Epic night on the water... off Laguna Beach 11/17/11

read on...

I met Daniel at 6pm last night in soon to be closed Laguna Beach with a plan to hit an outer reef. Luckily the night was not to foggy, and the waves were nil so we walked down the path and packed up our kayaks. My scupper is quite small and only fit my weight belt and fins and anchor, so everything else was put in my game bag and clipped on to the yak. Also, I rigged up a sweet little rack for my polespear. The kayak tracked very well in the water and I could even paddle a little bit and stop and the kayak would keep going. We got to the spot pretty quick. Daniel wanted to hit one reef that he had gotten limits of bugs and I wanted to hit another that “looked decent.” :laughing:

We decided on my choice for start at and got in, but with the tide low it was hard to get to the bugs through all the kelp. After about 30 minutes Daniel had 6 and I had 4; nothing huge, but the 2 females that I had had tails 3x the size of the males even though the CL was almost the same. We then started towards Daniels spot and he looked up and said it was too shallow and he was heading outside for deeper water… well I told myself that there is no such thing as too shallow and just 10ft from Daniel on top of a pinnacle in 2ft of water I found the largest of the night for me.:thumbsup2: Nothing huge, but simply bigger than the rest. It was in the process of molting and Later that night I found a whole molt left inside my bag.

The Sheephead:
We were getting kinda far from our yaks and after seeing a nice goat’s tail in a hole I went back for my kayak… and the polespear. I got to the spot dropped anchor, and straight below me was the hole. The sheephead was gone! Well Daniel had his limit so he help me look in the area for the sheephead. About 15ft away he found it DEEP in a very small hole. One side it could escape and the other we could see him, but he couldn’t escape. We teamed up to land him. I had the polespear set at 4ft, but that was even to long to fit in that hole. Daniel scared him to the other side and I shot him in the tail through the small hole. He went crazy and the slip-tip came out. I shot him again, this time closer to the tail, and he wedge himself in.
Early on I had thought he was maybe 5lbs, but when we began to get our hands on the tail to pull him out we agreed he was more like 10lbs. Well we could not pull him out, he was too big and the hole was too small. I pulled as hard as I could till tore the slip-tip out again. By that time, 30 min in, he had bludgeoned and/or bled himself to death. A big Moray came over to eat him but I wacked it with my light and it shot away. Daniel tried pushing him back to the bigger hole. After about 10 minutes of us ramming him through, he got wedge in and he was stuck. I could see his chin from the bigger hole, but the 4ft was too long to fit in the hole and he was too far back to hand grab!:@

Thank God for collapsible JBL polespears! I collapsed it to 2ft, got the pole in the hole, barely, loaded while it was in the hole, shoved my arm back in the hole, line up and shot through his mouth. The slip tip toggled in his gut and I pulled him out after 1 hour. It went from “boy that fish looks tasty” to “damn we can’t let this fish got to waste!” That was by far the longest and hardest retrieval of any fish in my life, but it was well worth it and my PB sheephead on a polespear. He came out at right around 10-12lbs. We made the tiresome trek back to the launch point, with the squid boats illuminating the night, where we took some pics of our catch. What a hell of a Maiden voyage.

Quote from sdeisen

Don't you guys have work or school? Nice sheep

A wise man once said: "If you are buisy, then you are simply not working hard enough.":cool2:

oh well.