La Jolla, Saturday August 16

[EntropyFletch]

First trip to La Jolla in the kayak for me and my buddy Ian on Saturday.

Short report: We both hooked yellows, Ian had his eaten by a sea lion, I landed a small fish.

Long report: If you were there Saturday around 5:30 you saw or helped me get my truck out of the sand at the launch. Yup, I was THAT guy. Felt like a complete idiot, but Andrew (who I randomly asked for help from and who graciously obliged) and my buddy Ian, along with a few other guys, helped rock my truck enough to get it out. THANK YOU!

Hard to recover from that, but we managed to get geared up and made it out past the small warm surf pretty easily. It took us a long time to make bait, with almost exclusively spanish macs. I actually hooked 2 bonito right off the bat and they made a mess of my sabiki. Eventually we each had about 6-8 spanish and 1 greenie each and we decided to start trolling. Ian hooked a tail within the first 5 minutes in about 85' of water on the NW corner with his greenie. Unfortunately...he also hooked a sea lion within the first 10 minutes...and lost the battle. We trolled around for several hours and eventually came back to the corner and made about 8 greenbacks. Trolling again and WHAM! My clicker goes off. Thinking its a sea lion, I let it run for a bit and put it in gear and...nothing. I start winding and about 30' from the boat I see a wake behind my bait. I wind faster and BOIL! Yellowtail misses my bait. Out of gear for a few seconds and he's back, slamming my bait about 15' off my bow. Hook up! I'm on and trying to figure out what the hell to do. 4 minutes later, small 10-12 # tail on deck.

Learned a lot, got even more hooked on yak fishing, and can't wait for the next trip.

First GoPro video, of my first trip to LJ, catching my first yellowtail out of the yak. Please watch in HD. I'm not sure how to embed the video directly...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1kHgb0nxlQ