Year End Slaughter On the Water

 Gentle Readers,

This morning your reporter was lucky enough to make a few year end casts for bass on the backside of a high tide in Dana Harbor as the day woke up.
I was listening to Neil Young, because, if used sparingly, his tunes draw bass.  It is cast and retrieve mojo music. I was throwing a white swimbait and managed to land the biggest spotted bay bass of this year (for me) after a spirited battle against capture amidst the rocks.

I released it and immediately racked my lure and headed for the car because I did not want to tempt the fishing gods to smite me for my greed.

This report is not about that fish, even though it was a cool way to start the morning and end the year.

Last night Isaac, Tommy, David and I crewed for Secret Skipper on a year-end lobster adventure into what was supposed to be sloppy weather and big waves.  We almost decided to put it off until Saturday when the weather window seemed more favorable, but we decided we were Gloucestermen and met up with Skipper in San Pedro at 1 pm to prowl the coast for a likely spot to drop our hoops.

It was great to all be out on the water together as we smacked through the lumpy overcast while scanning the horizon for the buttery spots on the surface that would give away crustacean positions for our baits of falsehood to exploit.

This was only the second time that all five of us had made it out during lobster season in all the years we have been sharing hoop dreams together in smaller crews.  The last occasion was epic, as we managed to limit out over the course of a long night of pulling.  This time we made a pact to avoid staying out all night to try and duplicate that feat if conditions did not support us.  There had already been some rain and the forecast was for five foot waves and double digit winds that were supposed to die off as this largely moonless night progressed.

As it turned out, the weather was not all that bad to begin with and just kept improving.

We cut bait, stuffed cages and made our sets by 4 pm against a sunset calendared for  4:54 pm.  It was one of the shortest days of the year in churned up water.  This gave us an early shot at a crawl we would need to last for all of us to cash in.

Since we had a large crew, we all had plenty of help in the routine at the rail and rotated in and out of the lineup.  The entire process was smooth and as close to error-free as we ever get.

Our first pull began at 5:45 pm and was empty, except for a snail.  Then the fun began.  We started getting bugs in nearly every hoop, including shorts that pleasantly constituted a minority of what we brought up.

All depths performed, but the shallows probably had the best scores, including another outstanding production out of our 125 footer, set in 104-107 feet of flat bottom.  It was our last pull of each set and got us to 12 in ten first-set pulls with a game-high three legals.

          Bycatch was very light.  We had a couple of medium spiders, no eels or horn sharks,and little in the way of bait swarms or seal harassment.  

David did manage to briefly detain this curious  hitchhiker that rode up the elevator to our deck.

Our second set put up 10 legals, our third set brought us eight.  We finished off the evening needing one more in a decelerating crawl as we pulled and stacked our gear to get number 35 in 45 pulls.

We did not get any giants, but did get a pretty good grade that featured many close to three pounds and a majority of captives that did not require measuring.  It was back to mostly females and no signs of an active spawn.

We left our spot and made it back to Pedro by 10 pm.  Cleanup was pretty easy with a five man crew.  Your reporter was back in our kitchen a little after midnight, watching in wonder as the boys rotated heaping plates of holiday leftovers into the microwave like coalers stoking a locomotive.

We decided that it was probably our best lobster trip ever as the boys nodded and chomped in enthusiastic agreement while fortifying themselves against the risk of starvation during slumber.

The abundance of what we encountered caused us to attempt to calculate the volume of lobster we could have preserved if we we had the ability to can the tails like Santa does with the coke he smuggles in to keep Christmas white.  We figured at least two cases.

Your reporter quickly hit the rack and descended into visions of ropes and pulleys before waking up to brew a large dawn patrol coffee and chase a favorable tide.  It was another chance to contemplate the morning surf crashing over the Dana Point jetty when that  bass jolted me into turning the handle on a perfect punch-out of my piscatorial timecard for another year.

Today, Isaac and Kyle put the finishing touches on a kayaker's gaff as your narrator prepared the counter for insecticide after the mandatory lobster life photos preserved evidence of our crimes.

