Mid-term Exam, Friday LJ

[dsafety]

Last week, I spent the day with my friend the Darkhorse. It was supposed to be just a day when a couple of friends decided to go fishing together, but I’m no dummy. When in the company of a guy with Josh’s skill set, most people would probably pay close attention to what the white faced man was doing. I am no exception. To me, it was Yellowtail fishing 101. I paid very close attention, learned a lot and even managed to catch a nice fish.

Well, today was the Mid-term exam. It was my chance to see if I could catch a fish without Josh’s help. The short version of this story is that I passed the test and will be studying hard so that I can do well on the final.

It was an interesting day. I made arrangements to fish with my new good luck charm Chris, who has been catching fish on every recent outing and was nearby when I caught my fist notable fish last week. We met at the launch Friday AM and were joined by a number other LJ regulars. Josh was there with a new client. Frank, Brian and several other members of our little society were there as well. The surf was minimal and everyone launched without incident.

The problem was that the fog was so thick that as soon as you left the beach, all visual references were gone. I had not experienced this before. Without GPS, which Chris and I both lacked, it was virtually impossible to know where we were at any point in time. We were also very concerned about being run over by a power boat. Whenever we heard one in the distance, we started yelling, just to make sure we were on their radar. More on the fog later.

We made bait very easily and peddled to the “spot”. Actually, we probably never made it to the spot because we were never very sure where we were due to the reduced visibility. We could not even see the sun. The only clue we could occasionally pick up was a rare swell, heading semi-east.

The next couple hours were spent trolling our greenies, back and forth, back and forth. We were never sure where we were but tried to stay in the zone based on depth readings from our fish finders. This strategy can be problematic because if you troll in 85 feet because that’s where the fish were last week and this week they are in 120 feet, you will miss the party. While the fish finder was helpful in keeping us at the correct depth, it was no help when it came to positioning within the fishing grounds. At one point, we were fairly sure we were off the condo until we almost ran into one of the buoys marking the preserve.

Thankfully, the dogs mostly left us alone. They were probably lounging in their newly created, publicly funded sanctuary at the Children’s pool. (Please don’t respond telling me that the CP is now a Seal sanctuary not one for Seal Lions. I know the difference but just wanted to use this opportunity to make a lame political opinion statement).

Anyway, on with the story. At about 9:00 my bait started getting really nervous. This was the first bait of the day and it was still really frisky. There was a bump… then another and a third. After about 20 seconds, my line started peeling off. Fish on… maybe. The run stopped and then suddenly started up again. I put my reel in gear and we were off to the races.

The fish fought hard for fifteen minutes or so. Being relatively inexperienced at catching large fish, I was not sure what I had on. It did not feel like the YT from last week. There were periods of steady pressure when the fish took a hundred yards of line or more. There were other periods in which the retrieve was little more than dead weight. Chris, who was witnessing the event, suggested that it might be a WSB. I did not have a clue.

Eventually, I saw color. I was still not sure what flavor fish I had on. I continued to gently work him to the surface. It was a YT. Smaller than last week’s fish by a couple pounds, (I weighed it at home, it came in at about 17 lbs.)



In case I failed to mention it before, I am a fairly inexperienced fisherman. This would be the first time that I would have the opportunity to try out the shiny new gaff that I got as a Christmas gift. The bad news is that I have never gaffed a fish before. The good news is that this fish was so tired when he came to my kayak that all I needed to do was lift him from the water with my gaff. The point never penetrated his belly. I am sure that the next time it will not be so easy so if someone wants to give me gaffing lessons, I ‘m game.

I do not keep fish that I do not plan to eat and two big fish in a week fills my freezer. I was ready to head in but decided to keep fishing for a while to see if I could catch another nice fish and release it as my friend Josh often does. Not today.

There was a very interesting event that occurred while all of this was going on. One of our Kayak Fishing brothers peddled up to Chris and I and told an interesting story. I do not know this guy but have seen him around on his tiny Hobie Sport kayak. Someone told me his name is Leonardo, so I will use that name in this part of the story.

Apparently Leonardo was peddling to the fishing grounds, in the fog like the rest of us, when he ran across one of those LJ Cove swimmers who had lost his bearings. As the story was told to me, the swimmer had no idea where he was in the fog and was swimming the wrong direction. When Leonardo found him, he was in the middle of the fishing grounds, headed to Japan.

I got this story second hand and cannot vouch for the details. I did talk to Leonardo and confirmed that he took time out of his day fishing to drag the exhausted swimmer back to the Cove. Regardless of the details, Leonardo, (or whomever did this), probably saved a life today. As a former Lifeguard, I can appreciate this and would like to commend Leonardo for his efforts. Of course, we would all have done the same, but on this day, the swimmer was very lucky that Leo crossed his path as the visibility was only a couple hundred feet.

Back to fishing. Given the fact that I already had my fish early and was playing hooking from work, I headed in. I am not sure how the others that were out that day did. I do know that Chris, my fishing partner for the day, spent most of the day on the water with little to show for his efforts. This has been the way this summer has gone. It’s slow… then it’s not… then it’s slow again.

After nine months of zeros, I have two nice fish in about a week. The only thing I can think of that has made the difference is my little class with Josh. Thank you professor.

Bob