Pacific Dawn June 2012

I met up with Jim at his work Thursday afternoon. Steve, Jim and I headed north to Ventura Sportfishing to board the Pacific Dawn on our last LARRC rockfish charter of the year. The boat was in when we arrived so we loaded our gear and headed next door to try the new restaurant "Rhumb Line". We were chased out by the hostesses advising us that without reservations, no one was allowed in the dining room - even though it was empty! We headed back over to Andrea's for dinner.

Pat Cavanaugh was our Captain backed up by ManDog, with Danny and Mo on deck and Glenn in the Galley. Jim and I handed out the Goodie Bags that Bob Hoose sent. A last minute urgent meeting prevented Bob from joining us. Everyone was aboard and gear set up early so Pat pulled the boat away from dock around 8:30 and headed towards Santa Rosa Island. The plan was to try for squid then fish white seabass in the morning. It was a little bumpy on the way out but not bad enough to keep me awake.

About 4 am, I heard the anchor drop and got up. Crew were jigging for squid. Little by little, passengers got up and contributed to the effort. It was quite difficult to snag the little suckers - I managed only one in an hour.

Jim informed me that he had purchased my JP spot and that I better fish hard. Just before daybreak, we put our dropper loops down with one live and one dead squid to try for the ghosts. I put the clicker on my reel and set it down to let the boat's action attract the fish. I grabbed another rod with a sliding sinker and fished with that. I fished very hard per Jim's admonition. One white seabass was caught for all our effort and I was not the lucky angler. We fished for the seabass until 10:30 before heading to deeper water for the rockfish.

Pat set us up in 300 feet of water. Conditions were horrible! Choppy with a wind so strong that the drift was so fast it was difficult to reach the bottom even with a 16 ounce sinker. I started with 80# spectra and a 40# mono gagnion with shrimp flies. I struggled with that rig and dropped down to lighter weight spectra and finally reached the bottom.

Eventually I started catching fish - but they were all salmon grouper when everyone else was catching reds. It didn't take long for me to realize that Jim had put the hex on me by buying my JP spot. He actually put the hex on himself too because for each of my 25 or so salmon groupers, he caught baby lings no bigger than 10 to 12 inches.

Conditions deteriorated making it even more difficult to fish. Once a fish was hooked, it was like dragging a couple 5 gallon buckets of water to the boat while trolling at 5 knots. Needless to say, it took plenty of muscle power to wind the fish in and stand on a bouncing deck.

Late in the day, Pat moved us East, just out of the wind and I finally caught a couple reds - enough for steamed red and some sashimi. I was happy then. We fished until 3 pm trying to fill the sacks. It worked as everyone had limits even though they were not the quality reds and rockfish of the previous two trips.

Glenn made me a grilled cheese sandwich then I napped from 5:30 to 7:30 while crew processed our fish and cleaned the boat. We got back to dock at 8 pm, unloaded our gear, grabbed our fish and headed home. I got home by 10:30. I expect in a couple days my body will feel the beating it took trying to fish in such difficult conditions but I’ll have some delicious fresh reds to console myself.