RPT: Decent Ling last night 3/8

I thought I'd be diving less this year due to little Bella Love being born but due to all the family flying in to visit her, they all request fresh fish because it's rare to come by non-frozen fish in AZ/NY. We have 4 family members visiting this week and they took us to a super nice meal at our favorite spot (Jeninni Kitchen + Wine Bar in PG) - I personally think they had ulterior motives because over dinner they said, we hope you can cook us a nice fish meal... =P Totally not a problem because I love diving and cooking! So I got off work at 4:30p yesterday, had my gear in the car, jammed straight to the local honey hole and hopped in. Despite a super long surface swim, rain, crazy wind, low light and a decent surge, it was one of my favorite dives this year! It was fun knowing I had limited time just because I had to make all my drops count. I wanted to impress the family with great fish meat so it was even more of a "competitive" feeling of racing against the clock. Excellent visibility, fantastic structure, and thankfully it was super fishy! I cant believe how many small to midsized sheepshead are in the north of Sur area. Give them another year or two and they will be big boys. A few highlights were seeing the smallest ling I've ever found (like 8"), swimming down to a little chimney hole that had a 90 degree turn at the bottom and seeing a huge ling snout sticking out. It wasn't far enough out to shoot, and there was no way to angle my gun due to the width of the chimney so I took my stringer with a fish on it and dropped it in the hole hoping to coax it out... no luck even after a few minutes. I kept on swimming from spot to spot and I finally found the fish I was waiting for! A decent 28.75" ling  that I spooked on a drop down... didn't even see her underneath me. Thankfully she was spawned out so I had no remorse in pulling the trigger. Stone shot to the brain. I think I got it on GoPro but unfortunately the case flooded for the second time and killed my second of 3 Hero3+ cameras. I have one left... looks like I need new casing. I'm waiting for SD card to dry and I'll look at the footage. At one point, I found a small Monkeyface, decided it wasn't big enough based on the size of the head and as I kept scanning the cracks, found a big one right next door! I felt really bad because I shot it right in the face and down the body but my double flopper didn't deploy inside it's body and it wriggled off. I watched where it went down to and I made several attempts to find it again but no luck... I hate killing a fish that I don't harvest.  Afterward, I shot 2 average kelpies for some additional meat for anyone that wants 3rds at dinner tonight (that ling will easily feed the 6 of us).  I'll post some of the prepared food photos tomorrow although I'm not decided on how I will prepare it yet! Bon Apetite! Thanks for reading!

nicely done!  Good looking fish!

See any Big Perch Down There?

TON of perch. Decent sized ones and on the swim back in too. Definitely within casting range.

Dang, I was fishing near the Carmel lagoon from 4-6pm yesterday and the weather was gnarly...you definitely earned that fish!

Dang, I was fishing near the Carmel lagoon from 4-6pm yesterday and the weather was gnarly...you definitely earned that fish!

I've never dove where it sounded like there was a boat or something nearby but in reality it was the wind and rain pelting my snorkel and back of my head. haha I could actually tell which direction I was facing while underwater when I looked up because of the wind waves and ripples at the surface.

WTG! Beautiful Ling 

WTG! Beautiful Ling 

Thanks MooMoo! Will I meet you at Barryessa FnC?

Thanks for the nice report and pictures Eric.