ISLANDER 3.5 DAY - Reports on pg 44!

F-U bro.

More lipstick

Medium fast action/medium light power rod has good bend and just enough backbone. Would be a blast to hook into a nice yellowtail or bonito with this set-up. 

Nice setup!  Although I think that setup would be definitely fun to use, if fishing near structure where you need to worry about the YT breaking you off in kelp or rocks, that ML trevala will be a bit under-powered in my opinion.  I've seen this exact rod in action hooked up to a 20lbish tuna and it totally lacked the backbone needed to turn the fish.  The rod would just bend over and you couldn't turn the fish.  I would imagine it would be the same on a 20lb YT running for the kelp, but not sure. 

Damn, still envy all you dudes going on this trip...its gonna be a blast!!

Thanks for the advice, Won. After having Derik hang off of the tip of the rod I did feel as if it was just a bit too lite, so I traded in the 30/50 for the 50/100. Still a medium fast action and medium heavy power. Probably better for trolling than anything else I have. I feel like I missed a lot of my live lined bites on the slow troll last year 'cause my Lami was too stiff.

No prob...MH is perfect!  Thats the one I use for targeting slightly larger fish.  Works good as a live bait rod too! 

Unfortunately I will not be able to make this trip.

Open spot for someone!

I paid the deposit.

Chime in if interested.

Weak, dude! We were just talking about this on Saturday! 

Bump.

ONE OPEN SPOT!

Unfortunately I will not be able to make this trip.

Open spot for someone!

I paid the deposit.

Chime in if interested.

Weak is right!!! .. Anybody else gonna dive? Was looking foreward to showing Joe how its done! Now I have to dive by myself.

Bump.

ONE OPEN SPOT!

Paging Chadrock! 



-Kiel

Unfortunately I will not be able to make this trip.

Open spot for someone!

I paid the deposit.

Chime in if interested.

Weak is right!!! .. Anybody else gonna dive? Was looking foreward to showing Joe how its done! Now I have to dive by myself.

Kiet will dive with you .  Heck, maybe I'll have gear by then.

40 more days! 

KIET!!!!! Don't forget the wasabi and soy sauce!!!!

KIET!!!!! Don't forget the wasabi and soy sauce!!!!

I'm gonna hover around you guys for awhile! 

Hard not to think about this trip all the time as we get closer....  Starting to browse for gear, too, and I don't need more gear.  FFS.

With water temps the way they are, what are the chances we get a shot at tuna?  Do they come close to San Clemente?

I don't think a tuna has ever been caught by a kayaker on an Islander trip, but last year an episode of Sport Fishing with Dan Hernandez was filmed at SCI a few weeks after Allen and I were down there. They were right next to the island ropin YFT right where we had been fishing a few weeks earlier.

Here's some SCI YFT tuna action. Doesn't look like they're too far off of the island. Actually, it does look like parts of the vid were filmed quite aways from the island. Haven't had a chance to watch it all yet.

Checkout this cool old story from here: http://www.jdsbiggame.com/report.htm

""The Clemente Monster Out of the Depth

The following is set down somewhat hesitantly. He who ventures aside from the accepted groves of believe lays himself open not alone to jibes, but to direct attack upon his veracity. It is human nature to scoff at those things which are not understood, or which are not simple of explanation. The most startling incident related in the following pages I experienced myself, saw with my own eyes.. Some twenty-five or thirty personal acquaintances, all of them reputable, many of them men of substance and standing in their respective communities, also saw with their own eyes the identical thing which I saw. The reader is at liberty to believe, or not to believe, what follows. However the fact remains that it happened: that I saw what I am about to describe. It happen in September of the year 1916.

