Posts by chris oak

  • 'but report

    Nice fish Miguel! Hali's aren't my favorite eating fish so I usually bake them in teriyaki sauce/ginger or else fry them for tacos. I'm sure halibut mike and ladvr have some great recipes.

  • Blue water Meet

    Don is Ken Pitcher still around? He used to volunteer his time at my work, this was way before I started freediving. One of my buddies said he was a really great freediver but thought he had passed away from alzheimers.

  • pv conditions 7/30

    It cleared up a bit, 10-25 foot vis depending on where you were but COLD. It dropped from 64 a few days ago to 58 on the surface and much colder down below (probably 56). Froze my ass off in my 5mm. All the calicos I have seen lately were pretty much gone as was the bait. Got schooled by 100 wsb but they were short or barely legals. I'm staying out of the water until it warms up a bit.

  • cat conditions 7/27

    Since I was tired of diving the murk locally, we hit catalina on Tuesday. Vis from the west end to mid island was epic, 60 foot or better vis on a lot of spots. Heard croaking on the west end and got really close where it got loud and uncomfortable and then BRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAPPPP I heard that really long and weird croak and then the fish must've took off because it got quieter and quieter dammit. Never saw a fish and that was the only spot I tried to check out the seabass. I was going to hit some of the spots east of the isthmus but there were boats sitting on all the other spots and it was murky in a lot of those spots too, I'm not sure why the vis dropped. Ended up on bird rock and shot a few calicos for dinner. We were going to go back west but the wind was ripping around 15 plus knots and there was a lot of swell and whitecaps breaking. Didn't see a single yellowtail all day. We bailed home and after about four miles it calmed way down so we hit pv, the water there was a bit cold and really stirred up, although it might have been the low tide.


    Hit a paddie on the way there, it was LOADED with bait, all kinds, but no gamefish seen. Rumor has it that clemente is turning up dry too. Don't get me wrong, the dive at catalina had epic conditions at spots and I really had a fun time, but if you have a gas burner you might want to stay home and work on floatlines and new bands.

  • pv conditions 7/18

    After work I checked conditions from pedro all the way to about middle pv grounds. Swell was coming in and although you can make it out easily, it looked like I'd take a beating on the way in. It looked pretty green all the way around but I found a nice cove with tiny waves so I took a chance. Vis was crap, probably 15 feet on the reef where the opaleye are but 5 feet in the kelp bed. I worked my way out to the very very outside and started making drops, on the bottom in 20 feet of water vis was okay, maybe 10 feet or so but very very cold which was pretty surprising, I clocked it at about 59 degrees in JULY! I found some promising sand patches that looked halibut friendly but didn't get a chance to check them well. I followed some bait and found a nice reef that I hadn't seen before, the bait was torn up so I sat on the bottom and waited but no one showed. It was nice to see the sargo all around though and I croaked for a while to watch them school up and swim around me in a confused circle. Finally a seabass showed! It was a whopping 16 inches. On my way back in I saw a couple of 5 pound calicos but one of them spooked and I wiffed the shot on the other.


    It was a nice break from the heat and watching the bait/sargo/opaleye swimming around was entertaining. Better than being stuck at home in my hot house! Swell is picking up even more so be careful should you venture out there.

  • Rattle Rattle

    I don't think you can scare them away, they aren't that smart. You'll have to build a small mesh sized screen fence, the bummer is it has to be dug into the dirt about six inches. I worked with reptiles on my masters thesis in the desert and we came across a lot of snakes but non in our enclosed areas.