We wish all of you a Happy New Year.

May all of us  take this chance to see our friends, have some laughs and look back on a year that brings us to  this annual overlook from which we can see, quite clearly, that

These Are the Days

October 2024 Fish Report: Chatter from Cheddar Bay

 Gentle Readers,

October found us scattered as we cast about in our own spheres of influence.  It feels like the tide of the season is in definite retreat for pelagics that mostly just grazed us on this cycle.

Isaac got out at Salt Point for  some camping and kayaking into the Norcal shallow water rockfish season.  This delicious and lucky cabezon was released because it did such a good job posing for the photo.

Tommy and Amelia went camping with fly rods.

They pulled on one cutthroat after another

    while dodging killer elk and moose on the trail and in their   campsite.

Your reporter got a first cast halibut that also was only briefly detained while fishing the high tide slack in Dana Point Harbor.

I was included by friend Mike on an impromptu charter for some local half-day bass fishing off San Clemente with Chris Bogseth of Left Bank sportfishing for a mellow escape from the daily grind. It has otherwise been mostly a shorebound existence during what has been some pretty high powered tuna action for others.

With the kids in town for the long delayed memorial for their grandparents, Tommy and Isaac joined the crew to  experience Atonement on October 7 with Secret Skipper for our first lobster hunt of the season.

We were headed out to fish the nooks and crannies of our secret spot on the lee side of Cheddar Bay at the Island of Romance. We had a nice visit with Baitmaster Mike and picked up sardines  before clearing the breakwater and starting our trip across the channel at 1 pm.

The ride over was on the bumpy side,as the weather stayed fresh and never did lay down for us.

We drop tested each rig to untangle the ball of confusion rope piles that ended our last season.

Bait was chopped and cages were stuffed as we were on station and ready for action hours before the real drops would begin.

Skipper invoked the blessing of the Lobster Gods as he performed the ritual "Crusty the Crustacean" dance that marks the start to another season of hauling at the hemp.

We had all gear deployed early and then proceeded to kill time chasing fin fish for a while. We avoided getting bit at a variety of locations while trying many different presentations.  The sea temp had just made a big drop and the fish were uninspired.

We had expected the seas to lay down, but the wind remained gusty enough to bounce us around into the darkness.There were several other boats working sets in the bay, but everyone had good lights and stayed out of  each other's way.

We pulled our  first set after a two hours soak, although only about 20 minutes was after dark.  We had a lot of pulls in the first set for big spider crabs and horn sharks, but it was a light harvest of four for ten on lobster. We went right back down and rolled through another set as the crawl was happening early.

We found that this time, males outnumbered females, which was not the case last year.  We had a lot of  by-catch and mean spiders to contend with, but the second set was better than the first, as we clawed our first two limits in three sets.  Once again, it was the shallows that were doing most of the catching.  Our 125, set in 90 feet of water, proved to be the workhorse, producing multiple legals on every pull while most of the rest struggled to produce, especially our deepest hoops beyond 200 feet.  We had about a 50/50 split on shorts to legals. 

We hit the doldrums and had many pulls in a row that did not produce any legals.  We were still pulling after midnight and inched our way past three limits with 50 pulls.  

We managed some really nice 2-3 pounders, along with bugs that had to be measured. We finally decided to start breaking down gear, starting with the deeps, as we made one last set, knowing that we would not get back until 3 am.

We pulled up one hoop that was crowded with kelp and produced threes legals, including one that was close to 6 pounds.  We finished strong, but had to earn it. The magic125 accounted for over a third of what we kept.

The ride home got progressively more dense as we motored into a heavy fog bank that progressively thickened as we got closer to land. As they say (in a Cheddar Bay/Pepperidge Farm accent), it was thickeh than sea-poop out theah as we navigated by pure radar love for the last 8 miles. We were really close to the Pedro light by the time we actually saw it.

We ended up with 26 bugs for four guys. Cleanup and stacking all of the gear in the truck is always easier with three or four guys.  Even with youth and numbers, it was still 4:30 am by the time your narrator crawled into bed to take a nap.

