Van Damme, 7-29, rockfish, caves and other invertibrates

Met up with Pescador and Amphibian yesterday at Van Damme to do some rockfishing.  We fished the main North reef for an hour for nothing!!  It was the slowest I have ever experienced the bite there, so we started heading south.  Picked off a few of the usual suspects (gophers, blues, etc.).  Amphibian had to take off which was too bad as the bite turned on some after he departed.  We went down to a few big reefs on the outside to the south a mile or so and had a pretty steady pick at the gophers, greenling, china's and all the blues you could shake off.  I literally caught a limit of greenling, all released except for two of course.  Dave managed to pick off one Red and I caught an underling, but that was about it for the fish.  I did bring home a limit, including some mortally wounded gophers caught deep and we had a nice seared rockfish in a white wine lemon butter reduction with capers and dill.

Beyond the smallish rockfish, I did manage to capture not one, but two sea cucumbers, and a seastar, all on the megabait using assist hooks. 

Dave took me for a cave and secret cove(s) tour on the way back to the parking lot, very sweet indeed!!

Nice weather and dinner to boot.....I love vacation.   

Excellent Adventure!!  Thanks for the pics and details....reads like a GoodOl'Fashioned NCKA hookup to hook some RF...and other seacreatures than might get in the way
those shots get me UP!

I love Van Damme, There's some really cool stuff north and south,

I gotta week scheduled there end of Sept can't wait!!!! was gonna do the first week of Oct like we did last year when they closed rockfish season on Oct 1.  

Thanks for the report

I'm still learning the Yak thing and I have to get out there just to see the caves!!! Thanks for the pics.

fantastic pictures.  have to do that cave thing sometime, looks so fun

A great day with good company.  I'm not sure what Norm sees in catching those cucumbers though.  I think he caught two of them. Oh well.  Other than his fixation with inverts he's great company.

We must have hit Gopher-ville.  I think I got about a dozen of those things and also a bunch of Chinas.  They fight like a sack of crap.  After the initial strike, you know it's a gopher or china, because its just dead weight.  I came home with plenty of rockfish for the freezer, but the grade was poor:  blues, chinas, and gophers, just the sure morts.  Funny, Norm couldn't keep geenlings off, but I only caught one.

I've got good mapping software here at work.  I think I'm going to plot all the caves I know out of Mendo, Russian Gulch and Van Damme and post them on the site.  They're pretty fun on nice days like yesterday.

The buoy sounded pretty flat yesterday. Was it so at VD?

The buoy sounded pretty flat yesterday. Was it so at VD?

Yeah, fairly flat.

WOW, nice lookin' day out there. 

Urchin city on the other side of the cave.

Great report and pics, indeed!   The cave looks like something from the movies of some great adventure in some exotic place.    I suppose it was exactly that. 

Ive gotta get up there and give that a try.

Urchin city on the other side of the cave.

Uuuuuuuunnnnnnniiiiiiiii! Yummy!

Ive gotta get up there and give that a try.

Me too!

Sorry about bailing. I got seasick and started blowing chunks. I went to Albion Thur and caught a 24" vermillion. Mooch took pictures so they should be up after the weekend. Thanks for the advice you gave me out there.