Posts by chris oak

  • Minimizing lost fish due to tear offs?

    I think a lot of the differences are due to the different types of diving we are all doing and that includes shore vs. boat diving and kelp vs. bluewater diving.


    For white seabass you want a floatline/reel line that is highly visible. The visibility in our kelp beds can be from zero to 40 feet or more but the norm when we are hunting white seabass is closer to 10 feet. That visibility can change drastically in an instant, if you shoot a fish and lose sight of your float or reel line then you've lost that fish. Before I got the carter float there was one time when I shot a nice wsb and it tied up deep. I had followed the floatline and clipped my gun to the line and found the fish. u/w vis was bad, when I came to the surface I had lost sight of the floatline and fish, I had to swim in circles until I found that floatline again, this was on a shore dive and night was approaching, if I didn't find that floatline I would have lost the whole setup including the gun.


    You can put the bands of the gun over your shoulder and totally disconnect it from the floatline while you are looking for fish but it's difficult to do in thick kelp. I've used poly in the kelp and don't like it, the rough edges hang up a bit and they also hang up on my fins which have rough edges from shore diving.


    My floatline is now bright red and I use the carter float and never have had a problem since. I've had guys say that the noise of the floatline through the kelp scare the wsb away but I seriously doubt that, I've had a lot of luck diving with floatlines for wsb in the kelp and believe as long as your connections are quiet you are good to go.

  • Minimizing lost fish due to tear offs?

    You can't put as much pressure on a fish with reel line as you can a floatline, and a good floatline won't tangle up at all (once you uncoil it). A reel is much easier to deal with in the kelp though and I have a lot of friends who use reels with 200' or more line on it. The scary thing about a reel is if you get spooled or if it jams up then you are sol.


    Your set up looks solid for bluewater Dan, but pretty much anything gets hung up on our thick kelp. I know a lot of guys that use a small float in the kelp, but I prefer to keep my line as streamlined as possible, and I really love my bungee at the end of my floatline because as soon as I see it I know that I'm coming to the end of my line and I can put a lot of pressure on the fish with the bungee, the bungee snaps back and fights the fish like a rod and reel. I know a lot of guys that use the bungee on the front of the line but I prefer mine in the back.


    I also like the carter float, what I usually do is shoot the fish, let it tie up, clip my gun to the floatline, manually inflate the carter float and clip it off. This makes sure that the fish isn't going to run again and take my gun and more importantly lets me find the gun in the thick kelp should the vis be bad or I lose track of my floatine.


    John has shot a ton of white seabass as well, he is correct on shot placement. However if you are new to shooting seabass or if the vis is bad or if you haven't seen one and it doesn't offer you a perfect shot there is a substantial chance your shot is going to be bad. If you are only targeting smaller wsb, say 15 lbs and less than a flopper would be okay. But if you get that trophy 60-70 lb white seabass and you blow the shot and its high or low you will be kicking yourself later on when that shot tears out. I've got a picture somewhere of a big one I shot last season, the fish did a 180 right before I pulled the trigger and the shot went high, just under the skin. Without a slip tip I would have lost that fish for sure. I gave it a ton of line, let it run and tire out and got the fish.

  • Minimizing lost fish due to tear offs?

    Polypro rope is cheap and definitely will work in a pinch but it tangles up easily and gets caught on the fins a lot, that being said I know a few guys who use it exclusively and it doesn't bother them. I made a few other types of floatlines but noticed a huge difference between a nice no memory floatline and a cheap one. As a bonus I coil up my floatline and velcro it to my gun, if I drop that gun on a beach dive in surf it's much easier to find because the whole thing floats.

  • Minimizing lost fish due to tear offs?

    Floppers are fine for reef fish but they really aren't good for wsb. If you keep shooting that soft wsb meat you are going to experience a decent amount of tear offs. Usually when I go out I have to have a game plan. When I'm hunting wsb it's slip tip only with a 100' floatline and a 10' bungee that stretches another 30' on the end of that floatline. If I shoot a big fish and I get close to that bungee I lean back and let it fight itself and tie up or tire out. If it's white seabass I'll let it run as much as I possibly can, wsb have white meat and tire out quickly, the more tired it is the better your chance of landing it. If the shot is solid I'll put a lot of pressure on the fish, I used to try to shoot them in the head a lot but you can bounce that shot off the gill plate and I've noticed when I shoot big wsb in the face they get really riled up.


    Reels vs. floatlines is a long time debate and it's personal preference between spearos. I used to use reels all the time for everything, then I started getting spooled by bigger fish. I used to have a 25' chicken line on the back of my reel guns and after having to rely on that several times after getting spooled I went to straight floatline. I've never had a problem with a good floatline.


    You want a good slip tip that doesn't wobble around either, mori's are my favorite.


    If I see another fish like halibut etc near the rocks I won't take a shot with a slip tip. There's always next time for that. Unfortunately there is no "one gun/rig" that does everything.

  • RIP Marty

    91 years old, what a great life he got to live! I remember him speaking at the legends event, it's amazing how glued we all were to his talk.

