Posts by Mike morgan

Its funny how knives become a part of us after time... I'll be so bummed if/when I loose my current dive knife...

Some guys on the west coast here just started remaking them and selling them through neptonics and other dive shops. I personally wouldnt make an entire belt out of them, but the are great for what they are designed for especially in so-cal...

You can pull up to a shallow spot for seabass or halibut etc. throw on a bar or two to set your negativity higher and then if you dive YT or deeper water later you can simply just pop one or two off instead of having to re-thread your belt.

Regarding weights, I use and love the newer version of tinmans pinch weights and these fit in nicely with those.

Well... ran over to the island sat morning. South wind was on it early making for a bumpy crossing, but nothing to bad. Ran at a nice pace of 26mph on the cat which is much faster then most of my friends boats that are much bigger :D.

Hit the usual spots at isthmus with great viz and lots of bait just no sightings of game fish. Ran from there down to the east end hitting numerous spots. Worked the east end for nada. Dove the backside for a bit, but the wind was up and viz was still very murky from the past weeks south swell. All in all it felt very dead and completely different then last weekend. Decided to run Allllllll the way back to eagle reef. Dove it...everything looked perfect and with the evening high tide we thought it just might turn on. Gave it a quick lap, but it was too early. Sitting on anchor killing time before the evening dive we watch as a 30+' pleasure cruiser literally came flying right through the f*in kelp maybe 20 yds from us? Unbelievable was all we could think of. Looked the (husband) was standing on the bow fiddle with something while the wife was driving this boat and just blazed right through the kelp bed. About 30 minutes prior the kelp was underwater and we were just contemplating heading over there to give it a check now that the kelp was coming up with the current slacking off. Island was just way to crowded yesterday. After that we were over it. Wind started hooting and we headed home. Ride home sucked.

Its been so long, I forgot what it felt like to get skunked. On the other hand, I got to just rinse the boat and take a shower instead of filleting and bagging fish for 2 hours. So I guess thats the trade off...

:rolleyes1:

Mike thanks for always posting unique and insightful reports. Last thing I ever thought about while diving is looking for lead sinkers for a belt.

Thanks Corey - Same here. Dove Monday night. Everything seemed right, but game fish. Lets get out soon!

Good looking suit Fuzz and the price is right. May have to try one next winter...

I love swimming in there thinking "well at least I dont have to carry a heavy fish up the hill" and then yt go swimming by in 15' of water.

Hey Chris! Always some of the best stories around. Its nice to finally get to read interesting reports again.

I remember that day too! I think I got my first for the season that day as well. Man we were working hard for those suckers. Glad we broke the skunk the first day...at least we werent the last though

I'm ready for some local yellows too!

United under one California...

Quote from Don Paul

you get it....hunting wsb is not a sport....there no ballls to throw or catch, or a score to keep.

Wsb are life....sometimes hard, sometimes easy, but always unpredictable, and some times when you suck at it it gives you another chance. Sometimes you think you have a easy shot..... And watch the spear miss it's target.

Cheers, Don

Great last few posts Don. I appreciate the insight and perspective guys with your history have. Thats probably the best/well said analogy I've heard.

Thanks for all the kind words guys. Its not like I was doing something different then the days I go out and dont see fish. It just happened to be my day.

cool video mike. bummed I lost my camera. I need to get a new one

By the way - dont you hate it when your friends cut the tail off your fish in pictures? jeez

Thanks for the comments guys. I agree John, if I see a slug come by I usually wont think twice. Like Mike said small fish are rare theses days :rolleyes1: Sheesh when I was asking you whether I should buy riffe metal tech's and stuff a year ago I never thought I'd ever get a seabass like that. You definitely set me on the right course....the gear whore course that is

I go back and forth sometimes on size issue. Smaller fish make more sense in that the meat is fresher and can be consumed faster and sometimes my thought process is let the little ones grow...Then again the bigger ones are more competent breeders so which is better for the overall fishery?

Stephen - You are right that was an old wound healed up and it was in a very good place for a shot. Someone must have been pretty bummed thinking they had a great shot just to loose a beautiful fish. Thankfully fish are resilient animals and can withstand some pretty severe punishment. I've seen multiple fish this season swimming around with tear offs and healed wounds on there bodies. The week I got that fish I know of 4 other fish that were taken over 45+lbs all with healed wounds like that and its not like they are tail shots. These are good solid almost stone shot areas. I think thats why its important to always get as close as possible so you know you get good penetration.

