I’ve been laid up with a knee injury for the last six or seven weeks.  I felt it was time to try out the knee and my new mirage drive in my Raptor G2.  I launched out of Santa Cruz Harbor about 6:30 or so on Easter morning.  One of my goals is to catch salmon off my kayak so I dusted off some salmon gear.  I have an old Les Davis Pink Lady I picked up at a yard sale about 30 years ago.  I never had used one before so I thought I’d try it.  I guess it was a practice run to become comfortable trolling with the gear.  First I stopped at the kelp bed outside the harbor to pick up some live bait, but no luck.  So I trolled out to the buoy.  I knew I wasn’t going to catch a salmon but I thought if I could get my rig on the bottom I might get lucky with a halibut or Ling Cod.  No luck.  I got out past the buoy and turned around.  I rigged up with some squid I had had in the freezer from last year.  I thought I’d do a slow troll back dragging the squid and tossed a small diamond jig with my bait rod.  Just inside the buoy I got a hit on the jig and pulled up a 6” King Fish. The first thing I thought of was “Thank you Jesus”.  It was like halibut candy from heaven.  I swapped out the squid with the King Fish.  I was a little surprised that this little King Fish was so far from home hanging out where the big fish live.  So I thought I’d give the guy a ride back to the beach.  We’d see who is luckier … either he’d go free or we made it back, or I’d get lucky and have an Easter dinner.  Well the little King Fish didn’t last long.  I had a nice take down and I was thinking Halibut but it turned out to be a four-foot shark.  Well the only lucky one was the shark.  That was my only set up for bait and I still had some squid left.  I tried to get a picture of the shark but I was more concerned about saving my set up and popped the shark off with the gaff.
Sorry to say, my knee wasn’t up to peddling on the return trip so I got my paddle out.  I already ordered a new electric trolling motor from Bixpy.  Hopefully, it will arrive in 2 or 3 weeks.  I will be looking forward to getting back out there.