Kayak Fishing 4-29-15

Kayakers gathered in the parking lot of Dana Point Jet Ski and Kayak Center beginning at 7 a.m. Wednesday.  Wednesday Kayak Fishing is on the calendar now as a weekly event.  Jim Carlisle beat me there this week.  Shortly after I arrived, Wayne showed up followed by Jack, Mike, Tim Boyer and a couple new guys. The sun was already warming the air and the winds were quiet.

We loaded up the kayaks with bait tanks, fish finders, tackle, put on our PFD's and launched the kayaks.  Jim's kayak broke a pin holding his rudder to the kayak.  Tim said a spare resides inside the back hatch.  Once they changed that out, we were on our way to the bait receiver.  $12 for a tank full of healthy sardines and we were off.

We checked out the beach then headed to the pipe.

A light breeze and current had me drifting at about 2 MPH.  I had a small halibut on for maybe 30 seconds before I brought up a raked sardine.  Jim hooked into a fish that drug him around until he got it to the surface.  It was a beautiful 4 foot leopard shark.  Mike went over to help Jim release it.

After an hour or so fishing the pipeline, I moved out to 80 feet of water.   The pipeline is around 35 feet deep.  That was a dead zone too.  I saw Jack heading back towards the pipeline and decided to follow.  Before I got there, the wind came up quickly and by noon it was really blowing so I headed towards the harbor.  I noticed Jim was heading there from outside and Jack had headed that way too.  It was slow going as the wind created a moderate chop to the water.  The chop managed to splash water into my kayak and drench my butt again.  Until then, I was nice and dry. 

By 1:30 we were all back in the harbor.  One by one we pulled our kayaks out of the water and cleaned them up.  I put mine back on the shelf and packed up my tackle in my truck.  A quick check of my fish finder revealed that I had traveled 6 miles and spent 5 hours on the water.  Great exercise even when the fish don't bite.