Mill Creek 5/5 - Limekiln Camping 5/6 & 5/7 (Alot of Pictures)

For sake of rockfishing opener fever, Martin, Eric, Ed and Paul launched Friday at Mill Creek between 7:30 - 8:00.
Ocean condition was so calm. It was glassy in the early morning. See the picture below.

We paddled out to wash rocks and fished around ~100ft. Fish(Blue, Oliver, Gopher and Cab and Lingcod) were everywhere. We had constant actions. We had put back many fish and tried not to reach the limit so quick.
Each of us caught lingcods and we managed to have a few keepers ( see pcitures below). 

We came back around 12noon. At that time, the swell came up a bit, but it was very managable. Tomorrow early morning should be good, based ont the condition check today.

See you tomorrow. Party is on. 

Eric

Ocean condition at Mill Creek Beach in the morning

Martin smiles at the harvest.

Eric smiles at the result.

Ocean condition at noon time. It was relatively calm. We hope tomorrow will be similar.

Thanks for the report Eric,

Pat and I plan to be to Mill Creek by about 7:30 or so.  See ya there!


Randy

Please 'splain to those of us born before computers how you are able to post from a campsite miles from the nearest village...did you get friendly Ranger Garcia to let you use the computer in his trailer?
   Your photo of the beach shows something completely different and better than what I saw Monday when I took a drive down there just to scout it out, it was breaking hard at low tide and the fog was a wall about 30ft from the beach.  I tried to post a report, but couldn't even get it to stick sitting at home!
 I'm glad you guys went anyway.  I saved the Monterey and San Martin  bouy info from the other day, and will compare it to today's to see if I can tell by the bouys what the conditions are close to shore. Maybe it's just one of those places where you just have to take a gander, if it's not good, can you really say that a non- yakking trip down that national treasure of a road is bad?  Good luck the rest of the weekend.

Ed and I didn't fare quite as well as Eric and Martin did.  Ed caught one short ling and I caught 3, 23", 23 1/2" and 23 99/100"  I might have been able to keep that last one, but my first two fish today were lings, so I thought I would catch a "real" keeper for sure.  I did catch a keeper cabbie and lost a nice vermilion at the yak when I tried to lip it instead of netting it.  Had a fairly close visit from a humpback and calf.  Beautiful place to fish, but didn't live up to all the hype (my opinion).  That isn't to say that I won't be jumping at the bit to go again. 

Here is a fish pic and a pic of my homemade pick-up rack.  Much cheaper than buying an equivalent one.  Bought the plans from ebay.

I looked at the buoy data I saved from 5/1 and compared it to today's.  As I mentioned above, conditions were not good on 5/1 -real dense fog and big breakers on the beach, vs. today's placid looking sea and almost no fog.
   Cape San Martin Buoy wind on 5/1: 17-21, 5/5: 5.8-9.7.  Swell: 5/1: 9.5 @11 sec NNW, 5/5:4.6 @176 sec SSW. Wind waves: 5/1 6.2High @ 5.3 sec. 5/5: 1.3H @ 3.8.
    So it looks pretty easy to figure that you shouldn't plan on going out at Mill Creek when it's blowing like snot at the buoy,
which sounds like a big "Duh!", but I'm used to (often) calm waters inside Monterey Bay when it's honking at the Mtry Buoy.
    I would have thought that the 5/5 SSW smaller but  longer period swell than 5/1 would have been more of a problem 5/5 at that SW facing beach than it apparently was. 

nice rack

Yesterday pales to the awesome fishing we had at last year's opener.  There was no comparison in both quality and quantity.  Here's a few additional observations to the above posts.

Lots of Gophers

Gophers numbered at least 1/3 of the total fish that I hooked yesterday.  They even outnumbered the blues and olives (although when we caught blues or olives, we would move to try to avoid them.)  Very numerous gophers.

Lack of Vermillion

I only caught one red, and it wasn't anything large.

