Spring of 2019 I had a buddy come visit from Illinois who has been trying to get into freediving and wanted to see the California kelp forests. We took a weekend charter out on the Spectre dive boat. It was my first time on the Spectre, which is mainly a scuba boat but has some spaces for freedivers as well, and it was a pretty fun time. I think the Peace caters better to spearfisherman and has more fish expertise, but the Spectre was a good and cheap option to get out to the islands and they made sure we were at least in spots that had some hunting grounds. It was too early in the year for prime fishing, but I did get my first ocean whitefish.

My first and only verm of the year (I think) from a dive a couple months ago. We got a late start this day waiting on a buddy, paddled a couple miles into a stiff headwind, dove a fairly deep spot, and didn't see many fish. At least I got a red.

Entering some fish from Baja: triggerfish, wahoo, and amberjack (actually almaco jack).

SUBMITTING: Striped Perch, Pile Perch and Opal Eye.

STORY: I have held off and dragged my feet on these last few fish I needed for fishy Triton, just because these 3 fish I don't find particularly tasty and I don't want to kill just to put a number on a spreadsheet. I hadn't gone after them either because I originally wasnt able to make the last meeting of the year in Dec. However, when it got rescheduled, and being able to make it, I got more serious about finding a time to dive. My good buddy Matt Bond had also recently showed me a recipe for perch sashimi that I was interested in trying. I also needed a bigger MFE to jump up a spot in DOTY. With the family travelling to NY then Kona for the holidays starting this coming weekend, and with the ocean much to angry to dive last weekend, I took advantage of the LAST half way decent dive window of my 2019 NorCal dive year. I had 4 fish I was hoping to get, the three listed above, and an MFE. By far the least desirable stringer one could hope to dive for! My dive buddy Huan, who recently won 1st place in the Catch and Cook comp, was requested by his family that he reproduce the winning dish for them so he needed a couple nice RF but was running about an hour behind, so I hopped in and stayed shallow to look for my 4 fish. The water was cold, the wind was up, the long point swell left a great deal of surge in the water, but the vis was a surprisingly pleasant 15'-20' with a lot of particulate from the recent 10'-13' swells that passed through in the preceding days. There is something fun about hunting a specific species and having a decent idea about where to find them, esp MFE. You can almost tell ahead of time which holes/cracks to look in. On my 2nd drop, I saw the striped perch - bam. On my 4th, I saw a big ugly face...MFE. Based on the size of the face, it appeared to be a bigger one (I needed an upgrade on one I got earlier this year) so I pulled the trigger. I ended up getting both perch and my MFE within 20 minutes. So I spent time having fun crawling into caves and looking for scallops and big urchin until Huan got in. When he finally met up with me, we went out to the deeper spot that is almost always fishy over the pinnacles, and man... was it ever fishy. Like... better quality fish that I've ever seen there and in troves. To make sure he got his fish, I shot 2 tanker blues for him but opted to keep only what I needed and would use before travelling. I should have waited to get my perch because I saw some baby boogie board sized perch out there. It was neat to just watch them - besides, smaller fish are usually less at risk for parasites.

On my way back in, I was surprized not to have seen a single opal eye. They are really easy to spot with their 2 dots on the back and usually swimming in a shallow school. While I was searching, I saw a really neat looking cave that was almost U shaped. I was curious so I shined my light in and to the right as far as it could go and just barely visible were a pair of really big grassy lips. Excitement got the best of me and I awkwardly wedged my gun in and took the shot. I love finding big grassys, they are sometimes really good at hiding! Another weird thing on this dive was the 4 dead molas all in a little circle that had hundreds of those hermit looking crabs starting to feast on them. Sealions must have gotten to them as there were no fins. Never seen that before in this area.

This will be my last submission for Fishy Triton and my first year participating. Thank you guys for putting this on and I'm stoked to see you all in the new year.

6 Species. Lingcod, Blue Rockfish. Black and Yellow Rockfish, Greenling. Striped Perch, Pile Perch.

2 dives in monterey scouting new areas. Came up short on fish but conditions were great both dives. Took a trip back up to Fort Ross for the Ling and the Blue. The water was great for up north 15'-20' visibility.

Submitting: Striped Perch & MonkeyFace

Story: Nothing too special as far as a story goes except that Friday night, I saw a Uhaul drive in around 7:30p and out came a dad and 11yo daughter. I have no idea what he was thinking because he needed someone to help carry the heavy stuff so I offered to give him a hand with furniture. 2 hours later, we were unloaded. Fast forward to Saturday early morning... I was sore for diving. haha! It's super fun to know exactly which fish you're targeting and just go after those. I needed a MFE for Diver of the Year (I had hoped it was bigger but it's hard to tell size when all you can see is the head), I needed a perch for Fishy Triton and my new downstairs neighbors said they love fish, so I got them a couple blues for dinner. Vis was garbage and I've never seen the forecast be so inaccurate. 6-8'@10sec? Yah right. It was glassy out there. Also got some funny looks bringing my riffe 120 out there but needed to practice aim with it for Baja and Hawaii. Look at those shot placements :) I was happy to stone all the fish! Anyhow, any day in the water is a good day. Also, any day you get to eat PigWizard with buddies after diving is a good day. Can you say Pulled Pork Naccherones?

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!

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.

Calico Bass taken down by Santa Barbara

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!

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: 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!

My first monkeyface, shot at the May meeting.

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

Submitting Rubberlip perch

After a hectic few weeks of research, working long days, and working weekends, I finally finished up my set of experiments and took a few days off to unwind and go spearfishing. The ocean was super calm and so I planned to dive Tuesday morning, do a halibut dive Tuesday evening, and then dive again Wednesday morning before heading home.

Tuesday was unfortunately a solo day since I couldn't find a dive buddy. Things started of slow and the most interesting thing I saw for a while was a plastic bag floating around the bottom that I grabbed and stuck in my kayak, but I eventually saw a nice sheephead from the surface, dropped down, and shot him. Shortly after I got a big rubberlip to submit for DOTY. Didn't see any other notable fish so headed in when I started to get chilly. After my last dive, when I tried to turn my dive light off, it went into SOS mode and was stuck like that. Out of the water I took it apart, changed the battery, etc. and the problem was still there. So canceled my evening halibut dive since I didn't have a light.

Wednesday a guy from the NCUH forum came down to dive Big Sur with me. The spot we hit wasn't super fishy, so I just took two small blue rockfish for dinner.

Short vid of Tuesday's dive:

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.

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.