San Diego Fishing Adventures

1st Place in SWYC Tournament!

Saturday, April 25, 2009

There’s nothing like being able to roll out of bed, grab your gear, launch your boat, pick up your friends and then end up at the Southwestern Yacht Club to have eggs, bacon, potatoes, pastries, coffee and orange juice served to you before heading out into the ocean for a day of fishing! Fishing just becomes the icing on the cake, especially when you return back to a cold keg of beer before the salt even dries on your face! And then for once you get to drop off your fish to be filleted and cooked for you later in the evening. Well, that’s how the Southwestern Yacht Club Bottom Fishing Tournament rolls when it comes to raising funds for Hospice and The Institute for Palliative Medicine.

Once again it was a great time! Myself, tournament partner and long time friend Terry Hastings, and Terry’s dad (my second) Pat Hastings joined forces to see what we could put together as team SDFA on my boat the Reel Hooker. As I stated above, the day started out great with a filling breakfast, some juice and a cup of coffee to go. The only issue on the horizon was the weather, which we had been watching all week. Every other day the swell and wind models went from extremely bad to very uncomfortable and back again! By Friday night Terry and I discussed the weather and figured the worst case scenario was either a rough day of fishing, or no fishing at all with a great breakfast, beer and a dinner party. Either way you sliced it, there was fun to be had, but we definitely wanted to get on the water. The week before we had gone out to our area and spend half the day just searching for new rocks and drop offs to fish for the tournament. We always have a few that produce, but we were hoping to find some new ones just in case. Sure enough, we found some very promising rocks that produced some quality fish.

As we departed the dock with our coffee we took notice to some flags that were showing a stiff Northwest wind already blowing at 6:45am. We picked up some live bait and waited for the official 7am start and began heading out into the sea. It was definitely rough with a mix of a South swell and a West wind swell with small white caps already peeking their head out. I pointed the bow to the West and headed out at about 18 mph to our fishing grounds. Under any “normal” day of fishing, we would have never considered rock cod fishing on a day like this. Normally you want dead calm conditions so you can get your bait down to anywhere from 375 feet to 550 feet of water. I knew with conditions like this I would have to stay on the wheel at all times and try to keep the boat from drifting so the lines would be straight up and down from the bottom.

We arrived at the spot we had found the previous weekend and I began to search around to get an idea of where the structure is and where the current was going to push me. The hard part was that due to it being so rough the transducer that signals the bottom was having a hard time picking it up consistently. The boat would rock to one side and back to the other which caused the signal to be sent out at an angler rather than vertically. I just had to slow the boat down to a idle speed to get a clear reading of the bottom. I had Pat and Terry rig up their lines and get ready to drop when I said. I noticed some really good structure that was off our mark by about 50 feet and a bit shallower so I had them drop down while I kept the boat in reverse fighting with the wind, swell and current. We were in about 450 feet of water when Terry called out that he was on the bottom. Not only were we able to keep his line straight up and down, but by the time he got his reel into gear he was getting hammered! He reeled into it and set the hook and sure enough had a big “load” on his rod. Pat also hit the bottom and was immediately getting hammered. Unfortunately his reel broke on him before he even had a chance to set the hook. While Pat dealt with his reel Terry began hauling in his catch. After a long reel, I saw color, not just one color, but three colors as he pulled up a beautiful catch of Vermilion’s.

Terry with his first drop, 3 Vermilions!

Terry holding up 2 of the 3 quality Vermilion Rock Cod from the first drop down.

In the mean time we got Pats line in and handed off my rod to him since we knew there was no way 3 people would ever be fishing at the same time. While they get their rods rigged back up and maneuver the boat back up to our original drop and call them out to send their baits down. As if it was dejavu, both rods get hammered as soon as they hit the bottom and once again Terry brings up another, 3 fish catch of beautiful Vermilion’s! Pat brought up 2 more Vermilion’s on his drop and we quickly filled our 5 fish big with only 2 drops to the bottom!

