STILLWATER COVE~PEBBLE BEACH

Met Fuzzytom at Stillwater and Launched @ 7am, flat water and no wind all day, fished 7 hours and wanted to stay longer. But hunger and sore butt got the best of me. The fish were on the bite most of the day. I brought home a 20" cabbie, 1 verm,2 blues.

Now the sad part ,  I hooked a little 6"blue and thought he would make a nice breakfast for a Ling. So I hooked him through the lip on my 6" metal bar I was fishing with, not really expecting anything I droped him to the bottom in about 50' of water in the kelp beds. In less than 3 minutes I felt the line get heavy. I thought the little guy was hung up on some kelp. So I started pulling him up, and low and behold there was a big fat ling on my hook, he swallowed that blue and I had him. I proceeded to get my gaff out and pull him on deck. With the gaff in my hand, I got out my Louiville slugger bat and whopped him on the head, POW ! He came to life and with one big thrash he was off of the gaff and out of my YAK. I learned a hard lesson today to say the least. I should have put him on my stringer or had a firm grip on his Gills.
He was at least 30" and sporting a head like a Pitbull. Im a little embarassed to admit my mistake. But hey, im still a rookie yak fisherman and I thought another newbie might learn from my mistake.

The last hour of the day I spent fighting a mystery fish. We were along the outter edge of the kelp beds in @ 70ft of water. I dropped down and BAM! something started peeling line off of my reel in towards the kelp. It dragged me about 60ft and was wrapped around a big kelp ball. I would pull him in so far and he would run out some line and stop. This went on for quite a while and I was getting no where. I cut the line and re-tied it to my heavy pacific rod with a 4'0 reel thinking I could horse it in better than with the 7ft ugly stick I was jigging with. But whatever was hooked on that line had other plans.
He just kept tugging and got more hung up in that kelp. Im pretty sure it was a good size Halibut the way it was tugging. I have caught many in the past on my PB and it felt like a 30-40lb'er. I ended up cutting the line so we could start heading in. We made one more stop at the point and I hooked a 22" underling. All in all it was a fun day. Good Fishing with you again Tom.
 AKA-KIMO

It was perfect out there today! No wind, small swell, nice sunrise with the light clouds, perfect vis to the mountains and 10-15' into the water. Got grayer as the day went on, but always warm.  Hard to get the time to eat my lunch without getting a take down.   
   F&G came by in a Zodiac and checked out my chart of the SMR's (which was a better printout than his) checked my lic and rockies, gave me a once over on my gear and was very pleasant. 
I think I had a ling on during the day, but I didn't get him up close enough to see, but he was doing the typical yo-yo moves. I was using a diamond bar with glo yellow squid skirt and single hook attached to top and a shrimp fly, both tipped with squid, most of the day, and a spooned floating minnow lure when trolling.  Got nothing on plastics, no matter what shape or color.
   The NE corner of the Pinn. Reserve is up into the kelp which extends out from the Tower house, I think it was 75' deep there.  I'll have to check my chart, but I think they must have used as an eastern limit the line between the Tower and Pt Lobos. We fished a little NW of that corner, but I trolled around while Kimo fought the mystery fish for an hour and there were fish everywhere - I guess they didn't get the F &G news release about the SMR's!

yeah, or maybe a WSB, the way it headed for the kelp.

You'll never know.....but the fight will stay with you forever!

sometimes those ones are the best, don't ya think?

....nice report, thanks!

Allen

yeah, or maybe a WSB, the way it headed for the kelp.

You'll never know.....but the fight will stay with you forever!

sometimes those ones are the best, don't ya think?

....nice report, thanks!

Allen

I sure wont forget that fight. I have scratches on my Yak from the Rod bending over and scuffing the side.

Nice report.  I though of you guys out there as I walked home from dropping the kid at school.  I could see the water was nice and really wished I was there.  If I thought it would have reached you I would have hailed you on the radio.  Got to love those mystery fish.

This is how fish story is telling again and again. Now you have your own version - be proud. Kids/others would admire you or laugh at you. 

Right on guys! Way to get into em!
Thanks for the report,
PK

Great guys, especially the part that DFG didn't get there catch . Prepared Tom with better charts than DFG priceless  . Way to get out there and enjoy THE sport.

Kimo nothing wrong with raw experience which in the long run always pays off in the asset columne. . I am sure that quit a few of us were reminded about how we started and the fish we lost and as for me will lose .

Great post and very encouraging as we go into the last week of the RF season. Gotta love this sport, Frankfishing.

PS Tom did you post that chart somewhere?

Frank,

You still have south of Pigeon Pt to play in.  Davenport can be good on somedays.  Bring your cart at Davenport.

Ken kickfish

nice report guys. one of those perfect days. kimo, those mystery fish are more of areason to go back then the regular catches. Tom if you dont mind where did your chart come from?  Randall

That's the funny part - I got it off the D F&G site, and it was in color and I  laminated mine, and the warden  on the line had a wrinkled B&W copy - I would have expected that fancy Zodiak to have a GPS with the waypoints entered.  They probably knew I wasn't in the SMR but when they rounded Cypress and didn't see any boats out there they figured to do a check to make it worth the gas. They passed on Kimo because he was in the cowpie kelp and they weren't making much headway.
 I was actually happy they were looking.  If I'm going to follow the rules supposedly for the good of the fishery, I want them to make sure others are too. The warden said "We're just learning this."  Aren't we all! 
Here is the DFG web site for the SMR's, tho it's probably more important to have the numbers in your gps than to have the chart on the water. The numbers are on that site. If you stay well into the kelp, less than 70 ft, at the Tower House and don't get out too deep west of  that, you wouldn't need the gps #'s.   I recently posted some numbers that are halfway down the north and east lines for those with cheap GPS's like mine that make it easier to see when you're approaching the banned rectangle. If someone goes to the Lover's Point area, please post if there are buoys or something to mark the water-side limit of the SMR. Otherwise, I'll have to plug those numbers in.

http://www.dfg.ca.gov/mlpa/ccmpas_list.asp#bay
 
 
 

Two words...lip gripper... get yourself one...once you get a hold of em with it, they can thrash all they want, and you got em... . I keep hearing these stories of the ones that got away with gaffs. On a big boat, it's easy cause you get em inside and no worries. On a yak, they're not in the bag,... till there in the bag... nice report. One more tip, when your putting a biggun on the stringer, don't unhook him till he's on the clip. Once I get a hold of him, I release my reel to spare the rod, then if he bails on you, most times you can reel him in again. 

Great story. Where can I get a chart of the SMR's?

Thanks Mike

YEP, a Lip gripper will be on my X-mass list this year. Along with a good padded kayak seat for those days that the fish are biting and you just dont want to get off of the Big Blue.
As for the talk about MLPA's. What if we had a GPS with two lights. When your out of the MLPA its green, when your in the zone it lights up red. Tom did a great job of keeping us outside the zone, but it did cut into his fishing time. Im sure the technology would be quite simple, just need the off limit zones programmed into the GPS.
 Anyone have any thoughts about this or know an easier way?

I just put the pinnacles no zone in my gps and for the first time realize how big it is.  when putting in all the rest, it is getting really depressing.  All this as the state has a "take me fishing" campaign.  Fishing where?