We did not get any shots of bugs on board, but snapped a garage shot of this big male. 

At 6:30, your reporter's alarm went off like a discount pager from Lebanon for the yard clean up I had to complete before heading down to Dana Wharf at 9 am for the long-postponed ash scattering for Wendy's Mom and Dad Sunday morning.

We were heading east as the morning sun burned a hole in the fog to backlight Rob on the way out.

The dolphins came out to play and delighted toddlers and adults alike as they rode the bow waves between the hulls of the Ocean  Adventure catamaran that provided a stable and comfortable ride just as the morning fog began to lift. 

It was a great send off.  

We had a really good family reunion and Holiday Celebration of Life with lots of old movies and slide shows of days gone by.

That evening, the boys posed for the mandatory Lobster-Life photos that are a prelude to the savage processing that we performed with ruthless efficiency.  We tailed and trimmed most of them for vacuum sealing, while putting a selected few on the BBQ for a late dinner with the offspring.

We broke out some of our prey a few days later to join up with birthday-boy Matt Sage, Randy and Suzanne for the time-honored gluttony of attacking way too much ribeye and lobster.  The next morning I took Isaac to the airport to head back to SF at 5am as our time together drew to a close.

Halloween is almost upon us and it feels like the summer season is over, though the tuna continue with their tease at the outer banks.

May all of you get the kind of candy you crave, whether it be door-to-door, or just feedbagging what you buy without feeling the need to share.

Daylight is now a diminishing resource, as it seems time for the clocks to fall back so we are not leaving for work while it is still night time.

Even as darkness consumes an ever-growing share of the calendar, we can see the light in knowing that 

            These Are The Days

Summer Solstice on the Provo

Gentle Readers:

My apologies for the lack of reporting this year.

It has been year full of activities, but not much in the way of hunting or fishing for 2024.

Exploratory Island Excursion

In May, just after David came home for the summer and took a day off from swimming,  he joined Secret Skipper and your reporter on a trip to The Island of Romance for an exploratory first trip of the year (for us, anyway).

We found a few reds and calicos to bend the rods a bit and start to dream about the season that is forming up.

 

Solstice on the Provo

As my readers are sick of being reminded, Celestial events are prominently featured as religion-adjacent  ways of cosmic calendaring with the Deity in this publication.  

We traditionally celebrate the envelopment of darkness with a Winter Solstice pilgrimage to Mt. Palomar for Band-Tail, followed by musings that serve as my holiday greeting and year-end summary.

This year I was fortunate to share the Summer Solstice with Tommy in the mountains of Utah, which is another western state that I cannot get enough of.  

Your reporter had the wheels turning on our 4 cylinder Subaru at 4 am and soloed the 700 plus miles to arrive in Salt Lake City Thursday night. I got to meet Tommy's cool lacrosse-playing girlfriend Amelia for a Summer Solstice dinner at Cafe Molise, one of our favorite spots in that college town.

We followed that with a twilight walk along City Creek and watched a 99% full moon rise over the mountains.  This display provided a magnificent cosmic setting for the piscatorial adventure that beckoned.

 The following morning we accomplished our mission to move Tommy's freshmen accumulation into storage and schlepp home his duffles and random containers into which we  squeegeed loose coins, lint and bits of  desk-scape which he could neither organize nor part with for the summer. 

We then headed down to Heber City, which was to be the staging area for our long-anticipated weekend on the lower Provo with Jeremy Jones, our guide from Wasatch guide service.  Jeremy is one of my favorite people with whom to spend time, as he is great company and a wonderful instructor with knowledge and access to some of the finest trout fishing water I ever get to foul.

After a night of musical entertainment at Melvin's Public House in Heber City, Tommy and I hit our rally-point with Jeremy just below Deer Creek Reservoir. 

At this spot, the lower Provo is a tailwater fishery. The heavy flows of this year's spring melt had just backed off to the point where the river was fishable and beautiful.  Our trusty Subaru found some shade below the mountain that perches above Sundance before we began our thrashing.

