Nice bugs. The WSB spearing has been a year round fishery the last few seasons.;)
I've heard of at least one person catching a monster in the past couple months. But I'm still waiting. Last year my waiting paid off with my first wsb dive of the year producing a 57 pound fish within the first 30 minutes of getting in the water. I want to get in another dive like that this year <img src= " height="23" srcset="https://spearfishing.world/forum/images/smilies/emojione/1f606@2x.png 2x">
To be honest I may eventually cut it out completely. I like lobster alright, but really prefer the hunt of some gamefish. I may go here and there for years to come, but I'm not sure it'll be as much as before.
More for me then 
But you know I love the way they set up lobster season. It ends right as the ghosts start to trickle in. That way I don't have to choose between my favorite gamefish and lobster diving 
<img src= " height="23" srcset="https://spearfishing.world/forum/images/smilies/emojione/1f606@2x.png 2x">
Nice haul Daniel, way to end the season!
Thanks Chris. I'm going to try and hit it one more time late Sunday night and see what I can find. I'll post a report if I get lucky.
Nicely done dude. I don't even dive Laguna much for bugs or fish for that matter anymore, but you guys seem to do just fine. Well done.
Yah I'm just having fun diving Laguna while I can. There's still plenty of bugs out there to keep me interested, but by next season I'll be expanding my lobster hunting grounds to the rest of Orange County and with some carpooling LA and San Diego as well.
45# blue catfish from the Red River OK, and 35lb Flathead catfish from Arkanas lake.
You've got to post some pictures or it doesn't count <img src= " height="23" srcset="https://spearfishing.world/forum/images/smilies/emojione/1f606@2x.png 2x">
Edit: nice catfish! I've only seen a few small catfsh in Nevada, but you aren't allowed to spear them. If I saw one the same size as your holding up I'd be tempted to bring along a fishing pole.
Nice Bug Daniel! You gonna do a mount of this one?
I may. But for the time being he's staying alive in the garage. Got an aerator and cooler full of water. I'm going to check on him tomorrow to see how he's doing.
Looks like a great way to end a dive. Great report as always. Thanks for sharing
My only report from Laguna today is ....my kid says '' hey dad I made the honor roll again, you owe me 50bucks...right?'' Then he hit one over the fence at Riddle field with a wood bat and won 9 to 7 along with getting the game ball.
I had planed to dive CC tonight but now after celebrating with two fat vodka martin's I'm going to puss out.
Life is good but the freezer is getting thin.
Nice story Daniel, way to go on the bugs mate.
Cheers, Don
Congrats on your son's win. 
But $50 for the honor roll? Man I if I got straight A's as a kid I think the most I earned was $10. You're spoiling that kid Don
Got the call from Josh that he was heading out on a bug dive in Laguna tonight. I was already planning an earlier night dive so I told him I’d meet up with him after checking out a couple of spots. Well two spots down and two legals pulled. Met up with Josh and it was time to dive again.
Waves weren’t too bad as we pushed through the surf. Sometime they’re so large you have to time your entry just right. But tonight they were just waste high. Well we jumped in the water and after quickly giving up on finding a halibut in the murky sand it was time to look for some bugs.
Thanks to Josh we spotting the right area in no time at all and I started working around some nice rocky holes for a chance at snagging a succulent lobster. Those critters were there alright, but practically every bug was a safe distance into its hole. By the time you got your hand next to a crack they were already scurrying out of the way and out sight.
Well after searching for a while I managed to see a couple legals and a bunch of undersized bugs. Josh found a good 5-6lb sheephead and plugged it in the face. Meanwhile I was still holding on to my empty bag with nothing to show for this dive. Then luck hit me and I found my first bug of the dive. It was a foot out of its hole (which was more of a crack than a hole, just chilling there. Not wanting to miss this opportunity I went straight at it and pinned the lobster to the ground before it had a chance to bolt back into its home. With my grip secured I yanked him off the sea floor. Back on the surface I called Josh over so he could check it out and then we shoved the oversized cockroach into my bag. Not a big one, but it’s an easy keeper.
More searching and I can’t find a single sign of a legal bug anywhere. Whatever bugs left here must have been scared deep into their holes by now. And since it's getting late I decide to call it a night. Josh had been searching for a massive sandbass just 15 minutes before, but apparently it gave him the slip and he was over finding it again. So we changed directions and headed back to shore.
We both snagged a meal from the sea, which meant the night was a great success! But we’ve still got some rocky ground to cover before we get back. So we both continued to dive, but aimed towards the shoreline with each submersion. Not like we’ll see anything. I never see any legals in the area up ahead and rarely do I ever see more than one undersized bug crawling the rocks in that area. But you never know, so I kept at it.
