St. Patrick's Day on the Pacific Dawn

The Los Angeles Rod and Reel Club had their first 2006 charter aboard the Pacific Dawn out of Hook's Sportfishing on March 17th. I am co-Chartermaster with Jim Carlisle for these trips (although Jim does all the work). We arrived in Oxnard early and signed in at the landing before boarding the boat. When we boarded, we were greeted with a special treat in the galley – Shane DeRemer was cooking for us. Shane also works in the galley on the Excel. We had 16 club members board the Pacific Dawn on Friday evening and set up tackle in preparation for the morning’s early bite.

I awoke early and found the captain, Pat Cavanaugh, and crew scooping squid. Fortunately, two of the three deck tanks were filled before the sea lions chased the squid away. We were on the back side of Santa Rosa Island.

We started with a wide open bite on rays while fishing shallow for white seabass. Unfortunately, the white seabass eluded us. Pat moved the boat to the rock fish grounds and the bite was on. It turned out to be a great day on the water. The weather was beautiful and everyone went home with limits of rock fish. Shane took this photo of Jim and me with our big reds which we caught on one of the last drops of the day.

For the ride home, Shane made a special meal for St. Patrick’s Day - corned beef. He also made us a big pot of clam chowder which was some of the best I’ve had. I’ll be bugging Shane for his recipe. We were back at dock by 7:30 p.m. Crew handed out our fish and we all headed home looking forward to our fresh fish dinners the following day.