I was over at San Clemente Island after Marlin Swordfish. We had left Mosquito Harbor about seven o’clock in the morning. The day was overcast with a high fog, and windless. The sea was like glass except for a small roll coming down the coast. All objects on the surface, birds and driftwood, appeared black. Visibility was perfect, the sea stretching away to the sharp line of the horizon. These details are important, so bear them in mind. By about eight o’clock we were perhaps a mile and a half off White Rock which is some three miles above Mosquito. I was sitting on top of the cabin watching for fins, my field glasses beside me. My boatman was busy at something down in the cockpit. A bait was out and the rod lashed to the fishing chair. Suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, and to seaward, I saw something big and black lift above the surface. I whirled, gasped, then clapped my glasses on it and yelled to my boaman to head for it. A scant quarter mile of a mile off there reared up out of the water the Thing which I instinctively knew was what, for years, we had called the “Clemente Monster,” which many had see, and about which there had been endless wonderment.

I shall try to describe it to you as best I can. Try to imagine a great columnar neck, or body, eight to ten feet thick and lifting twenty feet above the surface. Surmount this neck or body with a flat-topped, blunt, reptilian head. On either side of the head place two huge, round and bulging eyes. I dont believe they were an inch under a foot and a half across, perhaps more. There you have the essentials of what we saw. At my first shout my boatman stuck his head out of the cabin jitney and let out a queer little squawk. I don’t know that I blame him particularly! Steadily we forged towards the Thing. Remember, it was about a quarter of a mile away. My glasses were of seven power. I had them on it from the first moment I caught a glimpse of it. I don’t know precisely, but would guess that they brought it up to within a couple of hundred yards of us.

Certainly I could see it plainly enough to note various details. Two things stood out above all others- those enormous eyes and its unbelievable huge bulk. I never want to look at such eyes again. They were like the creations of a nightmare! Their very size, of course, left one breathless. But that was only a detail. It is utterly impossible to describe the coldness, the expressionlessness of them. It was like looking into the dim past when earth’s life consisted of great, slimy, horrible creatures dragging their way through gargantuan forest and over dead, sullen seas. They litterally froze me in my seat.

Later my man said I was as white as a sheet, my teeth chattering, my knees shaking. I wouldn’t be surprised. Neither in a museum, nor in any reconstructed picture of a prehistoric creature have I ever seen eyes which resembled those. The trunk, or neck, or whatever it was appeared above the surface, seemed to covered with a coarse, reddish-brown bristles. It wasn’t hair. They stood out rigidly from the body. It is strange that I should have gathered any impression of color in the light, but I did and, as will develop later, it is quite likely that I was correct in my impression. The trunk, or neck, was more or less erect. The head was turning slowly as though surveying the surface of the sea. The Thing did not rise and fall in the slight roll of the sea. Instead the waves broke against it. Give full consideration to what that statement means! I gathered the impression that the head was lowered. Certainly I saw nothing resembling a mouth. Others who have seen it say they saw a mouth. I didn’t. The great head continued its pivoting, seeming to make three-quarters of a circle. Then it saw us. The pivoting stopped. Those terrible eyes fixed themselves upon us coldly and without any expression noticeably through the lenses of the field glasses. For a few moments it regarded us fixedly, then, as though some great, hidden hand had seized it, it slowly sank. There was no visible movement of the great trunk, no commotion on the surface. Slowly, majestically, by comparison making the fluking of a whale seem a panicky, convulsive dive, it sank and disappeared beneath the surface. There was no swirl, no bubbles to mark where it had been, or where it sank. I don’t know how long it was up; perhaps a minute and a half, My boatman claims five or tem, but that is ridiculous. Out boat being slow, by the time we turned towards it I doubt that we approached appreciable closer. So what I saw I saw from about a quarter of a mile away and through the lenses of field glasses.

It is a little difficult to describe my emotions after the Thing sank. I had always loved the sea, particularly around and about San Clemente Island. With the appearance of the Thing, and its disappearance beneath the waters across which we were fishing, something of the friendliness went out of that sea and didn’t come back for a long time. I caught myself glancing furtively overside and with a strange prickling sensation up and down my spine. We went on fishing that day but neither of us was particularly happy. I know I felt a pronounced sense of relief when we dropped our hook in Mosquito that night and I stepped out upon the security of land. Well, there it is. You know as much about it as I do. I don’t think there is a shadow of a doubt but that, here in Southern California channels there exists an unknown species of great sea creatures.
Ralph Bandini, Veiled Horizons, 1939""