LONG WEEKEND of Successful Spearfishing 5/17 and 5/19 report

5/17 - Tried shorediving a spot in Northern Big Sur that I've only ever taken my yak out of. Just my buddy and I with a "fun" entrance including a bit of a jump. Had to do a fair amount of swimming and looking to familiarize myself with the structure and look for good spots. Surprisingly, we had to hunt for a while before we found the first big guy (a sizeable cab) hiding in the very back of a thin long cave. I almost overlooked him because his head blended in so well. After that we started finding them. I went way down to my honey hole cave where I always pull at least 2 lings out of... but it was vacant. Bummer, I just swam about 400 yards to get over to it. My buddy was already pretty tired at this point, so I swam back and on the way in got a nice black and 2 monster perch (I don't care what word on the streets is, I like them, they are super easy to shoot, fillet and make tacos out of). I try to go for quality over quantity so as to save some fish for next time, and not kill more than I intend to eat.

5/19 - Pacifica (Marc) stayed at my place on Friday night and we met up with 2 other dive buddies, and we were stoked to go way south in Big Sur for the first time for spearfishing. I've cliff jumped here a number of times but never looked for fish. I THOUGHT it would be the PERFECT place as its pretty inconvenient to get to and limited on where you can hook and line from the cliffs. There were 2 other divers there and of the 6 of us, we saw (and didn't shoot) a total of 2 small perch... WHAT GIVES??? WHERE ARE THE FISH??? Not a SINGLE fish in sight whether in super shallow or 50ft range. I was looking in what should have been epic caves, holes, under rocks, everywhere. (ANY THOUGHTS ON WHY THERE WERE NO FISH IN THIS APPARENTLY AWESOME LOOKING AREA???). We all called it after about 1.5 hours of no fish. We figured it was only 11a and we had plenty of time to load back up in the truck and head back northward to one of our spots we know has fish. I have to admit, I was freezing, not feeling fantastic, and the thought of putting back on a cold wetsuit was not at all motivating... but I'm glad we all did it because we slayed them! The water was some of the best viz i've dove in this year, I found structure I didn't know existed, got a large rockfish right off the bat and started deep diving for bigger fish - which we found a couple more of. Pacifica finally got his first fish on the sling spear, which was awesome, and we ended up swimming with a curious harbor seal for a few minutes. The seal kept trying to get close to my stringer on my belt, which I assume was to eat the fish, so I had to gently kick him away a few times (my wife was super jealous upon telling her this story - she said she would have fed the cute puppers all the fish). It was a great day, LONG, we skipped lunch (mistake) but well worth the tiredness and hungry bellies. That was one of my favorite dive days I've had in a while due to the visibility and wildlife.

P.s. I didn't bring gopro along this trip, so I only have a picture of the fish in our sink, but its on my phone, so I'll upload it later. Also, I modified a body board to turn it into a dive float back back. It worked wonders to carry all my gear down on my back and kick around and over the kelp. Good stuff! I'll send photos separately.

Great report thanks!

On your question of, "Where are all the fish?" I can just give you the opinion I got from a good friend, who has a cabin in Big Sur. Like you, I dove what seemed like an awesome area- rocky, holes, caves, big structure and only shot one single rockie. No clouds of blues or big cabs back in the holes. My friend told me that what I didn't see is what sport fishing boat had worked the cove hard. He said if you watch them, they are basically parked for a few hours, tons of bait being put in the water, and literally every rockie, cab, ling ends up on the deck, then it's anchor up and away. Diver shows up and can't believe that it's "vacuum cleaner" clean. That's the only possible explanation I can throw out there....

Glad you finally found the fish.  Thanks for the great report TK.

On your question of, "Where are all the fish?" I can just give you the opinion I got from a good friend, who has a cabin in Big Sur. Like you, I dove what seemed like an awesome area- rocky, holes, caves, big structure and only shot one single rockie. No clouds of blues or big cabs back in the holes. My friend told me that what I didn't see is what sport fishing boat had worked the cove hard. He said if you watch them, they are basically parked for a few hours, tons of bait being put in the water, and literally every rockie, cab, ling ends up on the deck, then it's anchor up and away. Diver shows up and can't believe that it's "vacuum cleaner" clean. That's the only possible explanation I can throw out there....

I'd love to know the cove your talking about if you're up for PMing me. The cove we went to seems like a bit of a ride from any boat launch but that's the only explanation I can think of... unless there is some weird chemical/mineral coming from any run off that the fish don't like.

Awesome report! Thanks for the entertaining read.