BH 7-3

Great group photo. WTG on the fish.
William102

WTHellHappened?

I hopped out of my kayak too soon, in about 4 feet of water, so by the time I dragged my yak near shore a small wave knocked it sideways just enough to catch the rod tip.

Only 3 chinas for me, all released.  Spent more time paddling than fishing, really.  The bait bustin everywhere was a trip for sure.

Nice report guys - congrats on a great day!

Thursday night people started bailing out on the trip, so Friday AM I'm heading over Bonnydoon Road at 5:30am wondering if i'm going to do this trip solo.Which means I'm not going to do this trip solo as this is my first Bean launch and after seeing the crash photos of previous trips, I'm not stupid.

But as I arrive there is a line of NCKA rides. I pull in , then Big Wave Dave behind me. Met MadDog, then EricB, on the beach met Ravensblack, Fishin Jay (did the new meds work?), and Piscean (such a showoff with his massive Lings and Halibuts  ).

Geared up and launched around 7:00am. We all headed south, split up and hunted or fishing grounds. I started in 30FOW, worked lead heads with white, root beer, green split tails. The white was my choice.. Started hooking Brown and Gophers. C&R'ed  most of them , kept one really big Brown and one big Gopher (is there such a thing? ).


Wondering why I'm not catching the big colored fishies (Cabs and Lings) I move out and in but by 10:30am, the bites off. The Brown decides to friggin freak out leaps up from the footwell and it's 4" dorsel pierces my wetsuit and into my calf. Where the hell is my fish meditator?? Right behind me, good night you SOB...

Decided to head in, waited out side the surfline, didn't like the look of the launch site, so I headed in about 75 yards south. Caught a wave, started to lose water under me, leaned way back and landed safe.


Dave came in next, turned out for whatever reason, the fish were in real close, like 10-20 fow.


It was great meeting everyone, and I will be back to the Bean hopefully next weekend when I get back from North Carolina.


Rich

Great report! Nice fishing guys, enjoyed the individual reports and pics. Piscean, nice play by play breakdown. Keep it up, guys

Looks like you all had a great day on the water with a beautiful grade and variety of fish WTG, I've yet to brave the Bean,,,,

As for the D-Blue, you see the sturgeon in my avatar, it was landed on an identical rod, didn't really expect to connect that day, love the rod but it has been confined to lighter service since then, didn't seen to have the backbone for sturgeon.

Contact D-blue, they seem to be great people to work with.

 Nice group of experienced anglers we had on Friday. Newbies had second thoughts and didn't show which was probably for the better. Three foot wave sets rolling through would have been trouble.
 My freezer has a good stock of fish so my plan was catch and release unless something special came up. Left my big jigstick in the holder all day and decided to use my old favorite spinning rod and reel with #10 line. Man I love fishing with the light salt water tackle, one ounce leadhead and 6"swimbait just kills em. First fish a nice thick blackie about 18", nice strong fighter made some good short runs. Next a nice brown about 16" both fish released to grow bigger. Mostly small tappers for the  next hour and then wamo big fish on, heavy pulls back and forth with my grin about as big as it gets without hurting. Up comes a nice ling which later measured 30 1/2", well I can find room for him in the freezer so on the stringer he goes. Fish bite seemed to slow for the next hour or so with the high tide. So everyone started looking for greener pastures and moved to new locations. I started getting sore buns and headed to my favorite spot I usually hit before returning to the beach. Fished for about twenty more minutes with only small hits no takers. Changed to a 5" pearl swimbait, drop down and wamo again except this time I can't move him. This fish runs short for ten or fifteen feet horizontally but still won't come up. Then he runs the other way about the same distance, damn this one is much bigger than the earlier ling. I make a couple of pumps up on him and back down he goes and I am thinking I have got to get him away from the rocks. So now I have my rod bent into a U shape and he is bumping along and then donk!! DOH!! Reel in my weightless line and at the end a clean cut. I got lazy earlier in the day and quit using #20 leader and tied directly with the #10, which works fine 99% of the time. School of hard knocks for me, oh well another lesson learned but damn that was a fun fight. Another one that got away story to keep me awake at night.

Great report, well written and fun to read too.

decided to use my old favorite spinning rod and reel with #10 line. Man I love fishing with the light salt water tackle, one ounce leadhead and 6"swimbait just kills em. First fish a nice thick blackie about 18", nice strong fighter made some good short runs.

I saw the battle with the black, it was worthy of the best fishing show, but wayyy better than anything on tv! I think I'll have to add one more rod to my aresenal & set up something in the 15lb range. Dave was having massive amounts of fun with that setup.

The ones that get away are the ones that keep us goin' back.

I hear you about the grin so big it almost hurt, had one of those all afternoon! Like this

We had fresh grilled spice rubbed halibut for dinner with fresh beets and greens and homemade polenta . Better than any meal you could buy. The leftover fish and polenta were warmed up for breakfast with eggs. I just love summer here on the coast!

Damn! The Bean is on fire!  WTG guys!!!

Now THATS a day to remember, Sean! Congrats man.
And congrats to everyone else too!

Boy there were some quality outings this weekend this one included. Thanks for sharing and congrats on the good catching.

-FF