Hooping in San Diego Bay

I headed to San Diego Tuesday morning loaded with my lobster gear and plenty of warm clothes. I spent a little time at Fisherman's Landing chatting with friends while the Royal Polaris unloaded it's catch from a trip to the big fish grounds. It's always amazing to me how empty the parking lot is at this time of the year while it's impossible to get a spot during the summer months.

Conditions were predicted to be tough for lobster fishing this night - full moon, strong tidal movement (6 feet) and the lobsters hadn't been crawling lately.

Jason and I agreed to meet at Shelter Island to launch his boat. We loaded all my gear into his boat, launched and headed to the bait receiver for sardines. We added these to the leftover tuna guts and bloodlines that Fisherman's Processing so kindly provided for our lobster cages. We baited our cages then headed to our desired hooping location.

We dropped our 10 hoops by 5:30 pm and drifted while we had a light dinner. Traffic in the bay was horrible - lots of boats, boats towing barges and military watercraft. Many of these came close to or ran over our hoops even though we were not hooping in the main channel and our buoys were lighted or well marked.

We made our first pull at 6:15. It was a good news - bad news situation. We got two legal lobsters but we lost two nets - floats, ropes and all. We assume someone ran over them. We dropped the nets again and now we had the sea lion problem. We made 3 more pulls without getting a single lobster and the sea lions were merciless. They bent open the metal bait cages and cleaned every one of them out and they stole two entire cages.

We picked up our nets and moved to another location and dropped them again. The move paid off as we picked up another two legal lobsters but we lost another net. When Jason grabbed the buoy, there was nothing attached. At midnight we decided to cut our losses. I managed to get home by 1:45 am.

Even with all the problems, we had a wonderful evening in San Diego Harbor with clear skies, a big full moon and no wind. It was a beautiful evening to see the harbor skyline.

Next day was clean up day – wash down all the gear and clean the lobsters (a nice way to say I killed them).  I’m sure it will all be worth it when we sit down to our lobster dinner tonight.

   

Lobsters pleading for their life!