I met Dave and Alex at the ramp yesterday at 0500, hoping that taking two guys who had never been on my boat might change my luck. It worked, even if they did require a lot of training on anchor pulling, etc.
We hit four spots. The first three all had at least decent vis, and even better than decent at the second and third. There were huge schools of sardines, lots of mackerel, and everything you might want besides white sea bass.
The fourth spot was clearest of all, and also had lots of bait. Of course by then, I was just on autopilot, diving, surfacing, and not even remembering why I was doing that. But lo and behold, I leveled off at around 20 feet and two nice fish came around a column of kelp to check me out. I shot one.
All of these fruitless trips, I've kept telling myself that I wasn't doing anything any different, and that as soon as I saw a fish, I would wonder why I ever thought this was so hard. I was right for once. It was easy, at least until I shot. Then it took off with me grabbing the float line and trying to keep it from getting deep or far away. At least it didn't get far away, but it did get to the bottom.
When I got it stopped, I was really breathing hard, and started looking for help. I'd see fins go into the air, wait an decent interval, and then shout, but the guys were pretty far away. Finally I calmed down, orally inflated my Carter float and clipped it to the float line and clipped my gun to the rear end of the line. I was cutting my way down, then taking up slack as the float line got closer to vertical. I was still looking for help, but finally saw Alex and Dave together, indicating that one of them had a fish too. It turned out to be Dave, and after Alex finished helping him, he came over to help me. We had quite a cluster ****, but I'll leave out the details, and just say that we finally got the fish up. I feel bad for Alex sacrificing his hunting time, but what goes around comes around, and I've been on that side myself.
The fish turned out to be almost like twins. When we got back to the ramp where the scale wouldn't jiggle, his weighed 61 pounds and mine weighed 59 pounds- 1 ounce.
As many of you know, mine was my first of the year, and it was nice to get the monkey off my back. Dave's fish was his first white sea bass ever, not a bad way to start.
On the way back to the harbor, it actually occurred to me that I should get a crew and go back today now that I know where some fish are. However, age and reality have intervened. I'm wasn't up for getting up at 0300 and diving all day today, and I'll spend half of today cleaning up and recovering from yesterday.
The photos show that various guns can do it. Dave has one of Gil's Zero Recoil guns, and having strained my back handing it to him, I'm sure it had no recoil at all. But I got my with a little 55" hybrid with 9/32" shaft, and it still managed to toggle the little Mori tip on the gill cover.
Life is good after all.
We hit four spots. The first three all had at least decent vis, and even better than decent at the second and third. There were huge schools of sardines, lots of mackerel, and everything you might want besides white sea bass.
The fourth spot was clearest of all, and also had lots of bait. Of course by then, I was just on autopilot, diving, surfacing, and not even remembering why I was doing that. But lo and behold, I leveled off at around 20 feet and two nice fish came around a column of kelp to check me out. I shot one.
All of these fruitless trips, I've kept telling myself that I wasn't doing anything any different, and that as soon as I saw a fish, I would wonder why I ever thought this was so hard. I was right for once. It was easy, at least until I shot. Then it took off with me grabbing the float line and trying to keep it from getting deep or far away. At least it didn't get far away, but it did get to the bottom.
When I got it stopped, I was really breathing hard, and started looking for help. I'd see fins go into the air, wait an decent interval, and then shout, but the guys were pretty far away. Finally I calmed down, orally inflated my Carter float and clipped it to the float line and clipped my gun to the rear end of the line. I was cutting my way down, then taking up slack as the float line got closer to vertical. I was still looking for help, but finally saw Alex and Dave together, indicating that one of them had a fish too. It turned out to be Dave, and after Alex finished helping him, he came over to help me. We had quite a cluster ****, but I'll leave out the details, and just say that we finally got the fish up. I feel bad for Alex sacrificing his hunting time, but what goes around comes around, and I've been on that side myself.
The fish turned out to be almost like twins. When we got back to the ramp where the scale wouldn't jiggle, his weighed 61 pounds and mine weighed 59 pounds- 1 ounce.
As many of you know, mine was my first of the year, and it was nice to get the monkey off my back. Dave's fish was his first white sea bass ever, not a bad way to start.
On the way back to the harbor, it actually occurred to me that I should get a crew and go back today now that I know where some fish are. However, age and reality have intervened. I'm wasn't up for getting up at 0300 and diving all day today, and I'll spend half of today cleaning up and recovering from yesterday.
The photos show that various guns can do it. Dave has one of Gil's Zero Recoil guns, and having strained my back handing it to him, I'm sure it had no recoil at all. But I got my with a little 55" hybrid with 9/32" shaft, and it still managed to toggle the little Mori tip on the gill cover.
Life is good after all.
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