Linda mar from below

Okay, been spackling and sanding and priming and painting and moving.  This is my first chance to post in days...  

Got up when it was still dark and met granitedive at 6 on linda mar, he was about ready to launch so I agreed to catch up with him.  Got out myself about half an hour later and found him on the point, where it was a bit rough, so we pulled back to 'the wreck', which is kind of south of the point near the end, and near a washrock that's pretty far off (the cause of the wreck?).  

I was kind of expecting the usual rock bottom kind of stuff in most of this area, but when they call it 'the wreck', they're talking about one heck of a pile of ship-bones.  We anchored in 25' and jumped in.  Vis was about 8' up top, but dropped off to 4-6' on the bottom.  This is the first time I've ever seen visibility go down as I went down - very wierd.  On my first dive I saw a lingcod, but I couldn't instantly verify if he was legal or not, so I let him be.  The bottom everywhere was strewn with pipes, beams and walls of ship-parts.  Granitedive had suggested a flashlight and I quickly understood why, those walls made caves that were as deep as 4', and could hide monster lings.  Unfortunately I didn't have a light.  There were huge perch everywhere, but the last one I shot tasted like soggy crap so I left them be too.  At one point I saw a 8" blue.  And another time I saw a greenling that went into evasive action, zig-zagging back and forth in front of me several times before zipping off.  I'd worked my way into about 15' of water at this point.

Granite came by after a while and reccomend I follow his floatline down to a hole where a ling's head was sticking out.  I swam back to his float and headed down following the directions, past the gun, just past the orange starfish and sticking out of a hole...  Unfortunately there were a couple orange starfish and the pile of beams here was about 4' deep - picture a trailer park post tornado, magnified 4x.  I couldn't pick out a ling and it was about 25' deep here so my bottom time was pretty limited.   Once I got back up and took a breath, something grabbed both my calves.  I looked down to see a big impish grin around a snorkel.  For some reason that wasn't as scary as you'd think, I was happy that I didn't panic too much.

I dove a little bit more, but then started feeling a little ill, so I re-boarded my yak and tried to recover, but ended up wholesale puking over the side.  That's the first time I've gotten that seasick, I guess I've lost my sea-gut doing mostly sturgeon and shore fishing all winter, or maybe getting up so early leaves me weak.  Anyway, no way to win that battle but to keep going out until it stops.

Ended the day without taking a shot, but I did get to rinse my gear off in a 15x40' fenced RV slot for the first time.  A guy with scuba gear had a 26" flounder that coulda passed for a halibut size-wise.  But I guess the halibut are still kind of thin out there.  Probably at the rockwall...

Promethean showed up just as I was shoving off to meet my friend from Shelter Cove, who never showed up (probably due to a 3 week old baby). Shelter was Maytag City so Promethe and I paddled back to the Point and dove the wreck. Not that much happening compared to what it's been; maybe it's the lull between the breeding season and the bait season. Speared one smallish blue only, inspite of Josh's chumming efforts. After he paddled in I continued on into the bay and started looking for 'butts. Lots of company from tank divers. I dove and dove and dove, then one-upped Promethe on the chumming when I had to make a shore-side rest-stop - not too much privacy with the minus tide leaving all the big hiding rocks far from the water's edge.
    After hours of freediving I finally spotted my dream date in the rocks of all places. She turned out to be 17 lbs. and the earliest in the year flattie I've gotten. Yahoo! Only 2 other guys got lucky, one with a 21 lb.
     Josh, come back and try again. The green water is a little disorienting, but it's prolific too.

Gnarly butt divers

OK, that didn't work. Let's try again.




Success!

Beautiful.... Congrats!
I guess it's time to start fishing for butts around Linda Mar.

That's awesome, glad it payed off.  I may well be back out again this weekend.

Josh and Rich.......is the shipwreck right next to the "nipple" - I guess Josh refered to it as the "wash rock"? I'm just trying to figure out the specific location - I remember snagging a lot of my rockfish jigs in that area.

The rock was pretty nippular looking.  Definitely snag city...

Granite Dive,

That is totally AWESOME!!!  Congrats to you and the other guy.

Stuart

~ 1/2 way between nipple and drain pipe on hill