Kayak Rappelling on Father’s Day
Written by Eric Keener
June 17, 2019
Fathers day weekend 2019. Jess, Squiggles and I had all day family plans on Sunday to go ride the coal train through the redwood forests at Roaring Camp, so I got the unusual green light to double dive Friday night and Saturday morning.
Dive 1) Friday night, Nico, Sam and I went to stare at the sand because I really wanted to cook some halibut, however the 4 of us thoroughly combed the bottom and came up buttless. Just a week before my buddies all limited so it was a bit of a bummer, but I did find a few trigger fish near some random structure that had some really small crevices (where these fish like to hide). I decided to take one because I hadn’t shot one yet this year and I wanted to cook it again. When I know a fish isn’t super abundant in an area, even if it’s legal to take, I limit myself on how many I bring home. Last year I did Trigger Fish 3 ways and it came out rad! Recipe Here. We swam a pretty good distance looking for butts but no luck outside of one that looked just shy of legal, although we did play with several skates, a school of undersized stripers, and a bunch of small squid. We got out of the water around 10p. I didn't notice until I got home but the trigger fish had some kind of flesh and fin eating disease. I decided better not eat it, it was in pretty bad shape. Bummer.
Dive 2) Ohhhhhh man. It’s now Saturday morning. Just a few hours of sleep and I was up and loading my yak. I've been trying to get to this one spot at least 4 times but the shore break always pops super hard and its a huge hassle to lower a kayak down a cliff (and back up) for mediocre diving. This time was different. It was far from ideal, but myself and the two guys I was with collaborated and made a calculated decision that we were up to the challenge, so I broke out the rappelling gear and 80' rope.
I hope you guys don't recognize the cliff in the photo that we had to rappel and climb down because I want to keep this spot on the down low haha! But suffice it to say there are some high grade fishies here. You know it's going to be a good day when you are the first one off your yak and in the water looking into a school of blues where the smallest in the school is bigger than most other schools you see around the usual Monterey spots. Swell was definitely up and down, surge was kind of odd and circular at times (not predictably pushing one way or the other) but the visibility was a pretty clear 35'. Didn't find any big lings (as is unfortunately the usual for my MO, but we saw large every other kind of rock fish). We were all super selective on what we shot - I took 2 blues at 16.5" and 16" and a black and yellow (I thought I was going to upgrade my Diver of the Year submission, but was just .25" short at 13" (those things are naturally small, ya know). CJ got a nice greenling and Giray got a couple fat blues.
With a steep shore break on the return, I came in first to help the other two in case of yardsaleage. Thankfully, despite it being a struggle bus of a landing, no one tipped flipped or dipped. Upon climbing back up the cliff, we had a nice system worked out where one of us was on the bottom collecting the gear and climbing it up to hand it up to the next guy who would take it up and hand it up to the top guy who piled it at the top and climbed back down. Conveyor belt rock climb status. Someone else that had climbed down snapped a photo (while laughing) of us hoisting the yak back up the cliff with the help of an ATC, webbing and the 2 guys helping guide and reduce yak damage. We were all so pumped on the wonderful adventure and to make it back to safety, mostly unscathed. We met a gal living in her truck at the top who was interested in our fish so we gave her some to cook. SUPER fun dive and can't wait for the next window of great conditions to do it all again. I'm crazy sore in all kinds of muscles but it was totally worth it!
That’s what Fin + Forage is all about! Adventure and helping each other out!