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[Aaron&Julie]

Went out solo on Friday 9/2/16, Julie couldn’t make the trip.

There were only 2 guys who went out before my 5AM launch, I did watch as they tried to time their launch.

Waves seemed small, but it was a new moon and it was rather hard to gauge. I am not one to time my launches too much, especially when it’s pitch black out.

3-5 minutes before I could launch it was dead calm, with little white water waves.
I knew I missed my opportunity and I was going to pay for it.

Yep, sure enough, I got through the first couple of small waves, just like normal.
Then 3 feet in front of my bow and right before impact it hit, a solid 3 foot high peak wave, all the way to my face and beyond. As every kayaker, paddling in the dark should do, I kept paddling hard.
I barely cleared the next big one, and the one after, then I was clear. But I was soaked from head and below. After drying up and re-organizing, I found water seeped in my hatch bucket between my legs, on my towels and clothes behind me in my bait tank, etc. Awesome!!!

As Julie will attest, our best trips seem to coincide with a good beach christening.
It happened when she got her first white sea bass, and on other trips to boot. After getting drenched good in the dark morning hours, things pretty much can only look up from there. Mind you, I love dry launches, and some may say this early morning bath was hardly worth it.
I say it was well worth it.

It was my first kayak fishing trip in 2 years, we didn’t even have fishing licenses last year. I think that’s the first time since my Navy days in 1990 that’s happened to me.

By the time I made it to the buoy line, I was confused. First it was just barely getting light, and I kept looking around for the LJ reserve buoys, I couldn’t find them. I knew the MLPA boundary was just beyond that point, the area I was legally allowed to fish. Well, minutes later, I saw a couple of guys who came out and were trying to make bait. I kept my sabiki in the water hoping to catch some bait as I paddled towards them. I started asking questions and found out the buoys no longer existed, meaning if you wanted to know where it was legal to fish you better have GPS, or know how to triangulate. While chatting, the one pointed out my sabiki rod was going off, so I started reeling it in and saw 3-4 bonito on my sabiki. By the time I got it on board there were only 2, and too big to use for live bait.

Next issue, catch bait. I’ve heard it was tough lately, but when I saw these 2 guys catching some, I thought it might be no problem. The difference was they had electronics on board, I didn’t. They spotted the school of Spanish macks (please don’t correct me), and I couldn’t. I didn’t want to be a barnacle to them and kept my distance. Perhaps if I’d used my 2 secret weapons I could’ve caught some then.

So after an hour and half of scurrying around, I finally went away from the crowd and went shallow.
Now, here’s where there’s important information like the absence of the buoys to those fisher-people like myself gone away from the LJ scene for 2 years, THERE’S NO KELP! I mean if you fished LJ more than 2 years ago you knew the kelp beds in front of the “Condo” were there, changing in size for various reasons (kelp cutters, etc). But I’m saying it’s gone, as in 98-99% gone. I employed weapon #1, which most kayak fisher-people know, tip your sabikis with small strips of squid. I also employed our own weapon #2, Friskies-Mariner’s Catch Pate catfood. With this tip pull back the lid about 1/3s, submerse and shake the can vigoroursly and randomly. Well it didn’t work right away, but I saw smelt puddling in front of me and cast my sabiki that way, often some Spanish will be lingering below them. Result, 1 good sized Spanish. I did it twice more and got a couple more. Then I decided to cast in the direction of where my “Friskies” was drifting away. Low and behold, a greenie. Then I cast that way again, as soon as I started to reel, BAM! 6 greenies on 6 hooks. It took quite awhile before I could unhook them all and I was surprised later that only 1 had died from the ordeal, but I cast that way again and got 1 more before the school moved on. These greenies were mirror images, about the size of mega-sardines, all smaller than the Spanish I caught this day.

In the next few minutes I was able to wrangle up a few more Spanish (singularly), and I left the area with an even mix of both species of macks. I’m one who would rather take longer to make more bait to start fishing with, than to just have a few in the tank to start the day.
It only takes one Sea Lion to rip you off of the 3 or 4 baits you may catch to end your success. If I continue to make bait like I was, I’ll stick around until the bait disappears. My perseverance for bait, I believe was in direct correlation to my successes on my trips.

Fishing:
Amazing…to me…but then I’m easily amazed. Within 3 minutes of putting 2 live mackerel on 2 of my poles, I was bit. An excellent run, maybe 5 seconds, when I was going to put the reel in gear for the hook set, he dropped it. After waiting then bringing the bait in, my analysis, yellowtail. Not a crushed head like might be expected, a skin scrap at the gill line, and a tenderized body. It didn’t crush the head, just the body, no teeth marks. 10 minutes later a pretty good run. Teeth marks, it was a bonito.
After going out, I headed in again. The next hit was a barracuda. It took the big Spanish I had on, for many rides. I didn’t know it was a ‘Cuda at the time, because of the repeat takes and drops, figuring it might be a big Calico. Finally I reeled my bait in, the fish followed the bait and I could see it was a ‘Cuda, about 26” long. I moved on, and it slowed from there for the next 3 hours. Except…
At one point during the lull, I took a slab of dead mackerel, hooked it on my B/W Salas 6x, and dropped it to the bottom. On my 1st drop, right when it hit bottom, BAM! Nice little fight, hoping for lingcod or nice Red, up comes a Calico. Easily legal.
The next nice thing during this lull, I had a friendly visitor…a sea turtle popped up to say hello. I never can get the camera out in time for these encounters. This was big to me, one of the things to keep doing what I’m doing.
Moments to cherish.

I went out outside again, around PBs and other ‘yakers.
Nothing really going on. One ‘yaker got excited, from what I could tell it was a medium ‘Dog’ giving him the works. Turns out, that was probably the smartest dog I’ve ever met. He got to me too. He ended up getting 5 or 6 baits from me, again, which is why I load up with bait before seriously fishing. He was so damn sneaky, he’d get his 3/4s without a twitch in the line. Those that don’t know (3/4s), just means he’d leave you pretty much nothing but the head.

So after searching around 6 hours already on the water, I wanted to call it quits.

But with a tattoo that actually says, “Never Say Die”, and a GF that knows “one last cast” usually means at least 3 more last casts, I started towards the launch. Now, with the “normal” kelp gone, I went inside (20’ to 40’ feet deep), eventually in front of the big “Condo”. I was rather hoping to catch a matching pair to my earlier Calico bass for more fish taco ingredients.

Because of the mad “Dog” around, I was trolling a Yozuri plug on one line, and my last greenie on the other. I still had 2 nice sized Spanish left in the bait tank.
When my live bait got bit, my clicker was screaming. After the initial run, I let the hook set and the fight was on, 5 minutes later and after the yellowtail towed me around a bit, I sunk the gaff perfectly. Since I had 2 bigger Spanish mackerels left I decided to fly-line them both out in the hopes of another yellow.

No such luck, but all in all a FANTASTIC spectacular day on a 2 year hiatus. The picture of is hardly worth posting.

http://i745.photobucket.com/albums/x...16%20catch.jpg