Plastics v. Iron

The legal ling, cabezon, and vermillion all bit a brown w/ red flake 7 inch Papa Bill's Custom Swimbait on a 1.5 oz Fishtrap leadhead (thx Bill, they work!!).  So my conclusion for yesterday: under those same conditions, plastics are the way to go.  This made sense to me: quite a few fish I caught barfed up invertebrates including small crabs and octopus.  The only reason I switched to irons was because of the wind - wanted to get down faster and I didn't have any heavier leadheads.  I would have stuck with plastics but our drift was really moving and I didn't want to keep getting hung up on the pinnacles or kelp.

Fishing Pressure?

Believe it or not, we saw a PBer about 3/4 mi south of our location, and it wasn't no RIB that you could portage down a set of stairs.  It was bona fide ~24 ft center console with 4 people aboard.  When they took off, they headed south.  Neptune only knows how far a run they had back to the ramp, but that just confirms my suspicion that ANYWHERE there's fish, we will find anglers hitting them up.  Nomad showed a lot of class (and a $hitload of restraint) by tossing back that arguably short underling.  (From where I was it looked every bit of 24" and had some shoulders and belly, to boot).  Same with ChefStefano (see his report)  Hats off to you guys!!. 

I just wanted to add a little info.  The group camping next to me stayed shallow that same day and they ended up with ling limits for at least four out of six guys.  they were in 30-60 foot of water all day.  All of their Lings were on metal jigs, I think Mega bait fish shaped jig.  When the weather and seas get better I will try and head down again and try shallow out of Mill Creek.  Overall great day of fishing and great couple of days camping and whale watching.  I got a good condor picture on the way home in Big Sur.  I also think I have a record smallest catch from Mill Creek.

I managed to get a limit including 8 reds sat, but I had to put in 5+ hours of extremely targeted (FF & GPS) fishing to do it.  I also caught at least 10 canaries and spend almost as much time 'descending' those buggers as I did fishing.  140' seemed to be the magic depth.  There was a half hour where we caught 70% of our fish, must have been some magical confluence of the planets or something.  Other than that it was slow for this area - probably too rough.  The devil-red bit on abalone trimmings.  Fishing buddy did equally well and he got through the surf ok dispite being his first time fishing off a kayak.  

The AM was windy, but it actually got better all day.  The swell got worse though and I had my worst surf incident ever - got wiped out by a huge sleeper wave at the spot I stopped at to watch the sets for an opening - 30 yards offshore!  Since everything had a leash all I lost was my hat and sunglasses, even though I spent a fair amount of time swimming in the surf with my gear.

I caught a starry rockfish that could've eaten the one that joel caught at stillwater cove.  Neat to catch the deeperwater fish.

Way cool on the condor picture Ed..........and the poor little red "gumby"...........

HERE IS SATURDAY REPORT:

Saturday, Dave and I carpooled down to Mill Creek. On the road, I saw a SUV with 2 kayaks on top. They seemed Pat & Randy heading down to big sur area. I wait for them to chime in. PSpark was heading down and passed Mill Creek. We did not know where he lauched and fished.

The swell was obviousely bigger than Friday. During the launch, Craig and James arrived. Nice of meeting you two! It was the 1st time for James to be on the ocean. He managed really well. Lauching and landing were smooth for him. Congrates! 

At 8AM, we were on the water. Fishing was decent. I got a legal Ling and 2 reds and others. Dave was close to the limit with 2-3 reds. The best time of the day was between 10AM - 12AM. Wind die down. Fishing was hot during the 2 hours. The ocean became very calm.   After 2PM, the condition got worse again, since the wind came back. Craig and James had their fishing stories to tell. Hope they will chime in.

Dave, James, Craig and I decided to land together. There were big surfs. We packed loose things and prepred for the worst case. Dave and Craig went first and had no problem. James and I followed and had no problem. We all came back safe.

We camped at Limekiln at Saturday night, while James and Craig camped at Kirk Creek. Later, Tim and Mike joined us. We crashed to camping neighbors who are kayak fishermen from the south CA. We had great time at campground. Campfire lasted for 8+ hours from 3PM to 12 midnight. We exchanged many fishing stories, surf launch incidences, and things related to the ocean. 

The night was well spent. We went to sleep around 11pm and prepared for Sunday's trip.  Sunday is another story ... 

Eric