At first I was in front of Josh, but I love to search and a few dives later I end up having to speed up just to catch up to him. So following his lead I'm now tailing behind Josh.
Then one dive down I spot something of interest! It looks like a cave with sandy bottom, so I swoop down to check it out. It’s wide enough for me to glide into it, but first things first. I shine my light into the cave and see what’s there. Maybe 12ft in, at the very end of the cave looms a very vicious looking moray eel starring at me, mouth wide open. It’s kinda dark back there, but within a few seconds I can make out the entire cave. And there’s not a single bug in it. Ah well. Saying good riddance to the moray I give up on the hole. Turning around I move my head out of the cave and aim for the surface ready to take another breath of air. Scanning to my left near some wavy brown kelp my view passes by a glint of orange and instantly I do a double take as my brain screams, “That’s a massive lobster leg Daniel!” Swinging my head back and looking for it again I can’t see anything. The kelp was perfectly covering whatever I had seen.
My hunger for air beats my curiosity and I breach the surface gulping in some much needed oxygen. Two breaths later and I dive right back down to make sure I wasn’t just seeing things. At the bottom, hovering above the kelp strands next to a rocky wall I wait patiently for the next swell to reveal what I thought I had seen. The surge pulls the thick brown kelp out of the way and a massive carapace emerges followed by thick orange legs. No way! I couldn’t believe a bug like that could be here, but I was damn glad it was. I don’t wait a second and swim straight for it. Snatched it with both hands and bolted for the surface. I’ve grabbed bigger, but this was so unexpected that I had to yell out in excitement.
Josh quickly heads over and just like me he can’t believe what he sees! A fat 5-6lb bug clinging to me. Josh said he thought I had to have found a fish in a hole when he first heard me yelling. So seeing the bug was even more a surprise. I quickly spill the beans on how I found it and I’m intrigued to find that Josh had just swam over this area and checked out the very same hole himself, not knowing that right next to it, maybe two to three feet away, sat this monster of a bug.
That bug made the night for me. And since I had grabbed two more bugs earlier in the night I decided to split the catch and give Josh two of my bugs (of course the smaller ones XD ).
Great night! That’s one less monster bug for the Laguna MLPA XD
Cool I was just looking at those trigger mechs. If I ever feel like buying that brand I'll buy it from your website.
How deep did you find that nice flatty Hutt?
That's one unique looking gun
Sweet looking gun. What shaft diameter are you using with it?
aren't you afraid of sharks at night?
We just don't have any aggressive sharks that live near the shoreline in Southern California. So day or night I'm never afraid of getting bit by a shark. It's just a non issue out here.
when you dive at night do you use an underwater flashlight? How do you navigate where you are going in the night anyway?
I always use an underwater flashlight at night. I wouldn't be able to see anything without it. Sometimes I even bring my underwater flashlight on day dives. It helps to look into dark holes where the sun never shines.
As far as navigating to the reefs at night it's not that hard. In California most of the reefs are located very close to shore, most you can swim to without the need of a boat. And luckily in SoCal there's plenty of lit up houses to help you tell how far away you've traveled from shore.
Glad you guys liked the report. I've been slacking off on writing any this year, but felt like writing something this time around.
Nice Daniel. If I wasn't so damn lazy I would be out there with you. So this was a solo mission?
Yep it was a solo mission. Thinking back right now every single bug four pounds or over I've grabbed has been on a solo mission. I guess on solo missions I get to stay out as long as I like. Most group dives I go on end much sooner than I would prefer. And besides Alex and one or two other people, most people I've dove with (at night) are too afraid or lazy to dive where I like to dive.
This explains all the pics of Sea Life on your head <img src= " class="smiley" srcset="https://spearfishing.world/forum/images/smilies/emojione/1f606@2x.png 2x" height="23" width="23" loading="eager" data-tooltip="biggrin" aria-label="biggrin"> Thats using your head!
<img src= " class="smiley" srcset="https://spearfishing.world/forum/images/smilies/emojione/1f606@2x.png 2x" height="23" width="23" loading="eager" data-tooltip="biggrin" aria-label="biggrin">
Daniel invited me, but gainful employment sucks sometimes.
You rolled with me on Monday Alex 
and we've got another dive planned next week.
Oh I'm going to try preserving the lobster the same way you did. I'll see how well that'll turn out soon. Got him sitting in a rubbing alcohol bath right now. His antennae were too big for the bucket so I'll probably have to rehydrate them later and bend them back into shape.
[FONT="]February 22, 2011 [/FONT]
[FONT="]Time for some exploring.
