DP long Haul, Mystery Fish and MOLA"S

[steveooo]

Sorry, Long Report.
Went out of DP last Saturday for the loooong haul, looking for a T. Paddled out through the biggest bait balls I have ever seen. Literally these balls had to be the size of 15-20 football fields. I chased birds and bait all day, dragging a couple of magnum Rapallas por nada. I had clearance from the wifey, so I stayed out long. I paddled out so I was with the boat fleet 11 miles off of the hospital in Laguna. Literally halfway to Catalina. I did get to see some cool stuff out there. I had a BIG school of porpoise swim through. At the same time I see my rod tip start to dance. My line went slack and I was a little confused. I look down to my left and 2 feet below my Yak was a dolphin holding my Rapalla in its mouth. It was cool to see the dolphin that close. I could see scars on its body, even some that looked like squid suction cup marks on it's head. He stayed right below me, looking at me for about a minute. He then let go of my Rapalla and shot up out of the water and dove over my bow. So freaking cool!! I also saw a bunch of Mola Molas. I reached out and touched one of the smaller ones, And paddled around the 200 lb models.

I also found a mystery fish swimming around on the surface. He had obviously had a bad day and had a couple of holes from somethin nasty. It looked like a cross between a giant lizard fish and a Spanish Mack.




Lots of PB's got into the T's on the BOM's, but it was obvious that they had no interest in the Rapallas.
I started the Paddle back to the faint image of the point off dana harbor. 5 hours later I am back on land and exhausted, but satisfied that I did not miss out due to lack of effort. I went 28 total miles for the day, trolling 2 big lures for most of that time. I entertained myself on the paddle in by listening to the Radio chatter on 72. My favorite was when they started talking about that "crazy guy on the kayak", and they were speculating on how I got out there. I kinda was beginning to wonder that myself.
I drank almost 5 gallons of water, but was still very dehydrated when I got back to the harbor. Needless to say, I am still recovering from it. Fun day, I still suck at shark fishing, and I'm tired.

Steve