Look what I found eating my garden!

I went out to water the plants on Saturday and found this terrible thing eating the new seedlings.  Needless to say I killed it, but now I'm a little scared to water the plants.

Long report....

Finally got up to Mendocino for an ab crab grab. The weather was fantastic, as good as it gets, and the vis was ~30'. 

We pulled up at one of my favorite spots to drop crab pots, launched our yaks into the river and began the leisurely paddle toward the ocean.  As we got closer to the bend and sandbar that was blocking the rivers mouth(so we thought) we noticed the current start to pick up.  A glance down the river and we could see that the river had just broken through minutes ago and there was a class 5 rapid draining the backed up river into a flat sea.  There were 2-3 huge standing waves at the exit and we immediately pulled to shore and drug our yaks over the sandbar to an easy ocean launch.  We were debating emptying our gear and running the rapids a few times, but we were running out of light so crab took priority.

We dropped our pots and dove off one of the points looking for reds, lings and whatever else, but the fish were not home.  Fairly un-fishy for a spot that usually has good fish. We dove hard, and made our way back to check the pots and get to shore before dark.  One crab.   Things were not looking good for the overnight soak, so after re-baiting we went in and got ready for the morning. 

Saturday we woke up and casually made our way up to check and pull our pots.  Since we were not diving where we dropped our pots this day, we ran the yaks with no gear, which meant we would get to shoot the rapids.   Unfortunately the river had drained out about 5 feet and the rapid was not what it was, but still fun.

As for crab, 4 pots on a guess of which side of the cove had crab = zip, skunk, nothing but a rock crab clamped onto my inner thigh.  I paddled over to see how Fuzz did and grabbed on to his yak and drifted while he pulled the last pot. He had a monster in that pot and 4 others in the bag. Then the number 1 cool thing of the day happened.  While fuzz was clearing his trap I heard a blowing sound behind us.  I thought it was a big bull sealion moving in to check us out, but as I turned I had to adjust the scale of my view as there was a full sized adult gray whale sounding under and to my left.  We could make out almost every feature of this huge animal. Awesome.

We made our way in and pulled our gear over the sandbar and paddled up back to our cars.  As we were paddling through the shallow sandflats, I saw a fish swimming slowly. Upon closer inspection I realized it was about a 4 lb steelhead in about 1 foot of water. Very cool and number 2 cool thing of the day. 

After that we went for a snail hunt on a reef that usually is hard to dive.  Looking for trophies we never found any, but all over 9 and the one above went 9 3/4 and weighed 8.5 lbs (my heaviest ab) Yummy! 

Amadeo I was going to say you are getting as bad as Fuzz with your posts. Then you put up the second post, go figure.

Amadeo I was going to say you are getting as bad as Fuzz with your posts. Then you put up the second post, go figure.

True!

Amadeo... get out the butter and garlic and sautee that big sucka!
I wish escargot were really that big, then I wouldn't feel so ripped-off when I go to French restaurant and order it off the menu.

Cool report!

Great report.  That's a nice, deep ab.  Gotta love the wildlife encounters - pinching rock crabs, whales and steelies, oh my!   

Wow. Looks heavy too.
I'm glad that it was a whale than the landlord.

Amadeo I was going to say you are getting as bad as Fuzz with your posts. Then you put up the second post, go figure.

Cool post.  If this is where you dove, that's like a six mile round trip paddle to the river mouth.  With dive gear...wow.  That is if I got the location right.

That's PHAT.

Cool post.  If this is where you dove, that's like a six mile round trip paddle to the river mouth.  With dive gear...wow.  That is if I got the location right.

You got it right, but we did not dive there, not that day. I have dove the north side of the cove where that picture was taken.  Without a doubt one of my favorite parts of the coast in all of California.

Damn, maybe I shoulda just bought the plane tickets.  Instead I worked on the kitchen...again.  Conditions down here were good too.

Super nice snail!!!

Damn, maybe I shoulda just bought the plane tickets.  Instead I worked on the kitchen...again.  Conditions down here were good too.

Maybe I shoulda bought a ticket, helped you with the kitchen, and look to shoot a fish over 10lbs. Hope the mend is going well.

Um, that thing looks discusting!

It is and it tastes the just as bad as it looks. Crab is disgusting too, so I don't recommend hunting for either and don't even get me started on Salmon.

Without a doubt one of my favorite parts of the coast in all of California.

It's no wonder why, that picture is amazing!  BEAUTIFUL!!!

Michael