Submitting 4 species: greenling, olive rockfish, kelp rockfish, pile perch

Here are the fish I’m entering from my dive before the first meeting of 2019. It was a rough day on the water with super strong current (ripping like the Cortes Bank, we could hardly swim back to our kayaks) and wind picked up along with intermittent rain throughout the day. We moved into the shallows and dove for a while to get out of the current. At least the visibility was awesome, and I could faintly see boulders on the bottom at 50+ feet. I didn’t take any spectacular fish, but had a good variety for King of the Tritons entries. I also swam around with an otter and later with a few sea lions for a bit. The otter was cool. The sea lions made me nervous.

Kelpie gill rakers (long and thin "fingers")

Submitting 2 fish: grassy and cabezon.

I went out to a new spot last weekend with a couple buddies. It was pretty shallow with interspersed flat reef on sand. Low viz and very surgy, but I found a few fish in the short while we were there, including an 18" grassy which I believe is my personal best. We hopped out pretty quickly and went back to an old favorite spot nearby, hoping to find better conditions. We did find better conditions, but I didn't see any decent fish after the move :/

Grassy gill rakers (short and stubby "knuckles")

Diamond Turbot. A first for me. Have seen them a few times before but never taken one. This one looked big enough to cook whole so shot it. Meant to be tasty. Will see. Just ignore the salmon madness in the pic. ; p

Submitting 2 species: ling and cab.

THE LING: After a promising 1st date with a lady I met via online dating I knew I had to up the anty. I set out to get my first ever Ling. The simple plan was to catch one, invite her over for Baja-style fiah tacos, and thus win her heart. Visibility that afternoon was all time for Santa Cruz, around 5-10'. To my amazement I found one holed up and brought it ashore after staving off a plump harbor seal who nibbled my fin tips the whole way in. Texted said lady with dinner offer that evening. She declined and later said she met someone else. Defeated yet unwaveringly proud, I brought the blue smurf meat to work and made lunch for my coworkers, who appreciated it.

THE CAB: Despite Sunday being a day off, got a tip from surf buddy that he could see the bottom out at his normal spot. A friend and I popped in to check it out. Said friend has been wanting to dive but won't buy a real suit or any weights. He quickly froze his ass off and had to go in, leaving me alone around a mushroom-shaped rock/cave structure with a giant perch, a cab, a ling, and a healthy rockfish or two. I shot the cab but couldn't get it out of the hole without rearranging a rock pile outside the cave. It flared its giant head, which did not help the matter.

Back on the steps I gutted the fish and pleased the seagulls. Guts were full of whole crabs.

I gave my buddy a fillet, split the other one with the surfer guy who gave me the tipoff, and kept the head and collar meat as a weekend treat. Bent my flopper pulling it out but nothing some vice grips can't amend.

Submitting Vermilion.

Story: I took my buddy Jose down to one of my favorite spots in Southern Sur. It was definitely a mission and a really really long surface swim but well worth it since we immediately dropped into thousands of decent sized blues. I showed him how to aspetto dive, hiding yourself between some rocks at a low point, scratch rocks, and look up around the structure for a curious verm to pop out. Bam. Got mine. So on his 2nd drop, he got his first Verm! We thought it would be funny to pull over and take a photo of us mean mugging by a flower field, but he couldn't contain his stoke! Great time and super fun to help friends out with new diving techniques! I posted the recipe in the recipe section of the forum for anyone interested in the bottom pic.

FineScale Trigger fish wandering around lost in the #831...

Submitting: Black, Blue, Greenling, Olive and Rubberlip Perch. I looked at the score card for the first time and realized I had a few more recent fish to add!

Submitting: Finescale Trigger Fish.

STORY TIME: Fathers day weekend. We had all day family plans on Sunday, so I got the unusual green light to dive Friday night and Saturday morning. Dive 1) Friday night we went to stare at the sand around because I really just wanted to submit a halibut, but after 4 of us (including Big Jim who was getting out when we were getting in) combed the bottom and came up empty. 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 didn't get one yet this year and I wanted to cook it again. 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 (which you could grab by hand). 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.

