mothership trip to point sur - 5/27/09

Nice catch you guys. Looks like a success.

Hi Allan:

     Time to go Hollywood, to bad you don't have a film crew!
You're the man when it comes to safety and a well designed
"Mother" ship.
                                                         Thanks for the Story.
                                                         Ernie

WTG Alan. I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for EVERYTHING (and that's a lot) you bring to this sport

wow what a great day, even if it was alittle rough at times, congrats to scallen on the hali and the rest for the nice stringers. cameron

so i was thinking.......   

if you guys had dry suits, some camping equipment and a suitable beach landing, you guys could camp out for a couple days.  i could drop you off, you could fish to your hearts content for two, three or four days, and then i could come back and get you.  guys do that in alaska.  why not here?????????????

we;ve just had a similar event up here in the cooler PAcNW.. http://www.northwestkayakanglers.com/index.php/topic,2526.90.html

sorry but you'll have to read thru the whole thing i'm not too good at editing 

sucia Island is a state park in the san juans in washington state.. not quite canada, but you can see it from there...

guys, thanx for posting that up on your sister site.. honestly awesome
[WR]

Awesome,

 Love the Racks!!!   

  Very Kool....   

  argghhh, the NWKA looking forward to something called "Salmon Season" anybody ever heard of that?

Sounds like a brutal, successful day. Congrats guys. People are going to be beating down your door Alan. You could start a business doing this.

-FF

Looked like a lot of fun. That hali, wow! That must of been fun in the yak. Looks like a sweet transport system. Fun pictorial report.

Where do we sign up for the next trip?  Congratulations to all!

Very VERY NICE trip!!  From the Verms to that HOG 'Butt!!   WOW and thanks for the pictorial Alan!  you are one nice guy that loves being nice........is it legal to camp there?   who would know?   

That looks like a really good trip!

I suffer from the hurls on rough seas as well.  I think its the hard chop when big boats hit the larger swells...in the kayak I's fine....

Wishin I lived nearer the sea!

Thanks for the great story!

Here's my story. Not as dramatic as Allens and involves a lot of vomit. But there are fish pics as well!

My biggest problem, was, I think, lack of sleep. It’s a big factor in determining whether or not I get seasick. I’d already eaten my breakfast by this time!



I was on 280 by 3.30. I didn’t see a single other vehicle between 380 and 85. I got to the launch at 5.30 and receiving a rousing welcome. These guys are loud.



We loaded up the boat. I took a minimalist approach; one rod. No net. No gaff. No whacker. If I hooked a monster, I’d have to take my chances.

The crew.



The nausea kicked in as soon as we rounded the point at Pacific Grove and I knew it was going to be a loooooong day. I’d taken my meds, had no beer the night before and eaten a big breakfast. The biggest thing I learned yesterday was that all of these precautions are rendered useless when you haven’t had any sleep. The conditions weren't actually that bad. The swell was a lot milder than GS3 and there was hardly any wind. It was pretty cold tho'.

We got to Point Sur and began unloading. As soon as I was in the water I snapped a pic and then chummed for the first of…..I dunno, a million times?



Time to rig up. This was no time for rifling through the tackle box and tying complex rigs. It was all about NOT LOOKING DOWN. At the end of GS3 I clipped off my most successful rig and threw it in the box. It was a (now rusty) shrimp fly above a Matt S orange jighead with a glow-in the dark curly tail. I fished it out, picked off the bits of dry dead squid, chucked on some fresh and dropped it down. Straight away; BAM. It felt heavy, but without any surging runs. It eventually became clear why; double hookup. A fat vermillion and an equally large copper. I didn’t take any pics of the two of them ‘cos I wanted to get the copper back down ASAP, which I did. Then I threw the red on the clip, threw some more chum into the grey and snapped a pic. Welcome to Big Sur.



The fishing was awesome. I lost count of the number of big coppers I threw back. I even threw back a couple of vermillions. Then I got into the blues, every drop. Allen on the radio “isn’t it great fishing when you have to move to get away from the school”?

Alan and Sean on the boat were doing equally well. They insisted on delivering to me one of their giant curlytails on a jighead. To be honest I didn’t want it because tying it on would mean looking down for 20s, but I figured getting rid of the shrimp fly might keep the blues off so it would be a fair trade. As you can probably tell, I was feeling really, really bad by now. Easily the worst seasickness I’ve had on a yak. I decided I’d had enough of catching rockfish that I wasn’t going to keep and I really didn’t want to get snagged and have to look down.

But………

I couldn’t quite myself to stop fishing altogether. I reeled the curlytail up so it was well off the bottom and laid back in my yak with my eyes closed and just drifted, which made me feel a little bit better. So, no jigging, well off the bottom, drifting blind well away from the structure the other guys were fishing. Should be a recipe for a quiet time right? Not in Big Sur I guess. My rod bent double, I assumed I’d snagged stray kelp. Wrong. After a nice battle I bought a 32” Ling to the surface. With no net or gaff I gilled him and chucked him on the clip. He was angry.



I tried this quiet approach a few more times and threw back more fish. It was loaded. I kept a couple of the vermillion and the Ling.



Although the fishing was great, I was very relieved to be heading back in. Props to the entire crew; they made this up as they went along. On the way down we had to stop a few times to secure yaks and rearrange. All the wrinkles were worked out by the time it came to loading the yaks up again for the trip home. There’s a definite future here for mini-motherships!!!

man... talk about a thourough report!! congrats on the awsome trip and the fish to follow!!

 

  Wow!