Fishing at La Jolla never ceases to amaze me, it truly is a Jewel. It is such an amazing place that constantly surprises me with new sights and experiences.
My brother was in town for a bachelor party and our job was to get some kind of fish for the party on Friday night. We paddled out at o'dark thirty on Friday morning knowing that we were going to catch some fish. Made it out to the squid grounds and soaked some fresh dead for a while. Nearly every squirt that went down caught a few barracuda and had a lot of bait devoured by macs. I moved around a lot looking for signs of the right kind of life while my brother just drifted out to deeper water. After a while I look over and sure enough he is bendo. Knowing that he does not have a gaff or game clip, i cruise over there to see what he's got. As I get closer, he says its a halibut. When I get close enough to see it, the only words that came to mind were "Holy F@&$!". The head was huge. I swoop in for the gaff shot, right in the belly. Stoked! Get it on the clip, pop the gills and about 15 minutes later I hand it back to my bro so we take a few pics.
Don't get me wrong, we were beyond stoked to know that halibut was on the menu, but at the same time we were hoping to have some sashimi for the party. It seemed really slow at the beds, so we headed out to the NW corner in search of the right kind. We both dropped back some macs and shortly there after I got slammed by a yellow, but he did not stick. Bummer. Then a little further out we hear some whales and we paddled over to find a pod of four massive blue whales. Insane to see them up close from a yak. We were so in awe that we completely forgot to take out the camera. We trolled some macs back to the barn, but there was no sashimi to be found for our party.
My brother's halibut measured 45.5", 45# and had some serious girth.
We cooked up about 10#s of meat for the party and made some tacos. Man that was a tasty meal. All his friends were stoked and wanted to head out and catch their own fish.
As it turned out, one of his friends talked us into another adventure on Monday. So Monday morning we head out again in the dark. This time there were some waves at the launch and we had to really pick the right time to punch through, but we all made it out without an incident. The squid grounds were nearly empty, just a few of the regulars. We drop down some fresh dead and they all got instantly tore up by macs and 'cuda. We all got sick of this and thought that we should again head out off the squid beds and troll some macs. I tie a sabiki on my bass rod, since I loaned out all my other rods, and drop it down on a nice size bait ball. As soon as it hits the bottom I put it in gear and line goes ripping off. This ain't no mac! This fish decided that it would be smart to head out for deep water and away from the kelp, so I decided it would be best to remove him from the gene pool.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dC_L0...ature=youtu.be
(I am not sure how to embed the video.)
It was a small yellow, 22# but was quite a fight on the bass rod, especially since he was tail hooked. And I was not sure how hard I could pull on the sabiki hooks.
I wanted to get the other guys on some fish and they wanted to paddle, so again we made our way out towards the NW corner and dropped in some macs, which were instantly stolen by a seal who then proceeded to follow us for the next 45 min, preventing us from doing any more fishing.
It's always fun fishing with my bro, somehow we always seems to come back with some great stories and most of the time they are based on reality.