Dive 2) Ohhhhhh man. 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 swell was always popping too hard to initiate lowering a kayak down a cliff (and back up). This time was different. It was far from ideal, but myself and the two guys I was with (both >90ft freedivers) wanted a fun story to tell. So I broke out the rappelling gear and 80' rope. We had a local advise us not to go out in the big 5-6ft swells... but we graciously mentioned we're all certified freedivers and have been out in much worse. 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 DL 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 usual for my MO, but we saw large every other kind of RF). 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 DOTY 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 super sore in all kinds of muscles but it was totally worth it!

Submitting: Lipstick Bass (aka Treefish).

Story: On Sunday, I had a super short window after church to dive, clean fish, make ceviche and show up to a potluck at 4. I knew huge fish probably weren't in my cards and I needed enough meat to make a hefty portion of ceviche. I typically only take 2-3 fish on a given dive, but knew I'd have to go for more today, especially if I didn't find any lunkers. So I decided to charge a local spot instead of going down to Sur. Been a while since I dove it, mainly because of how far of a surface swim it is and how deep you have to go to hit bottom, but I'm REALLY glad I did.

First, as I was pulling up, there was another dude solo diving. I asked what his plan for diving (depth, time frame etc) was, and we thought it would make both of our SOs happy if we didn't dive solo. He wasn't familiar with the area, so I pointed us out to sea and we were greeted with decent sized rollers and pretty poor visibility. Not a problem! Where we were diving was super fishy. My carbon fins are being cleaned and reglued so I broke out my plastics and man I forgot how hard you have to kick with those things! The surface swim alone was pretty tiring. My very first drop after catching my breath, I dove down, couldn't see, couldn't see, couldn't see then finally some structure started to appear. I landed right on a nice little crack and at the bottom was an unmistakable fish! One I had hoped to see, but had not yet seen in the wild - a Lipstick Bass (aka Treefish)!!!  It was nearly 15" and they don't get much beyond 16" so I did what any reasonable, sustainably minded diver would do, and shot it in the face.  Then a rather admirably sized olive was swimming in a school of blues - sleepy time - brain to belly. A rather poorly camouflaged cabezon was sitting out on top of a couple rocks, so with full lungs, I unbanded one of the bands, and gave him the night night spear. Next, a curious kelpie basically swam up to me and put itself on the spear. The last fish, was the unfortunate one. I can't be the only one who dives into a school of blues, takes his sweet time finding the biggest one on the outskirts of the school, and shoots it only to discover it's actually pretty small. Darn optical illusions.

It was about that time that I knew I was needing to head in, so I swim over to my new buddy Joe P. to inform him that we're actually on pretty good structure (lots of tall pinnacles) for sheephead, so keep an eye out. Right as I get up to him he starts hollering about shooting a sheephead but it was stuck in a cave on the bottom. I swam down, dislodged it and he reeled up a really admirable female. He hollered even louder when he saw the size. It as probably in the 12-15# range (24") which is great for that area. (I didn't want to spot burn, so when I took his photo, I tried to not include any landmarks... hopefully you don't recognize it haha) I knew that if the female got that big, there had to be a bigger male, so I did a couple more drops to no avail. The wind was strong, the vis was bad, and the waves were building, so we called it and went back in.

I was 4/5 on stone shots yesterday and came home with a rainbow of a stringer. Cleaned the fish asap, blanched them, chopped a ton of veggies for ceviche, jumped in the shower, helped get the wife and bebe ready, and off we went to a great evening of food and friends. What a weekend!

Calico Bass taken down by Santa Barbara

California Halibut taken while exploring new ground in my kayak. Had a jig and swimbait stuck in its mouth from a previous encounter with a hook and line angler. Took two more for a limit.

Submitting: Copper Rockfish

Less than stellar vis over the weekend. 10' to very hazy 20' at best with a lot of particulates; S swell with 20kts wind made the surface a washer machine (definitely puked in the water even after Dramamine); but the spot I was at was super fishy, which was awesome! Got a just under 17" blue, a 17" kelpie and this little copper. I rarely see these so was happy to eat it last night along with it's friends. I cooked for my in laws who are visiting and asked for fish. Not fancy plating but super tasty. Almond, portabello, Parmesan risotto; garlic & herb rock fish; dill & parsley yogurt; seared lemon. Easy to make, excellent taste - a go to for sure!