Abalone hunting with Diamondbear in Mendocino County 6-5-08
I forgot to post the pics last night so I added a thread of my own.
Here is the link to that thread. Not like there are too many of these threads around here these days, ya know what I mean? ;)
http://fishingnetwork.net/forum4/sho...859#post199859
Here is the stuff from that thread so you don't have to go there and read it too.
Here is the cove where Diamondbear and myself dove for our abalone. MacKerricher State Park in Mendocino County.
Steve just prior to our rappelling down the cliff. Next time maybe we should just toss the weights down there?.....lol.....j/k
The weather was perfect up there with sunshine all day on Wednesday and Thursday.
Friday saw the clouds come in right about the time we were leaving. We left around 1600 hours.
Here I am just prior to getting it all wet for the first time in nearly 12 years.
We didn't take many u/w shots because of the particulates in the water due to the surge.
The abalone were thick up there. Nothing like the sparse populations down south.
I used to feel lucky when I'd find a rock with one legal and a bunch of empty scars on it.
A scar is the depression left by an abalone from years of living in the same spot.
We slipped in right between two periods of pretty rough weather.
Friday and Saturday there were supposed to be gale force winds.
The yellow straps are part of a harness I need to wear to hold my weight belt in position.
The belt had slipped off wwhen this pic was snapped. I need to get a custom suit made now.
The extra bouyancy required me to wear 20 lbs. of lead to get down. I think I could have gotten by with 18.
Diamondbear using his ab iron to gauge how much bigger than the minimum size.
Although the abs up there were huge you still need to measure them before you pluck them off the rocks.
Abalone are hemephiliacs and will die if you tear their skin while removing them.
If you hold an abalone up to its scar it will try to reattach itself to the rock.
It takes about a minute or two sometimes to reattach an abalone after removing it.
You should always measure an abalone prior to popping it off the rocks to be sure it is legal.
Just to be clear on this matter, Diamondbear had measured all of his abalone prior to removing them.
In the pic above he was measuring it to actually determine how much larger than 7" it really was.
They were a LOT BIGGER!!! Thanks for the choice spot Steve.:cool:
The DFG reporting requirements are very strict now in order to make it much harder for the poachers.
Here is Steves Abalone report card prior to his filling it out.
This nice gal checked our Abalone within minutes of our scaling the cliffside.
She was real nice. Very polite and helpful. And armed to the teeth too......LOL. I like that in a woman.
The daily bag and possession limit for abalone is 3. Here are both of our limits.
I am seriously considering moving up there to do a little gardening, ranching, and hunting.
They got it all up there, including the nicest people on earth. We saw lots of deer on this trip.
Thanks for reading my report. I hope you liked the pics. Next time I'll make sure to get a lot more for you.
I rented all the gear I needed to safely complete my dive at Sub-Surface Progressions dive center.
Great store with extra helpful staff. Here is their website address.
http://www.subsurfaceprogression.com
abalONE_LEG
Reply With Quote
