4/19/13 Timber Cove with SF Dive Crew.

:I met up with some other spearfisherman from the city yesterday bright and early at 7am. We loaded all our gear up and headed north across the gate with the intent of doing some spearing and taking some abs as incidentals. A few quick pit stops and after a short 2 hour drive later we were looking out over Timber Cove. Sunny day, calm water, we suited up and got wet. Not far from shore and in about 30' of water we started hunting. Jake with a gun and Kris and I with our polespears. In only a few minutes we got into a nice school of blacks with some real winners. I scored a few medium sized blues and then two 18.5" blacks, Kris trumped me with a 21" black and an 18" vermilion, very nice!!! Jake, fairly new to spearfishing, did himself well with a good sized black. I scoured the rock a bit more and found what I thought was a small grassy. I stuck him through no problems and while swimming him over to my stringer I stopped to check his gills and quickly realized this was no grassy and instead was a massive 17.5" kelpie!!!!! That's right DOTY competitors I now have the highest point value fish on the leader board. Hahaha, *MC Hammer music plays in background*. We kept diving and I scored a 25" Lingcod, he was hiding on the bottom trying to camouflage himself with low growing kelp. My hawk like vision immediately spotted him and I slowly crept over before putting 3 recently sharpened spear points right through his head. I looked for fish a bit longer but found nothing else sizeable and worth taking. The wind had picked up and the surge was beginning to take its toll on my sensitive stomach, I decided to begin focusing on abalone. I pulled a 9 and only a few dives later my stomach had gone from not so good to omg I just want to be out of the water before I die of sea sickness. I gave up on searching for more 9"+ abs and headed in (I promised myself I wouldn't take anything smaller than 9" this year) on the way back it occurred to me it might be nice to vomit and so I did, it was nice. Jake was already out and Kris and I were kicking back in. Almost back to shore I was in 5-6 feet of water and noticed a long tentacle. My eyes followed it to find a massive Giant Pacific Octopus!!!!. I called out to Kris to let him know what I had seen and when I put my head back down the beast was gone. Kris spent 10-15 minutes searching for it and finally headed back to the beach, a 20-30lb writhing octopus in tow!!! Damn good day diving!!!

Congrats. good dinner for you coming up.

Nice hunting guys.  Thanks for the report and picture Chuck.  What'd happened to your shoes? 

Flip flops broke on the climb out. Photos of Kris and his catch.

What a great day you guys had out there! Thx for sharing.

Cont. for another site.....pics of the gills....OK, you get the points.  .  WTG.  Time to step up my polespear game.  Step one: use 7 mil instead of 5 mil...step two: get back in water .

nice! good job guys! i may head up there tuesday

Cont. for another site.....pics of the gills....OK, you get the points.  .  WTG.  Time to step up my polespear game.  Step one: use 7 mil instead of 5 mil...step two: get back in water .

For you Russ, I was shocked myself when I saw those gill rakers.

WTFG Charlie!!!!

Stoked for you dude!!

Congrats and thanks for sharing!

 

Sincerely,

Jim

Orale Carlitos!

WTFGS 

AWESOME report and pics!!!!

Is that octo any good? Have had it in sushi restaurants but it was bland and like chewing on a balloon. Sweet haul by you guys!! Wish I had more then a 5 second down time.

Anthony

I had grilled octopus in Mexico and it was great , then I bought one down here and tried to grill and I had the whole balloon thing going on.