Also, I'm kicking myself for not getting a picture of it. But a friend shot a 20lber last week. Solely because he swam by it and it was just sleeping there in the kelp. It had a crescent shaped piece like a cantelope chunk taken out of its side behind the gil plate. He was convinced it would have died so he shot it. The only thing I could compare it to was something like a boat prop hit it. There's no way it could have been a seal, shark, shot tear out etc. It was just to clean like a blade sliced it off. One more weird thing in the ocean...

As divers...or shall I say - WSB hunters we can spend many days diving the kelp with out so much as a glimpse of the quarry we are after. We may hear that beautiful croaking that perks our senses trying to figure out just what direction its coming from. You can swim up current, down current, dive the slack tide, high tide, whatever tide. Just when you think you may be doing something right they go and flip the script on you. In my opinion no other name has been more fitting for a fish then what we sometimes refer to seabass as ghosts.

I cant say how many times or dives I've gone without so much as seeing a fish and when that moment finally comes you take it. Rightfully so. How many nights have you "blown" a fish just to keep replaying that moment over and over again in your head? Then again, I think that's one of those things that makes diving so great. The desire to learn from your mistakes...reanalyze, re-equip, reformat and try it again. Always learning from what worked and what didn't.

Well one thing that I've set out to change about my diving this year is to "TRY" not to shoot the first fish I see. I've seen a good amount of videos where a ghost swims into frame and you think "shoot it!" But the cameraman shows the restraint and often a few seconds later more fish follow in its path. Sometimes bigger; sometimes not. Usually having that restraint is a lot easier said then done. Especially when we get in that desperate mind set of shoot the first thing that swims by. I've had a few dives this season where I have been rewarded for my patience...

So sometime in June I headed out with a friend for a pretty standard WSB hunt. We had a pretty good idea of where some decent fish were. Nothing huge, but great respectable fish in the 20-30lb range and now that the limit was 3 fish, we could afford to tag the first thing that swims our way and then get a bit pickier if we wanted to. Well of course my friend hops in the water first and not 5 minutes pass and he has a fish on. Around the 35~lb mark. Well great they are here! I'm in the water in record time and beginning my rounds through the kelp bed. Maybe 30 minutes into my dive I see a single come swimming underneath me. The viz was great, but a bit hazy in this particular kelp room and a little tough to determine just how big it was...but I call it 25lbs. Pop! One fish on the stringer, but it was more like a sea trout then a seabass at maybe 15lbs. Ohh well we expected the little guys to be here and now the bar is set at around 30lbs so its time to look for something bigger.

In my experience or more the experiences of others past down to me. If you are seeing small fish, chances are you aren't going to be seeing big fish. Not sure how this relates to other species, but this seems to be the consensus from most guys relating to white seabass.

So back to the dive and maybe another 40 minutes or so in the water my friend puts his second fish on the boat! Now the pressures on. It was a beautiful dive 15-30' of viz; temps where in the 63-65 range with lots of life about. I'm just enjoying being in the water when I have another smaller model come moseying along underneath me. I'm tracking it from the surface and just watching its behavior in this clearing of a few stringers and some higher spots on the reef when the fish seems to sense my presence and change direction and bug out. It would have been an easy shot from the surface, so initially I let it go as I knew it wasn't near that 30lb mark, but after a quick deliberation I decided to go back down for it. I dropped to about 28' feet and use this high spot with kelp to mask my approach. As I try to sneak around the pinnacle thinking it will be somewhere around the corner, I reach the area and nothing. I'm basically now at one of those "kelp fork in the roads" Do I go left or right? I'm hanging there for a few seconds debating on which direction seems more promising when I get that sense and look to the left.

