1/21-1/23
I received a few PM's from Murrieta Angler (robert) and we decided to meet up for a 1.5 day trip on the Legend out of Seaforth. Coincidentally, a week before the trip - i ran into another fellow FNN member (Nick Lam) at a house party and i told him to join us and he did.
I cut out of work a little early on Friday and got to Seaforth at around 5pm. Then when the sun went down, Nick showed up with his buddy Tim. We boarded the boat around 7:30 and I was wondering if Robert was gonna flake. We stowed our gear on our bunks and when i came back up on deck, Murrieta Angler finally showed up.
left to right: Me, Robert, Tim and Nick.
The boat had picked up a bountiful supply of assorted sized sardines and small Macs.
We departed and gathered in the galley for the captains safety speech. You can tell by Robert's facial expression... "you're preaching to the choir - captain."
The crew of the Legend is very nice and VERY helpful in getting tangles out and general knowledge overall. There's just 1 thing that kinda irk'd me. It's looked down upon if you use anything other than 2 hooks and a weight on your rig. The captian was very adimate about that. No rock cod rigs, no butterfly jigs, no lucanis jigs were seen throughout the day. I don't know... i mean, if you pay all this money to go on an overnight trip, i think you should be able to try out whatever bait/technique you want as long as you're not tangling up the whole boat.
moving right along...
We also had 2 special guests on board. Bob - prostaffer from Berkely/Penn who raffled of some cool gear (including a Baja Special 4/0) and also Ernie from 976=TUNA who took pics all day long.
Then i turned in early at around 9pm so i would have strength to stand up and fish all of Saturday. 6:45am we all wake up...
I went out on deck and it was pretty foggy in the morning. Oh and thank God i put on my patch for this trip cuz it was...
7:15am - had our breakfast plates and breakfast burritos that Gery-Sue made for us. Here's a picture of Murrieta Angler taking a picture of his breakfast.
And after breakfast, we did our last minute gear changes (the ones that you lay awake on your bunk the night before and question yourself about...)
At around 7:35 - the boat started slowing down and we finally reached Colonet. All of us were on deck and waiting for the boat to completely shut off so we can drop.
We fished from 250-350 feet all day.
On my first drop, i put a pony sized sardine on the bottom and a full squid on top. 12oz torpedo dropper loop setup. Right when it hit bottom - my rod tip loaded up and then bounced up and down for joy. My first fish of the day which was also the first lingcod on the boat.
And the guy immediately to my left caught this bohemoth red.
by the by, all the rockfish today were QUALITY QUALITY QUALITY fish as you will see in the rest of the report.
We swung off the rock and so we reset and dropped again. And again - my squid this time got CLOBBERED and this time Nick was to my left so we both pulled up these beauties...
Then Robert, quietly on the Starboard side hooked into his bounty.
Since there was no killbox on the stern, the floor of the boat quickly became littered with these huge rockfish.
15 minutes later, on another drift, Nick and i both hook up again right next to each other and what do you know?
Using the double squid now, i dropped down and like a vaccuum, something INHALED my bait -- so i wind wind wind and it's giving head shakes like mad - different than a lingcod - almost like a big Mackeral. When it finally came to color, up came this nice sized whitefish.
We made a few more moves and a few more drifts over rocks, pinnicals and ledges.
Photo op - between moves...
This is how the whole morning went. Drop - fish - drop - fish - drop - fish... then i got hungry and Gery-Sue made me a swiss Cheeseburger.
While i was eating my burger in the galley, i noticed some commotion - it was Robert!! He was grinding on the rail and then he lifted his stick up and it went BENDO!!! All eyes were fixed on him.
Wow that was exciting... when it came 10 feet from the surface to color, it fell off the hook. When i asked him what it was, he said "it was a HUGE rockfish (without the fish)".
okay so, after lunch - it was time to get back in the water...
More nice reds coming over the rail.
This next one was probably my PB (or close to it) Red at around 6-7 pounds. Boy did he put up a fight all the way to the top.
And then Tim, out of nowhere puts all of our reds to shame with this MONSTER RED!!!
Then Nick hooks up on his light tackle setup and brings up a dinosaur.
A few minutes later, somebody tailwrapped a 5 foot Nurse Shark. It was promptly but away though...
More fish littered on deck...
Random starry eye caught on skwid.
The day was coming to a close and the wind picked up just a tad (8 knots) and so the boat was drifting faster and faster. The fish became really finecky towards the end of the day. My final fish of the day was this Gigantic Bocaccio caught on a double sardine dropper loop in about 300 feet. It came up with it's mouth open as the boat was moving forward so i had to crank faster than usual. Thing was as big as my whole torso.
We called it a day when the sun touched the horizon on the west and Gery Sue whipped up a batch of her famous Spaghetti and garlic toast dinner.
Bob from Berkley/Penn approves of his dinner.
After dinner, Bob picked 2 lucky winners out of the raffle. 1 guy won a pole... i didn't bother to look what kind becuz i obviously didn't win it. And a Baja special 4/0 reel ... which i also did not win.
After the raffle, the crew laid out all the fish on deck and separated them by numbers. By this time i was too cold and tired to take anymore pics... i think Robert and Nick have more pics to add. And also you can check the 976-TUNA website for more pictures of this trip.
http://www.976-tuna.com/e107_plugins...anuary_22_2011
Anyways guys - Robert and Tim - it was a pleasure fishing with you guys - hope to do it again soon. Nick, u promised me we were gonna go freshwater or surf fishing.
Peace.
kk