Once we get the fish on ice we repeat the same process with me pulling back up to the spot while they rig up their rods again. Once more time I tell them to drop down their baits to see what will happen. Once again both rods are hit and Terry and Pat set the hooks and start winding in their catch. This was rock cod fishing at it’s best despite the wind, swells and constant fish with mother nature. Terry’s catch came up and once again he pulled up 3 more nice Vermilion’s all in the 4lb range! Pat pulled up a nice single Vermilion that was also in the 4lb range.

This is getting ridiculous! Terry with 2 more quality Vermillions from drop number 3.

The fish hold is filling QUICKLY!! This is a shot from only 4 drops total between Terry and his dad Pat!

Can you guess what we did again? You got it, pulled the boat right back up. Terry offered to take over the wheel so I could fish but since it was a tournament and I knew right where to get those baits back down I passed. I figured we were doing really well with me getting us on the fish and them successfully pulling them in! Why change something if it’s working? So I stuck to the wheel to have them drop back down another time. We repeated the same steps and again the fish gods blessed us with another amazing hookup of beautiful Vermilion’s! To hook this many quality Vermilion’s is a real treat! Normally we only get a few of them and fill the rest of the bag with other various Rock Cod. But everything came together for us and was only about to kick up another notch! Yes, it get’s better! This time both Terry and Pat hook into some huge loads of fish which judging by the bend in their rods was some serious quality fish! While Pat is battling his catch Terry announces that he thinks their lines have crossed. This is not good! Often when this happens one line can “saw” off the other line and lose the catch. Sure enough as Pat get’s his line closer to the boat he feels his “load” lighten up on him. Just then Terry’s catch comes up and we realize he didn’t have 3 fish, but instead had all 4 hooks with fish on!! I quickly helped him get the fish into the boat and then went to the other side and got Pat’s fish into the boat. Unfortunately Pat had lost everything from his first hook down, fish, hooks and weight. But fortunately the only fish left was the biggest fish so far that morning! It was amazing to see these quality Vermilion’s laying in the boat! For Terry, that was 4 drops that equaled three triples and a quadruple!!

Pat and Terry with another instant double hook-up on Vermilion’s. This time though Pat brought in the winning fish.

After that I felt confident in handing the wheel over and trying to add to the fish pot myself. I would pull us back up to the spot while Terry got my rig ready. Then once we were on the spot he handed off the rod and took over the wheel. I got the bait down to the bottom and instantly got hooked up. I battled my catch to the surface and once again added another double made up of one Vermilion and on Mexican Rockfish, both of quality size. Pat brought in a few mixed fish and once again we repeated the same steps.

This time I hooked into a better catch bringing up 2 more Vermilion’s with one definitely being added to our top 5 fish bag!

El Capitan gets to take time off the wheel and add in his Vermilion donation.

After that I took over the wheel again and let Terry and Pat drop back down. At this point we were feeling good about what we had on the boat but knew it was still very early in the day...actually the morning. At this point it wasn’t even 10am yet! And once again both rods loaded up with another nice batch of fish. This time thought it did take a few minutes before they hooked up...yes, a few minutes, if that. But once again it was an amazing catch of Vermilion’s!

Terry battling another batch of Vermilions in 480 feet of water! We know why Popeye had such big forearms.

Just when we thought we had a great bag of 5 fish, it got better!!

After this drop we kept picking away, but overall it started to slow down. But then again, what is “slow” after that amazing bite of Rock Cod? We still managed some Mexican Rockfish, Chillipeppers and other assorted tasty critters. At the end we had 29 Rockfish to donate to the dinner along with one of the best days of Rock Cod fishing we have seen in a long time! We felt good with what we were bringing in on tournament day, especially under those conditions.

