Ab opener

I carpooled with a guy from norcal to fort ross, with all the rain in the morning we were worried, even had to ford a 1' deep flood at one point.  But the sun came out and the vis was even decent at 6-8ft.  The water was kind of choppy so we stayed inside the cove and tried behind the rock on the very eastern point.  It drops off pretty fast there, but there was plenty of abalone habitat to go through.  Still, the pickings on abalone were mediocre, usually I dive outside the cove and they must be a little thinner where the shoredivers can get at em. 

My new flashlight was helpful, though there was some confusion on my first descent when I went to clear my ears and both hands were full!  I ended up leaving the iron on the bottom with the floatline and clearing with my right hand while holding the light with the left.  The light did let me work in an area that was filled with foam from the nearby washrock.  It was very dark under it and nobody else was diving there.  The foam was also full of those little blue jellyfish to make things interesting when the snorkel flooded. I was surprised to find little caves with the flashlight, when I've never really found such holes without one.  I really like having the thing, but just have to get used to operating it.  It'd be sweet if it could attach to the back of my hand or wrist somehow.

I had been expecting 2' vis, so I'd brought my polespear, I peeked in a few hidey holes, but nobody was home and I didn't see any fish except a few little perch skitting around at the edge of the visibility so I didn't even take the spear off the yak.  One of the other norcal guys popped a limit of lings somewhere outside the cove though, there's some good divers in that bunch!

Last, my new freediving fins worked great.  It was amazing how much lighter they felt than my old heavy fins.  I broke my previous depth record of ~23' and got to 25' (my floatline is 25 exactly before a short rope and bouy).  I guess I could do more, but that was the deepest spot that was handy.  I made a pair of finkeepers out of velcro and 2" wide nylon strap. They worked quite well, probably more secure than the retail version, and also kept the zippers on my wetsuit cuffs zipped.  Perhaps I'll develop a velcro fastener to attach the light to the back of my hand in a similar manner.

Promo~
What kind of dive light did you end up getting?? I like the idea of having the dive light attatched to the back of your wrist. I just bought an industrial sewimg machine to do some heavy duty stitching on layers of nylon webbing so I might be able to come up with something for you. Let me know what kind of light you have and I will see what I can do.

that sounds like so much fun! i cant wait to head up north in a couple of weeks for abalone!

I pulled into Fort Ross and looked at the water from the bluff.  It looked like coffee so we went up and dove at Fisk Mill Cove.  We had a solid 8-10 ft. vis.  I saw one small ling and shot 1 olive rockfish.  There were several schools of blues that had to be 50 or more fish.  We were really looking for lings.  We popped our abs and then went on to finish the weekend with a nice Tom Turkey.  That is a new trifecta for me. Ab, rockfish,turkey.  We tried to throw a pig into the mix but couldn't make it happen.  We saw 3 but they must have winded us and we never got a shot.

I as well went out for the opener, although we got our ab's the conditions we not the best. The surf was big, and visibility was not the best either. I did end up diving deeper than I usually do to get away from the surge. We had our choice of ab's the biggest for the weekend was 9 1/4, my biggest ever. Now I am ready for Salmon. Savage it is time for another epic trip, and by the looks of your report, your the man to go with.

Joe

My light is an ikelite pca.

Though the water was choppy, I felt the visibility was about average.  Going past the russian river it looked like mocha out there.  We were glad to see that diluted by the time we reached ross.

Great job! Looked like fine weather too. Im jonesing for some abs big time!

Bigeye,

Sounds like a fantastic weekend.  The porker would have been icing on the cake.

Stuart

He's sniveling!  He shot 5 pigs on Wednesday...he's a maniac!!!  Awesome tri-fecta Dave.