Big Hat: No Cattle; Saturday Skunking Saga

[DDS]

After reading a few other posts, I thought I might post for the first time and share my Saturday story…

I’ve got a regular every weekday kinda job, so unfortunately weekends are my only chance I get to try to buck the “0 for _” trend I have going.
Saturday was a beautiful morning, there was a bit of a fog, and when I first rolled up to the beach you could hear the waves pounding on the beach.

Hit the beach just before 6 to see probably 20 boats lined up, gearing up and getting ready to hit the surf. I unloaded my tandem island, rocking it solo for the first time. My usual crew are my 7 and 10 year old, but today they wanted to rest, and it would give me a chance to concentrate on the fish instead of feeding, entertaining and watching out for two of the most patient little fishermen I could ask for. Plus it would give me a chance to hopefully learn the magic of finally catching something so the boys wouldn’t have to catch bait for me and then watch their dear old dad flail around and give the mackerel tow rides around the cove for 6 hours again.

Dumped the Tandem on the beach and went to park. Had to pull the little red wagon with all, or at least I thought, my stuff down to the beach as without my crew there I had no one to watch it, and with all the stories lately of stuff disappearing, I didn’t want my day to start off the wrong way…

Just as I was pulling the boat onto the water to launch I saw two different yaks get popped straight up and over by some pretty big breakers…so back on to dry land to lash everything down. The Tandem is a big beast, and though stable out on the water, she is a lot to handle in the surf.

Thought I would be patient and time my launch…find a nice break and the sets and went for it…pushed the kayak out to about waist deep, slammed in the peddles and jumped about, got about four pumps in before I had to jump off…kinda like in the back of the car in high school. Rogue wave comes up and over the bow of the tandem so I bailed in chest deep water and tried to hold the boat from getting pitched sideways…I could just imagine the wreckage of all my gear and the tandem going over in front of 30 other fishermen. Thankfully the only casualty was my coffee, and my bait tank got blown off the back but managed to stay attached.

Made it out to the kelp, and strangely for how bad I suck at this kayak fishing thing, I made bait pretty well. Sabiki brought in 6 Greenies and a Spanish in about 30 minutes…so I decided to high tail it to the La Jolla Canyon to see if I could catch something big and fun coming up at the depth break. Spent an hour or so failing at that and decided to push out deeper and look for some kelp paddies. The headwind was pretty strong and it took quite a while to push outside. Every time I stopped to rig something, or check something the wind would blow my tandem completely around and back to shore a few hundred yards. After an hour or so of pumping I look around about 5 miles off shore and don't see a single other kayak. I kept thinking I was going to have my first post be a bluefin story….but no dice. Came across one paddy and fished if for 20-30 minutes with no luck. Fly lining mackerel all around it….yoyo jigging irons. Finally decided to head in and fish the western side of the kelp beds close to shore where most of the other boats had stayed.

Coming in took so long I needed to bail on fishing anymore and just head in…So I finally put up my sail and started to tow my last two macs…one flylined about 40 yards back and one about 30 yards back with a 2 oz weight to keep it below the sea dogs and the other mack…

No luck, but as I get closer to the kelp beds on the way in I start to pull my lines in, but foolishly don’t reef my sail as I’m trying to hustle, my wife and kids are meeting me on the beach at 1PM. So as I am pulling in my second line, it is caught around at least 100 yards of someone else’s braid, and it tangles around my rudder and snags a small kelp paddy as I’m trying to undo the rats nest.

Little did I realize that the wind had caught the sail and blew me right into the kelp beds…and that is right when I realized that the one thing I forgot to put on my little red wagon from the car to the beach in the morning was my paddle. OH #$%^. So my peddles and rudder are now uselessly dragging through and wedged in the kelp…it’s 1 PM, I’ve been peddling almost 7 hours at this point and I’ve covered almost 14 miles…My legs are toast, but I’m realizing that without my paddle, and without the use of the rudder and peddles, I have to put the sail back out and let it skim me over the paddys until I get to a clear point enough to be able to get back out past the kelp.

If the nice Asian couple who was kayak fishing the kelp paddys is on here, forgive the minor expletive ridden hulk fest you may have seen as I was trying to peddle through clear spots, pull the peddles and pull up the rudder, then put the rudder and peddles back in again for 20 second intervals as I skimmed over kelp and into open areas of water. Especially when I got free of the kelp and then blown back into it by the wind. Finally, after almost an hour of fighting through the kelp, and contemplating radioing the coast guard or swallowing my pride completely and waving my arms like and idiot at one of the powerboats nearby to give me a ride, the sail caught some wind and pushed me clear…almost all the way down at marine street beach…downwind and over a mile from the launch point.

As I rounded the point to head into shore, the last insult, besides the fact that I still had not caught a fish, was that while trying to secure everything for what I was sure was going to be a disaster ridden climax to my day of pirouetting through the surf in front of thousands of beach goers, I dropped my gaff in the water and the damn thing sunk like a rock.

So after what was a long day there were some positives, lost only one piece of gear, didn’t capsize, lost 6 pounds of what I’m sure was only water weight from the exercise, and my wife had the only fish related thing I would actually catch that day waiting on the beach…a nice cold Sculpin.

Well, that was a much longer story than I meant to write. I’m still “0 for” after 5 outings and probably almost 40 hours out in La Jolla cove and the surrounding waters. Hope my luck changes, I’m enjoying the boating, though the fishing could improve. I very much feel like I’m “Big Hat with no cattle” as I have the right gear…I’m just getting in the way of it working…

It is crushing hearing all those great stories about catching when you come up empty handed, especially when everyone says this is one of the best fishing seasons we have had in the last 20 years. Thanks to all the guys who have been so gracious offering tips and advice on the beach and in the water…hopefully my next post will include pics of a nice catch.