April dive - hide & go seek...

Preface:
Embarrassed to post these, since the dive pics are pretty poor quality (screenshots from my gopro)… but figured I'd piece together a report anyways...
(yes, I have a bit of OCD)

Headed out couple weekends ago for a solo mission.

While I love the camaraderie & fun of diving with friends, the occasional solo dive helps keep me grounded & sane.
A solitary escape into the underwater world helps clear away stress, worries, etc... & allows me to truly relax.

Oddly, found a couple clusters of small copper rockfish in shallows (15-20ft):

Despite the relatively flat swell, there was a fair amount of surge and the lings I found were all tucked into holes:

Checking a hole with an awkward ceiling entrance, I flipped upside down & found a decent sized ling playing musical holes, casually swimming between different rooms in this cave system:

As it lifted up to move rooms, I placed a secure shot through its gills & made my way to the surface:

Snooping around the shallows, I found a nice 20"+ cab hiding in plain sight… nestled amongst the coraline algae:

At home, filleted out the fish & packed the fillets away.
(ling, ling, cab)

A couple days later, headed to Nate's place for a small fish fry.
One of our buddies picked up these fish taco fry-discs in Ensenada for us, so we put it to good use:

And to finish up the post, a short clip from the dive.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVbn7CBIBZg

Quote from Dan

Those pics are nice. Something very different and pleasant about the vid. How did you achieve the shot footage if you were by yourself? What diameter shaft are you using?

I have my 2nd gopro on a gorillapod.

When I saw the cabezon, I tried to set up close to it... it let me get close enough, but I thought it was a lot better angle.

It was also surgey there, so camera didn't need much coaxing to be tipped over.
My next thought was to use a small red brick as a base. Brick cam! :crazy:

Shaft is a 6.5mm.
Usually I have a 6.75 for my ONE gun, but was playing with one of my smaller Omers.

Quote from LunkerBuster

Fuzz. I have a nice rig I made for doing just what you did , it is basically a metal base and I added a fifteen inch piece of spectra braid and a float and wrapped the metal with a lot of flasher tape( all so I don't lose the camera :))

It has performed well in the pool. I haven't gotten it out in the ocean yet. I'll try to post a picture in a little bit

Sounds good... one of my crazy ideas was to use the red brick as the base... cause I could soak it in chum for the drive to the dive site. Figure it'd bring all kinds of interesting critters in. Even if there's no fish coming in, it'd be an interesting time-lapse of the starfish approaching.

I'm always worried if it's too light & flashy, a ling or seal will carry it away. :nono: