Stillwater N 8-27

Went up north with wife, dad and son to fish and dive stillwater.  We put a big lifejacket on my son and put him in the zodiac, and that worked quite well.  He saw lots of cool stuff and got to help reel up a few fish, then fell asleep and slept a few hours before getting seasick around noon.  We each caught 6-15 fish, including two 27" lings and a better grade of rockies than last weekend.  The ocean was very calm and made it easy to fish even past 100'.  The motor for the zodiac worked perfectly.  Oh yeah, we parked for free on a pullout 100 yards away both weekends too. 

Next my dad and I dove for abs around the south point of the cove - past where most shoredivers go.  The abs were just as plentiful as at fort ross in this area, and the bottom structure was the coolest stuff I've ever dove in, lots of walls and small pinnacles up to 15' tall, sometimes forming deep cracks that I could swim down into and through.  I also found several caves up to the size of a car that held abalone and fish - I wouldn't enter those even with scuba, but it was neat to look in through the door.  Most of the time there was a rock top close enough to kick, but I was diving to 16-20' next to it.  There was more than the usual amount of smelt, perch and rockfish about too, though the 12' vis probably helped with the fish-spotting.

I marked a bed with half a dozen abalone at 12' with my iron/floatline for my dad, then explored on my own - regretting that I'd left my speargun onshore so I could focus on helping my dad out with the abs.  He got a barely short ab with the 'grab em quick with bare hands' technique and seemed to be doing okay in that hole, so I crawled out on a rock to watch, rest and enjoy the view.  He came by and took out the snorkel to ask something,  but got a mouthful of water, then scrabbled up on the edge of the rock, took off his mask and said that he'd been working unsuccessfully on a large ab and wanted me to get it because he figured it was injured by now.  Then the largest wave yet to hit that rock came through.  I was high up enough that I held on okay, but dad got rolled off the end of the rock into (luckilly) 10' water.  His mask strap pulled out on one side and the clip-on snorkel was MIA.  He went back to the zodiac and I tried unsuccessfully to find the snorkel, then swung by my float and got that 9" ab after one failed attempt that bent my iron.  Tenacious bugger!

Hopefully tales of such mishaps will help the rest of you guys be safer and have more fun out there.  Keep your snorkels in your mouth and your mask on, and be careful on the rocks!

I had the snorkel slip out once. Then I cut some strips of ducktape to tape up the opening of the clip so it won't ever slip out. Helped a lot. Now after 2 dozen dives, the ducktape still holds!

Oh, I didn't mention it, but I was in my kayak and the rest were in the zodiac.  I wouldn't have brought my son out without a second craft, and generally don't go out in one boat myself.