More Hollow news - 9/4

Well the hollow was pretty happy for me today. Breezy condiitions made for 1.5 mph drifts. I"m going  to have to get a chute pronto.

First drop brought up a barely legal Greenling. "Mmmmm" I say to myself "Ling candy". I keep the Greenling in the foot well while I find better structure. Eventually I do, and down goes the Greenling. Within a minute or so, I've got a hitchhiker. I bring it near the surface, with the gaff ready, but it's not a big fish. Down goes the gaff, out goes the net, away swims the ling.

Lesson: If you are going to go to the trouble of having a bait leader ready in the tackle box, just go all the way and have a rod rigged for bait. Complete with stinger hook. That will keep you from doing dumb stuff like putting a greenling on a 3 oz jig head, and hoping that a hitchhiker will stick.

I keep drifting over the same bit of structure - a table that goes from 50 to 30 feet in depth. Eventually I lose the Greenling to a snag. But I continue to get a little action here and there, but nothing sticks until I get an undersized cab and then finally a keeper China. I keep paddling up drift and floating back down until I get a good solid hit, start reeling it up, and then it get's reaalll heavy and starts taking line. I slowly bring it up, and eventually get to the point where I see a decent sized rockfish (that eventually turns out to be an 18" cab) with a goood sized hitchhiker Ling. That releases about 4-5 feet below the surface. And then chomps back on. And then off again. And then it sits there eyeing the China  on the game clip while I swing the cab into the footwell and try to get my other rod with the swimbait in front of it. But by that time it's gone. This was a good solid fish too. Probably in the 10 pound range. And this makes me 0 for 3 for hitchhikers. I put out a radio call to Tim and John and I want to say Fred, but my memory is shot when it comes to names. I let them know that there's some decent action up where I am. They come on up drift for a little while, but because I'm yo-yoing over the same table, they eventually wind up down drift of me again. I do manage to bring up another ok rocky. It's possibly an olive, or a very greenish tinged brown?. I'll post pics in a little while. And then it's 9:30 and time to head in. I do stop to toss the Kastmaster on the trout rod at a school of blues/blacks, and come up with a dink. And again toss the Kastmaster into a bait ball right at the mouth of the cove and come up with two Jack Smelt. But as promised, I'm off the water by 10:00, and home by 11:00. All in all, a most excellent day of fishing, but the catching could have been a bit better.

My new mantra is "Drift chute. Live bait rod. Drift chute. Live bait rod."

Regards,
Scott

Great report.

Love the mantra!

BTW, your beer is just 7%ABV on the nose. 

Looks awesome.  Delivery within two weeks.

MolBasser

Scott, that was me, Gary aka Sandman that responded to your radio message.  Tim, John and I were south of your ling fest and didn't get much except for a few small rockies.  Thanks for the call because as soon as I started my drift I got hit by a good sized China while the swim bait was going down.  With the China on the game clip I get hit by something big, most likely a ling.  Fought it for about 5 minutes because I wanted to bring it up slowly and with the next power dive it severed my leader just above the snap swivel.   I lost a dark purple swim bait on that fight and I didn't have something similar to offer. 

Right after that the wind picked up it and was a struggle to make any movement north due to the wind and southern drift.  I was planning to head over to the sandy area for halibut but when I switched over to a live bait rig I started catching good sized gophers.  By then the wind really picked up and it blew John and myself way south.  It was a long paddle into the wind to land.

When I helped John rig up for live bait a jack smelt impaled itself on my shiny empty hook.  Taking that as a sign I trolled it while I was heading in and got a big takedown about half way to the beach.  It spun my yak around I went for a short ride before it spit the hook.  Never saw the fish but it was fun while it lasted.

Conditions: sunny but windy.  No waves in BH so launching and landing was no challenge.  Outside the mouth of BH it was rocking and rolling.  There was a strong southern drift and to stay in contact with the reef you had to paddle for 5 minutes for a 1 minute drift over your spot.  If it was just a drift or the wind we could have handled it.  With both the wind and the drift we got lots of exercise today.

Everyone got some rockfish today but Scott got the big ones.  Tim, John and I headed in at about 11:30 and recalled when we had better days at the Hollow.  Good fishing with you guys and I hope we can do it again but with a little less wind and drift.

Gary