Ocean cove fun!

My friend and I went up to Ocean Cove last weekend to test the waters!  It was my friend's first time up there and I think he had a great time because he was not interested in diving at first but now he is!  This is great because I don't have any close friends who are remotely interested in freediving, but I may have my first convert now!

First day got practically skunked save for a greenling which we shared for lunch.  Later that afternoon I went diving while he spotted me from the yak and got a haul of ab and uni right near the cliff where the houses are in the cove.  There was a ton of kelp there a month ago but it's almost all gone now.  The uni were fat and delicious.  I "did my part" and got a whole bunch of large purple ones too, and they were delicious as well.  I'm not sure why they don't have more commercial value, they seemed as good if not better than the red/black ones.  I also took my Riffe E90 down and speared my first fish ever!!!  I was very excited and am getting a lot more comfortable with all the gear, breathing up, spotting fish, marking spots, learning my comfort zone, etc.  It was quite a feast that night and got us ready for the next day.

Next day we went out around 7:30AM and got to work.  Right away I got a decent size ling, but then nothing for the next hour.  My battery for the sonar also went kaput so we were fishing blind.  Luckily I remembered a spot from the day before that felt especially fishy and we immediately got several rockfish.  By 10:30 I was getting cold and we decided to drift one more time... and BOOM a small tug followed by what I thought was the fish getting totally wrapped in kelp.  I haven't felt a fish fight hard since a trip to Alaska 5 years ago, so I must have forgotten what a big ling feels like.  At the surface I see a beast swimming in the water and immediately know things are either going to go really well or really bad!  My friend missed with the net the first time but got it on the second and threw it in the yak!  The thrashing was intense and I had to trap him between the seat and my knees so I kneeled down on him while trying not to get bit.  Cut the gills, more wild thrashing, and success!  What a way to end our trip. 

It was a trip of many firsts for my friend (seeing what freediving was all about, eating abalone and uni straight from the water, and seeing his first ling cod).  He already asked me where he can get a diving wesuit

Credit to Kris for his Fii class, without his instruction I would have never learned how to dive and none of this would have been possible.

Congrats on the nice weekend up there.  I drove up to Salt Point (just shore fishing with a friend) on Sunday and it was a beautiful day.  Was really wishing I had my  kayak, the ocean looked like a lake out there and got skunked from shore...

Nice! Thanks for the report. Those pictures make me hungry.

Looks like a blast!

Thanks for sharing your trip! 

Great report and pics!  Wife and I were coming home from Manchester and stopped for lunch at Ocean Cove Cafe. We were watching several kayaks, but couldn't tell who was who from that far. We both commented that it looked like a lake out there!

awesome trip.  never seen or even heard of grilled uni before, lox amzng.

Nice report and nice stringer that you guys put together Saturday! That's me coming in next to you as you were washing off your kayak in the first pic. Glad you made a new convert to the madness.

Cheers,
Brad

Sounds like a fun trip and even better feast! Were you cooking the uni on the grill? If so, do you get rid of the rest of guts first?

Huh. I have heard the purple ones are "not edible" but that doesn't seem to be the case?


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It was a great trip, needless to say the freezer is well stocked so no more trips for a while.

The grilled uni was a first for me as well.  I figured there had to be a way to do it and the internets revealed several pictures of Vietnamese grilled uni (spicy sauce inside then grill until the sauce is bubbly). It tastes and has a texture like fish roe when cooked.  Fun way to eat it. 

Yes I used a small chopstick to remove the poke at the guts and washed it out.  Didn't bother making it super clean, just enough where there wasn't bits of kelp and membrane covering the uni. 

The purple ones had more flavor than the big red ones. The red ones seemed watery but sweeter.  There were plenty of big purple ones, some as big as the red ones.  We grilled the small ones since we didn't know how those would turn out on the grill. 

That trip was a blast! Thanks bobby for such a great experience and not freaking me out with 2 minute dives! I was keeping a close eye on the time when you were diving. Such good seafood, never had Uni taste like that before. I have to admit you do have me thinking hmmm..... maybe free diving isn't so crazy after all.....

So for grilling, am I right you take everything out, add some spice sauce and just put the uni back in?

Haven't tried grilling uni but it looks good.

If you can find shiso leaves a tasty treat is to rap a piece of uni in the leaf, dip in tempura batter and give it a quick fry. So good.

Cheers,
Brad