW. Ended up with a ling that was 33.5" when I measured it at home. I measured it on the boat and it was looking like about 32" so it's nice to get the extra inch or two in. It was plugged with two nice sized octopus'. Greedy bastard. So the new boat's been great all around.
       Oh ya... we got a great show from some breaching humpbacks and they gave us a nice swimby. I'm going to try to post some pics below.
                                    peace    CoS