  • Drawbacks of Titanium

    From my limited experience, titanium does not sharpen well because it's so hard, once my wenoka titanium knife got dull it was almost impossible to sharpen it without using a file.

  • The waves need to die down

    I was out on the work boat today, swell was big along the shore but definitely doable away from the shore for boaters, it was pretty flat. Looks like it won't really die down until sunday, San Pedro was pretty dirty water.

  • Bu Bu

    That sucks man :(, but at least you made it out safe. I use the clips off a knife strap and made a really simple clicking strap that locks my gopro to my mask strap because I'm paranoid about losing it. It snaps on and off quickly for removal and is so thin I don't feel it against the mask strap.

  • before the MPA hit so cal...

    But before those closures hit we hit them first. Hard.


    It wasn't the swell that scared me, it wasn't even the wind because there was none. It was something even more menacing. As I backed my truck down the launch ramp I could barely make out the pavement below. Freaking Great, the fog had rolled in after those long days of heat and then cool.


    If you've never been in thick fog on a small boat, you are in for a treat brother. It's absolutely terrifying without having any radar. I've got a great little chartplotter and that works out well for identifying landmarks and jettys but it doesn't help out on bouys, logs, or even boats that are in the harbors.


    I reminded myself of this as we cruised out to an area that was soon to be closed off. I was extra careful and had my head on a swivel, you would think that I was hunting white seabass :). We saw a few boats in the thick mist and never had any close encounters but man was I happy to drop anchor. As they anchor spiraled downward I was amazed at how great the visibilty was. You could see that anchor clearly forty feet below. In the cold wet mist we had a hard time getting our spirits up enough to put on those cold wetsuits. It was like suddenly some of us had turned into whiny schoolgirls.


    I grabbed my 55" wong hybrid and dropped in. In a few moments I was making my first dives, there were a few fish out but nothing like the spring or summer. Mostly garibaldi were the ones making noise, not a croak was heard. As I worked my way through the outer edge I started seeing a few nice calicos bolting from the safety of the kelp. I took a breath, inverted and dropped down and kicked towards a kelp room. On the edge just under a kelp blade was one of the biggest calicos I've seen in a while. Luckily there was a smaller two pound fish in front of it and it kind of hid the eye of the big one. I braced the gun for the shot and clicked the trigger.


    I wish I could have said I stoned it but the truth is the shot was low and I saw the fish spinning around and heading towards the rocks, my floatline in tow. I headed towards the surface, took a breath and went down after it. The fish was still spinning as I grabbed the shaft and then the fish by the gills. Almost by instinct I passed a sharp knife into it and dispatched it and swam to the surface. The calico was so big my buddy peered into my fish bag later and thought I shot a white seabass :). It would later weigh a bit over 8lbs and verified on two digital scales, the fish was 25" long and probably would have been 10 pounds if it had anything in it's gut.


    I dropped my friends off on a reef while I hit a deeper spot in the sand. I was hoping for some halibut but figured conditions were too cold to really have a shot at any. As I creeped along the bottom I clearly saw the tail of a fish in the sand but before I could make out it's head BOOM it threw sand up in my face and took off. Damn that was a legal fish too!


    Still I knew that at least one was around so I continued my search. As i dropped around a bend I saw a nice one with it's head fully exposed. The distance between the eyes told me instantly it was a nice one and again the hybrid twitched and then rang true. I dispatched this fish and threw it on my belt. There couldn't be another one right? I made a few more drops and saw another pair of eyes. Bang. This one was stoned and merely formed a tight c around my shaft, I dispatched it anyways and headed back towards the boat with two 12 lb bookend halibut in tow.


    As soon as I had got there I saw a gray RIB sneaking up towards us. It was still far away but I told my buddies to make sure their lobster cards were filled out because we had a lobster on board. Sure enough I could eventually make out the shapes of two DFG wardens with one of them having binoculars trained on us the entire time. They pulled up next to us and I offered to tie them onto my boat. Knock on wood I've never had problems with wardens and they asked to come aboard and check our catch, I've got nothing to hide so I said of course and showed them the halibut. When they saw my calico they laughed and said "no need to check that one!", we chatted a bit and then they wished us luck and took off.


    That luck must have paid off, we stopped at a few different reefs and I was amazed at the skills of my partners. One of them was absolutely on target, each spot produced a few bugs for him and he was always the first one on the grab. We kept on going and then as darkness closed we took a hot shower (thank god for instant hot water systems) and started heading back towards home port. The problem was the fog had again set upon us and this time it was even thicker, so thick I had to back down the engine and by the time we got back to the breakwater the visibility had dropped to about 100 feet. It was so bad we had to cover up the stern light because it was reflecting against the fog so bad I couldn't even see the end of my boat.


    By the time we pulled all the game out we ended up with a nice assortment of reef fish as well as 17 bugs. The fish look small in the picture because I didn't pick them up off the ground and they are bent, but when you see the calico next to the lobsters in the close up it makes the bugs look like parasites :).


    I'll never forget that day and it would be a great end to a great year but I'll miss those spots forever...