Catching fish is always fun no matter what is at the end of the line. But more times than not, mother nature reminds us of how much life is truly in our ocean. I can’t tell you how many different forms of life I have seen in the ocean while fishing, from 8 foot long Jellyfish to crazy parasites, from whales to sharks and everything else in between. Many things we have seen in the past were completely unidentifiable to us or others when we have described them. For this particular day we were treated to Terry bringing up a small “casing” from 500 feet of water on one of his hooks. The casing looked like something from a sci-fi movie, not from mother nature. We snapped some pictures and looked at it carefully and sure enough Terry noticed a small “fish” living inside the casing! If you look at the top left side of the “yolk” looking ball you can see a faint fish image in there.

We were amazed to see this so I emailed the photo to Terry’s brother who is a biologist for NOAA to see if he knew what it was. He said it is an egg casing for a Swell Shark which often wash up on the beach. The Swell Shark lays these casings and the young grows inside of the until they are big enough to break out of them. Here is a picture off the internet of a Swell Shark coming out of the casing.

The Swell Shark can grow to around 4’ in length and has a large mouth with many small teeth. It is called a Swell Shark because it has the ability to suck in large amounts of water to “swell” up his body. He uses this to make himself look bigger to predators and to lock himself into rocks and crevasses to prevent predators from pulling them out. After snapping some pictures we put it back in the ocean to grow up for another day.

The Swell Shark egg casing was just another treat along with this great catch that mother nature gave us!
El Capitan displaying the new SDFA shirt logo along with the final catch, 29 fish donated to the dinner.

Once we got back in it was nice to tie up the boat and get warm again while sipping a cold beer of Green Flash IPA beer. We were the 3rd boat in out of 46 boats! It was a short day but a very successful and productive day! In fact, the fillet guys hadn’t even arrived yet so we got to enjoy our beers, rest our legs and admire our catch.

Pat with SDFA’s boat “REEL HOOKER”. Possibly the smallest boat in the tournament, but with the biggest catch.

We finally loaded up our 5 fish and took them to the weigh station. After getting them weighed we found out that Pat’s biggest Vermilion went almost 7lbs and non of our fish were under 5lbs! Everyone got excited seeing that knowing it was a good weight. Then we went back to the boat and loaded up the rest of the fish for the dinner and kept about 5 fish for our own home consumption. As Terry dragged the bag back up the guy asked for our boat name. Terry replied that we had already weighed in and they freaked out seeing the “extra” fish we were bringing in. Even the fish that didn’t make our 5 fish catch were all quality 4lb fish that other teams would have been happy to have. I could hear the yelling from where I was at the dock.

As were were about the leave I asked Terry what our total 5 fish weight was. He said it was around 22lbs but also made the comment that they guys were enjoying that keg of beer. Immediately I realized that wasn’t right if all our fish were 5lbs each! That alone would be 25lbs total. Terry said I should run up and take a quick look, and I am glad I did! It turned out that the adding was off, way off. We went from 22lbs to 29.74lbs once they corrected their addition! That was a close one!

Team SDFA on the board with their total weight.

We headed back home, cleaned the boat, cleaned ourselves, grabbed the ladies and headed back down to the yacht club. When we arrived we immediately got a beer and checked out the “board” to see how we did. Once we went over all the numbers we realized that we had the largest 5 fish total, along with the largest Rock Cod for the tournament. Not only that, but we also had the second largest Rock Cod and only lost the third place spot by six hundredths of a pound!! It was what I call a cleaning of the house! We were stoked to say the least!

Team SDFA with the win! - (from left to right)Pat Hastings, Terry Hasting, Peter Hamann

El Capitan with the new SDFA t-shirt and winning board.

With that news the beers flowed a bit more than usual in celebration of a great ending. Soon we got to grab our seats at the dinner table to enjoy eating our days catch!

Team Reel Hookers dinner spot.

The only down side is that each team can only win one place so others can be in on the winnings. So we took biggest fish for the tournament and the rest was forgotten by everyone else but us!
As always, it was great to fish with Terry and Pat and be a part of something that gives back to Hospice which is something I really am thankful for. It was a rough day for sure, but a great day of both fishing, friends and great food!

Until the next report, tight lines!
Captain Peter Hamann

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