This stretch of the Provo lends itself to midging and nymphing more than dry fly fishing, so we found ourselves intently watching the indicator through short drifts below riffles and adjacent to swift water. Each night after fishing, we drifted off to images of that twitching orb and what we could have done better.

Jeremy was patient in schooling us on casting and coaching us through getting fish back to the bank to his waiting net.

Tommy displays a typical brown.  We were using a drop shot rig with two emergers about 8 feet below the indicator. The lead shots were lined up below and weight was added or subtracted as conditions varied from spot to spot. Jeremy ties all of his own flies. Hot flies were PMDs and especially the "buffet," which is an amalgamation of all of the most popular patterns crammed into one presentation.  Size was pretty small - 18-22.

Both Tommy and I hooked a lot of bigger fish that we were able to release just prior to making Jeremy work to get them into the net, so we didn't cause him to lunge as much as his more skillful clients often do.

We mostly caught browns

Jeremy gave this brown a bit of air-time before returning it to cool water.  The fish were all healthy and colorful.

Tommy, with his keen eyesight, was hooked up more frequently than your narrator.

He also managed to catch the only whitefish of the trip, which we did not photograph, so I will cram in another one of his dazzling yellow browns.

Your reporter was able to get a couple of feisty rainbows all the way to the net to momentarily alter their environment for the sake of photo-documentation .  Note the dancing bear hijab and slathered sunscreen that years of angling has made into more of a tardy mandatory practice than an early start in solar prudence might have provided.

We learned that the rights to fish these waters has shifted around in recent years and we were quite fortunate to be able to take advantage of Jeremy's access to restricted water, which is guarded by security horses that operate in pairs along the frontage.  They look unassuming, but they  will sneak up on you to check your ID.

Each day, we were acutely aware of the limited amount of time we had on this beautiful stretch of American recreation.  Jeremy kept us well supplied with fresh flies, cool drinks and good advice during the course of some of the very best hours of the year for me.  There  were lots of opportunities for jokes, given our level of skill, but the three of us are bound by our common love of this pursuit.

We tended to wolf down the lunches Jeremy brought for us so that we could get back into the stream and make the most of every moment.  As your aging narrator feels the compression of time in the fleeting opportunities to enjoy experiences such as this with my mostly grown kids, it is impossible not to wonder how many more hours in a remaining lifetime will afford this kind of transcendental bliss.

One of the joys of fishing, regardless of tangles and dumped fish, is that every cast is an occasion for hope, even if it is quickly fetched back and presented again after a disappointing placement.  Although it always seemed like I managed some of the worst casts when I knew I was being watched by our mentor,  I still found myself in that zone of locating the chutes through which I slotted my objects of deception while locked in a riverine trance.  As the minutes which I found myself counting pushed past my desire to make time stand still, I knew I was getting a little better at an activity in which I have spent a lifetime as a novice.  More importantly, I can see it happening in the ability of my son to hopefully grab more traction than me at an age where he can create immersion in waters that have mostly slipped past me by now.

Each afternoon, when Jeremy would announce that we had fifteen minutes left, we would engage in an accelerating melancholia of casting for that one last take, when a fish flashes up from its station in the current like a bright idea to let you know that you have to find a way to make it back to this state, or at least to this state of mind.

Time is the stream in which we all go fishing.  We are all allotted so many casts, and few things remind me of that quota more in such a positive way than a day on an insanely pretty river with a fly rod in hand, so my thanks to Jeremy for counting us into the rhythm of this experience.

We hardnosed the highway south from the banks of the Provo for the 11 hour drive to Orange County, on our way to make the most of our chances in the salty season that is just awakening down here along the coast. We are blessed to have left a spot on this magnificent river for seafaring adventures closer to home, so it is the intention of this publication to keep spewing, come what may.

The summer has established its presence and we have Isaac and Haley's wedding on our immediate horizon, with the chance to see the people we love and grab handfuls of what matters most.

May all who have persevered in reading this to the bitter end continue to find a shady place of joyful ambush in the sunny season that is hard upon us. During these precious days and hours that count the most, we  must always keep in mind that  - whether they be tangled, or untangled,

 

These Are The Days