[/FONT]
[FONT="]Well if you didn’t know, it’s still lobster season out in California. And for a while now I’ve been meaning to check out a sweet looking reef in an area that I hardly ever frequent. When I first spotted it in the daytime a few short months ago I thought to myself, now that reef could hold some bugs on it. So after putting off the dive, but keeping it on the backburner, tonight I finally decided to dive it.[/FONT]
[FONT="]And well... unfortunately... I failed at finding the reef. In the daytime it just seemed so easy to find, but I guess nighttime and being out in the deeper water was enough to foil my chance at finding it. [/FONT]
[FONT="]So instead I changed my course and swam north, determined to keep going till I found something. A chance for halibut, reefs with bugs, or even a lone wsb was on my mind as I wondered through the empty sand. After a long swim and thanks to a white buoy on the horizon I found a house sized reef with some bugs on it. It was nothing big, but within minutes I grabbed a 2lb bug that was literally on the crawl, just trucking along on the top of a flat rocky reef. Picked him up mid crawl, which he wasn’t too happy about, but back on the surface as I looked down at him in my hands I decided he wasn't worth it. I watched as he flipped back down to the murky depths below. You see I had promised myself I wouldn't take anything unless it was big. Also that and I wasn't wearing my lobster bag. [/FONT]
[FONT="]Done with that reef and with no monsters spotted I traveled on further north to scour an area where I had found my first monster bug. I even found his old hole. Now I've heard people say that when you pull a big bug out of a hole then in the next year or so another big bug will have taken up residence in that very same hole. Well I really hoped that this was true, but peering into the hole I was only greeted by four small scared undersized lobsters hanging on to the walls of the cave. Oh well so much for that theory. [/FONT]
[FONT="]Still there was more reef to cover so I continued my search. Found lots of crevices with bugs that kept scooting back into the depths of their holes never to be seen again. The amount of lobsters was reassuring, even if most were borderline legals and too far back to grab. By now I was popping my head in every crack I could find, just to see what’s there. Then in one crack which I could barely squeeze half of my body into just to get a view…. I saw something! Three bugs all bunched together at the back of a cave. It was the middle one that immediately caught my eye. A fat 6-7 lb bug! Jackpot! But I couldn't reach him. At most the end of that small cave was only 2-3 feet away from my hand, which was right where those three bugs sat. Off to the right was a deeper hole but to get to it the lobsters had to move closer to me to get into it. Now the crack I was wedged in was angled in a way where I probably could have touched a foot of the bug but not reach the bulk of it. But at the moment I wasn't positioned correctly to touch the bug so I retreated for more air and to calm my nerves. However not before grabbing a rock that was in my way and moving it to the side, hoping to block that big bug’s exit. Of course it wasn't much of a blockade. So as I floated there on the surface, my heart pounding, I had visions of the bug crawling away to freedom, pass through my mind like an ominous slideshow. [/FONT]
[FONT="]Twenty seconds later my heart still pounding, but not as fast as before I dove back down. This time I would angle myself right so I could at least touch the bug. Down I go into the crack. I angle myself right and as I reached to touch the monster I see him move his body to the side in panic. I thought, this could be good, as I stretched out my hand. But before I could even touch a single leg he kicks it into overdrive, flapping his tail like mad! 7lbs of lobster smacks straight into my face. My mask fills with water and I grab by instinct at the massive bug on my head. I got him! There's no way he's getting out of my hands now! I quickly reverse wiggle my way out of the hole and head to the surface with the prize I was looking for, for the better part of the night. Now back on the surface stoked by my catch, but not as stoked to the idea of having to swim back to my entry point all the while holding on to this monster bug in my hands. It almost made me want to drop the lobster back in his hole. But then I’m not that kind of guy XD Plus the only home for a Laguna bug is at my home XD And with that resolve I repositioned Mr. Bug so he'd clamp on to my chest. With only one kick of protest the entire ride back we both found our way home together ;)[/FONT]
Is what I wish for
<img src= " class="smiley" srcset="https://spearfishing.world/forum/images/smilies/emojione/1f606@2x.png 2x" height="23" width="23" loading="eager" data-tooltip="biggrin" aria-label="biggrin"> I do love the Mickey's, but I can always make do with free beer <img src= " height="23" srcset="https://spearfishing.world/forum/images/smilies/emojione/1f606@2x.png 2x">
jello
Got out on Monday looking for a little Valentine to be mine and convinced this flattie to come home with me. Followed it up the next morning with a WSB. This white had 2 huge wounds (One on each side) but was getting around pretty good considering. Felt compelled to cull him out of the herd. Hopefully this weather settles and we can get back out there soon.
Cull him out of the herd? So does that mean you saw more of them out there?
Last year I waited till April to start hunting those fish. I might have to start earlier this year <img src= " height="23" srcset="https://spearfishing.world/forum/images/smilies/emojione/1f606@2x.png 2x">
BTW nice spearing Mark
