Back in the game Ab dives sonoma and mendo coast.

Hey all, after a year hiatus (SP) I am finally back in the game. I made a few dive's this last week during the week before work at a couple of  local sonoma locations. During these dive's I found one ab that I would guess to be well over ten but  I  had no good angle to get the iron it, try ed couple of times  with no luck. So I made the choice to leave it behind and let it live insted of just randomly stabbing at it and killing it and not coming home with it.Saturday morning came around and Brandon, Greg and Stacy and my self made a boat dive at several locations all up and down the sonoma coast 10 hrs in the boat !!! with at least 7 hrs spent in the water looking for giants and I logged over 87 dives. Found lots of stellar diving but no tens. vis ranged from 3 to 15 ft depending on where we were at and the ocean was a lake. We hit up one spot that has yielded tens in the past. On my 3rd dive at this spot I found one that appeared to be a ten, try ed several times to get the gauge on it but no luck. So with no tags used yet I decided to take a gamble on it and take it. Dove down reached back in the hole and popped it. Once on the surface I started measuring and it was coming up a pubic hair short was still hopping I could get to click on the boat !!! Well once home we put the calipers on it and it 9.994 and weighed 9.75 pounds !!! Stacy ended up with a real nice fat nine, Greg another fatty 9.5 and brandon did not take any due no finding his standard of ten inches. Well day 2 Sunday, woke up and met up with Chad Watts and a buddy of his and loaded up and headed up to mendo. This time to a undisclosed spot !!!! Once there there we could tell it was nice butt a little wind chop and bump to it and vis was give or take 5 to 7 ft which is awesome for this spot. Well we were in the water for about 30 min when I look over to my amazement chad all ready had to giant tens which was his 13th and 14th life time !!! I continued to dive eventually finding to of my own which brings my life time totall to 21 and chads buddy Tim pulled 3.  All the Ab's ranged in from sizes of MINE 10.3 and some change weighing 9.8 pounds and a 10.2 and some change weighing 8.8 pounds and Chad's going 10.3 and 9.5 pounds and a 10.1 going a little over pounds, Tim did good as well with to fatty 9.5 + and one that went 9.9. So another awesome day of diving ! I think chad and his buddy spent a total of 4hrs in the water.  I spent a tad longer about 5 hrs and logged another 72 dives. Chad and I were both working hard to make the trifecta happen but no luck.  All I can say is I am exhausted and beat but it was worth it !!! heading to the lost coast next weekend.  attached is pic of my tens chads wanted his kids to be in his pic so as soon as he sends it to me I will post. Hope the report was not to boring and to hard to read with my horrible grammar and run on sentence.

Congrats Matt!

Glad you are now able to get back in the water and hunt again.

 

Sincerely,

Jim

Slugz right there!

oh forgot to mention in the report on sunday I did a double dip at another spot on the sonoma coast trying to get the trifecta but no luck at this spot I logged another 47 dives !!!! so in all over the weekend I managed to logg over 206 free dives over the weekend and not sure how many hrs in the water but what a great time !!!

Nice job, Matt! Welcome back to the water!

Thx guy's but I was never really out of the water just could not hunt !!! I still dove threw out the year !!!

Why couldnt you hunt? Thats wierd. Ear pressure?

I have allready explained why on here awhile back not going back down that road, it would be redundant and just want to mover forward also just happy to be diving and hunting.

Lol....right on Matt

 

Matt - nice job on taking a fat 9.9 even if it didn't hit that coveted yet arbitrary size of 10 inches. There is NOTHING wrong with a 9.75lb abalone!
Congrats...

Which would be better: a 9.2 that weighed 11lbs or a 10.1 that weighed 8.5lbs? I guess it would be a "good problem to have" but I'd assume more meat = better. I don't know, just wondering what the general consensus is.
Congrats on a solid wknd of diving Matt! Good luck on the LostCoast dive trip!

An 8.5 lb ten is nothing to scoff at but an 11lb 9 would be FAT. Depends if you're diving for shells or meat I guess.
I'd probably go for the 11lb 9.2!

Personelly I would like to se the definition of a trophy ab be determined by a formula something like this length + width + weight = trophy measurement !!! because I have taken tens that measure ten inches but are dwarfed by big nines in weight !!! Kinda like hunters do BOON AND CROKET I think they call it. That way you are taking into consideration more of the animal the whole thing not just length.  Just my 2 cents.