This is the moment I live for when diving. It happens so sudden, probably all of about 5 seconds but feels like an eternity. Everything around me goes quite and slows down. I can feel my heart beating, but it feels like I don't need to ever breathe again, everything is focused at this moment. I watch as the biggest seabass I have ever seen goes swimming by behind a few kelp stalks a mere 10-15' away from me. My brain is processing the fact that this is a beast. A true trophy fish, the moment is NOW and the signals are sent to pull the trigger. In another split second almost too fast to witness my shaft leaves the gun, hits the fish perfectly behind the gills and the fish is off with a thunderous explosion into the kelp room. Time for the ride! I know its a solid shot and immediately put pressure on my reel line, but this fish is big and means business and has no problem pulling me an easy 25-30' underwater. I know its main objective and that is to run up current into the deepest water it can find. That's its last act of defense against whats going on. I surface and take some much needed breaths of air and begin breathing up so I can secure the fish. I don't like letting fish run if you don't need to and I always like to recover my fish as fast as safely possible. I always make sure to breath up adequately, but I feel the longer you wait the better the chance the fish has to tear off or some other animal has to capitalize on your catch. I give it a good 3 minutes on the surface which feels like 10. Usually I will try to close my eyes and relax that way, but its hard when the viz is this good and I can almost see it on the bottom at 40'. Its time to get the fish. I spit my snorkel and begin climbing down my line finally reaching the fish. Wow is it big! It really wasn't tied up that bad so I was able to just get my hand in its gills, bleed it and pull it up. I left enough slack on the reel line that it would allow me to pull the fish up. I get to the surface and do my standard test measuring the fish against my leg and it sure is bigger. I'm barely able to get it over the rail of the boat with one hand. Finally on the boat this fish makes the 35lber look like a schoolie and I'm pretty sure at the time its my new personal best wsb. Its just so long and skinny I'm not quite sure. Time for a cold beer and I just sit there on my new boat thinking. Wow! First blood on the boat and a new personal best...does life get better than this? Well of course it does, but right now is pretty damn good from where I am sitting. The suns setting and my friend swims back with his third and final fish to complete his first 3 fish seabass limit and share in the marvel of these beautiful fish we landed this evening.

Well the nights not complete without an anchor retrieval at 55' but I take the honors and in no time we're all set for the ride home in smooth flat seas. We get back to the dock and the fish weighs in at 62-64lbs on a 50lb Berkeley scale and measured just over 60" being my biggest seabass to date and something I am very proud of. The next day when I filleted the fish, its stomach was completely empty and egg pouches were empty. So not only do I know this fish would have weighed much more had it been fat, but at least it was able to complete one last breeding cycle for the ocean before providing food for me.

Mike Morgan

Great thread Dan and a lot of interesting perspectives. On the west coast Thresher and Mako sharks are targeted pretty heavily by h&l fisherman. Both of which are top quality meat. Other two common sharks that come to mind is Great White (protected) and the Blue shark. Which is considered poor table fair due to the high ammonia levels the meat gives off.

I personally am not for or against the taking of sharks. I think with all spearfishing, responsible take is what should always be at the top of the divers priority. In self defense situations it is obviously a no brainer. Do I think it is ok to consistently target sharks. Probably not. But again I dont see that being the case with divers either. They are an important part of the food chain and a lot harder to replace then other fish. If I was put in a situation where it was me or the shark. I wouldnt think twice.

PV shore dives are better then the gym

Good to see ya Corey!

Ahhh haaa! So this is where everyone is now seeking refuge? jk

Well my name shouldn't be to hard to figure out. I've been diving for almost 2 years now and have made some great friends and had some incredible experiences that would not have been possible without the sport of freediving. I love the psychical and mental exercise of diving and am always looking to grow as a diver and expand my knowledge of the ocean.

I've pretty much surfed my whole life up until about two years ago when I had a pretty nasty accident on a trip to nicaragua where I broke a bunch of ribs and shredded my back. I wasnt able to get back in the water for quite some time and somewhere along the way I picked up freediving as a way to get back in the water. Now I find myself diving more then surfing...even when theres waves :rolleyes1:

Well enough of the match.com intro, just wanted to get this out of the way so I can start posting and sharing some of my experiences that I havent felt comfortable putting out on other sites. Some of you know me and the rest that dont...well I look forward to meeting/diving with you in the future. So far I'm pretty impressed with the way this site seems to be formatted and think there is a lot of potential in growing this community.

Mike

Ohh and here's a shot from the other day. Gotta love that epic viz we get out here on the west coast. Well it was bound to end sooner or later.