ok, joel, you can cry now

Great Job fellas.  I wish I could have gone, I should have but that is way it goes sometimes.  Alan you did a job great guiding those guys to fish.  Way to go.

Jason

i took a look at the boat this morning. it's the cleanest it's been since the day i bought it. thank you, gentlemen!

judging by the radar, we were only between 3-5 miles offshore, slightly south of san gregorio.  for you, chris, there are very few spots that i could consider "out of range!"

on a reasonable weather day, i think we should be able to carry myself, one deckie, four yakkers and four yaks.  the boat is certainly big enough.  we just need to figure out a rack system of some sort.  my only concern would be where to put all those fish!

http://www.barewest.com/

Above is a link to a Wakeboarding rack website. Obviously it wouldn't be something to hold a kayak or fit a Gradywhite.  However evolving similar technology and architecture to fit  boat and other similar boats may help maximize loading efficiency and capacity. 

Just a thought for the engineers of the website.

Jason

looks like we hit the weather window just right!

Tough day out there. Wanted to go to Bodega but heard it dried up so switched plans and went to Pescadero for rockcod. The wind blew 15-20 mph all morning and finally started to come down in the mid afternoon. Drift was so fast even with a drift sock I used a 16 oz diamond bar in 35 feet of water to keep it vertical enough to keep from being snagged. Finished the day with Three jumbo Lings, one 20# halibut and twenty seven rockcod for four. One nice thing was the sun was out and it was not cold, T-shirt weather and it beat the dickins out of staying home.

Talked to Tag, Shodan, who was fishing just North of us and he was having a tough time also.

that is a really cool adventure.  by the way alan, those old penn reels you refurbished for me have been working well as loaners for guests on my big boat.  penn  mag 525 and penn 209 i believe.

Holy Mackerel!

What a great trip and great story.

Sign me up for the next one!

MolBasser

OK...I'm crying now 

Hope I can make the next trip! 

Man, what a great trip. Thanks Alan, for having me on board. The weather was perfect and the fishing was good. It was nice to meet and fish with you guys, John and Freddie. Nice to see ya again, ChuckE.
John, you rigged up Alan's boat perfectly.

I think I had the smallest stringer of us all. Freddie'd reds were huge, biggest rockfish I've ever seen in person. Can't wait to do it again.

On the tuna front, I think it's very possible. Deploy the yaks and the boat can troll up some fish and keep em on and troll near the yaks to bring the school up into sliding range(livebait/jig).

Thanks again Alan and thank you fellas for making this one of the best fishing trips I've ever been on.

What a blast!
Tuna fishing sounds like fun too. I don't need to bring a yak, but my 62" Riffe speargun would love to come along!

Man... I guess some people are just hard to impress. I usually like to just let the picts do the talking for me. No big ling, no limit of anything but, it was still a heavy stringer. This was one of the best rock fish stringers that I've put together in a while.

Deeeeeeamn!!!  Look at those stringers!!!

I'm still amazed by the size of those reds.

Freddie: Did you weigh any of those reds?

Hey J,

That is a nice stringer of fish! How many pound did you ended up getting?


Freddie look like you need to get another fish clip

great job guys!

freddie, that one of you with the stringer is great!

Alien, I did not weigh any of mine (no scale).  But I've seen
coastside reports where a 21" red goes 9-10lbs, so I think a few of
those rockfish we caught that day were double digits.  I think if we
launch bean hollow and paddle 280 degrees for 2.5 miles, we'd be on
them. no worse than a salmon attempt. my stringer looks a little like
yours from the other day, eh? a ling, some blues and some bigger
rockfish, you had more reds than me! plus you were on a kayak.

Well, I will post a long one with some reflections on what I learned
here.

It is true that the fishing is almost surely still better in carmel
bay, ft. ross, elk, big sur, etc, but it was good fishing for being on
my own highly populated and well-hammered section of coast. We also
did not have a big fleet right on us all the time, which I like. Plus
I don't think we used any bait or scent or anything, just basic
plastic and metal and feathers. very relaxing simple fishing. whole
squid would surely have caught more in the deeper water.

It is fun watching freddie. I had a floater gopher on my stringer, he
had 4 or 5 reds before we even tried the deeper water.  My own theory
is that he just does the basics real well, there are no secrets. the
basics being jigging 4-6oz iron with a hoochie teaser with spectra and
a sensitive rod. no secrets, but no wasted motions either. he's either
jigging, stuck on the bottom, or landing a fish. he doesn't miss
strikes and he doesn't waste time tying and trying wacky rigs.  good
luck trying to duplicate what he does, chuckE knows, he is no slouch
but fishing next to freddie is tough.

It was kind of the same with alan t. he just fished 6" swimbaits. if
it got too deep to get to the bottom, he'd just cast up drift and let
it scope out a bit after.  Both those guys just did the basics and
were real consistent.

pat went with iron and plastics and got a lot of strikes, but some
short strikes on the plastic and had some snags that cost him time. he
was fishing with mono which is harder to unsnag/break off for me and
definitely less sensitive. If we crossed lines, I always felt it
first. but he had the first ling into the boat and advised me to my
biggest strike on a smelt-like 7" swimbait (fish came unbuttoned a
few minutes into the fight and I still think was a 'but).

I tried everything as usual with mixed results. an anchovy megabait
was very efficient on the schooling blues. I had a streak where I had
a lot of nicely lip hooked and released fish. One assist hook on the
tail made it real easy to unhook them (tiny barb, pliers grip the
shrink wrap great, just turn the hook, they fall off and swim away)
and actually pretty easy to hook them too. I kept what felt like one
or two for the smoker, but was actually 4 or 5, so I might have hooked
10-15 in that streak. Later the giant iron in the deep water produced
for me.  shrimp fly teasers worked but were counterproductive cause it
made it harder to detect strikes on the main lure and the fish on the
fly were smaller. But if the fishing were slower, I would use them,
otherwise I'd go with one big lure and two hooks.

plastic worked great but my plastic was mostly high action, fragile
big hammer swimbaits, vs say alan t.'s berkley swimbaits.  Mine got
shredded in shallow and were not heavy or streamlined enough for the
deeper water for me to stay vertical. my 7" fishtrap with stinger hook
worked in the shallow and medium water and I had fish on my stinger
until finally the stinger broke off.  The rod I used was sensitive
enough for me to feel most strikes (cheap catera IM-8 steelhead rod).
for a reel I used a tiny abu 4600 highly customized for the heck of it
(no levelwind, power handle, steel pinion, carbon fiber drag) and 120
yards of 20lb fireline.  I only lost one iron the whole day and it
caught a copper first. I did almost get spooled on that snag tho.

okay, enough from me, sometimes it helps me to learn if I can write it
down. once I write it down, I figure I might as well post it for somebody
learning like me.

J


 

I usually like to just let the picts do the talking for me.

The eyes on that vermillion looks like a meal in itself!