Fort ross diving 6-3

Jae got to my house at 6 and as we were pulling out I checked that my liscence was in the glove box, it was but the ab card was not!  Hopefully it's with alan's gear from the last trip or I'll have to get a new one.  That left me spearfishing only, which was ok since I had reserve abalone (dad forgot to bring some home to MN with him) for a sunday abalone dinner.

Met up with everyone at the unloading area and got on the water around 9.  As soon as we got off the beach we hit very strong winds, any hope of paddling outside the cove were dashed, and the only protected area was inside the very north part of the cove, and even that was an arduous paddle.  Ended up with 5 kayaks and a few shore divers in a 50 yard section of cove, and I regularly bumped into folks on the bottom.  Visibility was good, and got better as time went by, peaking around 16'.  First I took a bunch of pictures of stuff, then started spearing.  My new floatline/float worked awesome - no leaks in the floatline, and my gun sank it fine.  Jae found a nice ling and directed me to it (yeah floatlines!), but it came off my spear dispite a good shot to the side of the head.    A seal came to investigate the shooting about 10 seconds later - they're on the ball!   I worked my way around looking for more fish, it seemed to get sandy past 25' so that was the deepest  I worked - but I had good 20s bottom times at that depth which was the best I've ever done.  I found a copper rockfish deep in a hole, but the spear bounced off the rock and right back out of the fish without engaging!  There were a lot of perch about, but I left them alone.  Finally got cold and called it a day without any fish.  This is the first time I had to quit because of cold instead of seasickness, so that was a good sign I'm getting used to it.

I'm really disapointed in the performance of my tahitian shaft.  It has to punch through the other side of the fish about 5" to engage the flopper, and that's just too far to expect when hole-hunting lings and rockfish.  I'm going to use either a small double flopper or a trident point next time - I'd have probably had both fish with either of those.

Everyone got their abalone, but I was the only one that got a shot at a ling (that I know of - thanks Jae).  A few smallish rockfish and a nice rubberlip were taken, but we couldn't really expect much confined to such a small highly dived area. 

thanks for the report, that was a good time and the vis was decent. it was nice to see underwater up north for once. by the exit of the cove the vis was even better but super surgy. funny how the abalone in that area were all about the same size.

i saw mostly underlings and saw a couple of nice black rockfish laying on rocks. i managed 0 shots that day and wish we could have gone out of the cove. i am glad we didnt venture too far as the conditions were pretty rough.

i hope to go again soon!

john

with that many people in a small area you're lucky you didn't spear another diver.   

with that many people in a small area you're lucky you didn't spear another diver.   

the vis was good enough that you could see way beyong where the gun could shoot. i trusted the folks in the area and the one guy who was not sure about using the gun did not even load it a single time. had i speared someone i would enter the big fish tournament and surely have a winner

I was very concious of other divers and made sure to keep my gun on the bottom with the floatline so it was usually in a position where it couldn't hurt anyone easilly (surface is out of range).  As it was the backstop was entirely too secure on both my shots!   

I did bump into several folk on the bottom though, and Jae surfaced in front of me while I was loading my gun once, which was pretty sobering. 

There were two guys and a kid abalone diving that were pretty comical.  One of the guys dropped his weight belt and they spent 20 minutes recovering it, then they asked me if there were any abalone down there because they weren't seeing any.  I said there was a keeper right by my gun 14 feet down but they didn't take me up on the tip.

Dispite not getting any fish and not having my ab card, that was one of the most fun days of diving I've had.  Certainly beat herding vomiting newbies around.   

It was definitely a fun day of diving except for the headwind paddle to get to the inside of the north cove.  Thanks again Josh for letting me use your kayak and thanks for introducing me to kayak fishing.  Great to have put faces with names.  Josh, did you ever figure out what happened to your ab card?  John, hope your finger is ok.

Couple of sea urchins (red and purple)  - no uni.  Josh also reported no uni last month from Fort Ross sea urchins.  All last year, sea urchins from Timber Cove produced lots of uni.  Bigeye reported lots of uni from sea urchins at Stillwater.  Could it be something with Fort Ross?

Jae