But some times my crew makes me do it. It seems that the only times I ever do any good on paddies is when I just stop on the ones that get in the way on a run to the islands. If I set out to hunt for paddies as a primary goal, all I do is burn a lot of gas and get a boat ride instead of diving.
Today Jeff Bonisa, Dam Nguyen and I worked our way down then coast from Dana. We saw a total of just three white sea bass, but no fish landed. Finally, we decided to head straight offshore from the Barn Kelp and look for paddies. The sea temp gradually increased from 66 near the coast to 72 about 10 miles out, and it was reasonably calm. Yesterday the weather gave me an excuse to abort, but today it was just good enough for the guys to stand on the side of the boat and hold on to the rail on the pilot house roof without too much danger.
Both guys have very good eyes for paddies and spotted quite a few, but they kept jumping and reporting lots of bait, but no fish. Jeff spotted a large white object in the distance, and when we ran to it, we found that it was a flock of terns on a nice paddy that we could never have seen from that distance were it not for the birds. They both went in and found just one very intelligent 20 top 25 pound yellowtail. They must have spend 30 minutes at least picking on it, but could never get a good shot, so we moved on.
At about 11 miles offshore, I turned right and paralleled the coast toward the 279 spot. For those of you new to this stuff, there are various sea mounts offshore, sticking up out of much deeper water, and known by their charted depth in fathoms. So the 279 is 279 fathoms, or 1674 feet deep. They may seem like "so what" information, but the deep currents hitting these spots causes upwelling of nutrients, which in turn attracts bait, which in turn attracts game fish, so they are popular spots with marlin fisherman. The 279 is about 12 miles south of Dana Point.
As we approached the 279, we saw a marlin jumping. As we arrived on the spot, we saw a paddy, and a Dorado jumped three times chasing bait, so that seemed like a good omen. It looked to be around 5 pounds, but at this point, who cares?
Jeff and Dam jumped in, and very quickly Jeff shot a nice Dorado. Unbelievably, Dam got a video of the shot, and then of the Dorado wrapping line around Jeff. You just don't see stuff like that very often. I just got a quick look on the camera while trying to steer the boat home in very rough seas, but I can hardly wait for Dam to publish it.
Dam hung in there on the paddy for quite a long time, but the fish never came back and we moved on. They jumped on quite a few more paddies but didn't see any more fish, so we came back home in increasingly rough seas at about 6 PM.
I'm still not crazy about paddy diving, but one Dorado beats the hell out of no fish at all, and it was great to see the excitement over that fish.
Dam has some great underwater still shots as well as the video, and I hope he'll post them soon.
Today Jeff Bonisa, Dam Nguyen and I worked our way down then coast from Dana. We saw a total of just three white sea bass, but no fish landed. Finally, we decided to head straight offshore from the Barn Kelp and look for paddies. The sea temp gradually increased from 66 near the coast to 72 about 10 miles out, and it was reasonably calm. Yesterday the weather gave me an excuse to abort, but today it was just good enough for the guys to stand on the side of the boat and hold on to the rail on the pilot house roof without too much danger.
Both guys have very good eyes for paddies and spotted quite a few, but they kept jumping and reporting lots of bait, but no fish. Jeff spotted a large white object in the distance, and when we ran to it, we found that it was a flock of terns on a nice paddy that we could never have seen from that distance were it not for the birds. They both went in and found just one very intelligent 20 top 25 pound yellowtail. They must have spend 30 minutes at least picking on it, but could never get a good shot, so we moved on.
At about 11 miles offshore, I turned right and paralleled the coast toward the 279 spot. For those of you new to this stuff, there are various sea mounts offshore, sticking up out of much deeper water, and known by their charted depth in fathoms. So the 279 is 279 fathoms, or 1674 feet deep. They may seem like "so what" information, but the deep currents hitting these spots causes upwelling of nutrients, which in turn attracts bait, which in turn attracts game fish, so they are popular spots with marlin fisherman. The 279 is about 12 miles south of Dana Point.
As we approached the 279, we saw a marlin jumping. As we arrived on the spot, we saw a paddy, and a Dorado jumped three times chasing bait, so that seemed like a good omen. It looked to be around 5 pounds, but at this point, who cares?
Jeff and Dam jumped in, and very quickly Jeff shot a nice Dorado. Unbelievably, Dam got a video of the shot, and then of the Dorado wrapping line around Jeff. You just don't see stuff like that very often. I just got a quick look on the camera while trying to steer the boat home in very rough seas, but I can hardly wait for Dam to publish it.
Dam hung in there on the paddy for quite a long time, but the fish never came back and we moved on. They jumped on quite a few more paddies but didn't see any more fish, so we came back home in increasingly rough seas at about 6 PM.
I'm still not crazy about paddy diving, but one Dorado beats the hell out of no fish at all, and it was great to see the excitement over that fish.
Dam has some great underwater still shots as well as the video, and I hope he'll post them soon.
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