Garapata spearfishing

I thought about trying a new place today. Ended up diving out of one of the turnouts in Garapata SP. Followed a long ravine down to the water. But as soon as I swim out, I kind of regretted. The vis was 15 ft, but the bottom drops off dramatically. It went to 50 ft+ not 20 yards from shores. Plus I can hear the loud barking from the sealions, made me have second thoughts on the man in the grey suit in that murky deep water. Found a big washrock nearby, the water is a bit shallow there and stayed in the thick kelp bed the whole time. Took me 4 1/2 hours to scratch up a limit of various colored rockfish. Found a small crack with 6 black&yellow in it having a group meeting, too bad I didn't take my underwater camera today.

I too dived at Garrapata a few years ago with a friend and we didnt see a single fish we wanted. The water was real clear and it got deep fast but there were nothing but puny fish. im sure if someone were to go on scuba to spearfish there it would be much better but close to shore its not too good.

I think the reason is that some live fishery commercial guys go there to drop their live fish rigs. these are 3-4 ft sections of pvc pipe that have hooks on them with bait and they drop em down to get the nearshore fish so that they can sell them live to restaurants. out of 3 times i have been at garrapata i had seen these nearshore boats working 2 of the times. Im sure that area once had a lot of fish but its a desert now. Live fishery guys hit a lot of spots down the coast and this is just one of them. Sometimes diving in different places i'll see these live fishery rigs which had been abandoned or stuck in crevices.

If you head down south from garrapata and hike the dusty trail on the south side of soberanes point down over the granite slabs to the hidden coves down below. these little coves hold some pretty good fish. there is a lot of kelp and once you get past it there is a lot of nice structure that hold decent fish.

john

John,
The fish I got were decent sized, but about the same sizes as the ones coming out of Carmel.
I probably will not go diving Garrapata again anytime soon. The terrain get really deep too quickly. Santa Lucia mountain range is not only steep where you can see above the water, it goes like that to a abyss below the water too! It’s an eerie feeling when you are the only one in the ocean, the water is murky and deep, and all you hear is the sealion barks.
The spot you mentioned is even closer to the lobos rock sealion haulout, I don't think I even want to try there.
There were 4 parties of shorefishmen kept me accompany that day. It feels great when you come out with a stringer full of fish and they didn't even catch a single one! 
Leon