Always a bridesmaid

[Bill McIntyre]

The last two times I've been out, my guests have taken very nice fish, but its about time I got one too. Enough of this gracious host crap.

Today I headed out with Robin Cadiz and Andrew Halverson with high hopes that they would have mercy on me and let me get a fish.

Andrew's previous best (and only) white sea bass was a 12 pounder taken while diving from the beach. He went out with me once before, last summer, and shot a nice one, but it tied up in the kelp on the bottom and the guy who was trying to help him get it out inadvertently cut his shooting line and the fish was lost.

The first couple of kelp beds didn't look too good, but we finally settled on one with about 10 foot visibility. While suiting up we saw big schools of sardines go by the boat, so that gave us the courage to get in the cold water. It turned out to be about 59 F, at least not as bad as other days recently.

I was working around the edge of the bed where I thought the vis would be best, and Andrew came swimming by and went into the bed. It couldn't have been more than 10 minutes later when he called "I've got mine." I guess a fish just swam slowly in front of him and close range and gave him all the time in the world, so he shot it.

I swam over to help and held his gun while he made a dive to find the fish, but he couldn't see it. On the theory that the guy who shot the fish is always more excited and has more trouble holding his breath, I volunteered to give it a try. I'm not very good, but at least I've had some experience messing around down there in poor vis with line wrapped all up in kelp.

I found the fish pretty quickly and saw that it was dead as a doornail. On the next dive I tried to grab it and bring it up while Andrew let out reel line so I could pull it though, but it was just too tightly wrapped in one of these columns of kelp that white sea bass seem to organize so well. So my next try to was to put the Carter float one it to see if that would rip it out, but it didn't. So then I decided to just cut his shooting line at the shaft, but I actually couldn't find the rear end of his shaft. Did I mention, it was murky down there, and the damn kelp was wrapped up dense.

Finally, with the 25 pounds of buoyancy provided by the float along with jerking and kicking by me to augment, I managed to pull the fish to the surface. But even then, the line was so tightly wrapped up that we ended up just cutting the shooting line at the shaft anyway.

I figured that I needed to get a new C02 cylinder for the float, so I accompanied Andrew back to the boat for the weighing and photo ceremony.

By the time we got through with that, Robin came back and said that the vis had deteriorated so that he had a hard time seeing the end of his gun, so we left. Otherwise, I'm quite sure I would have taken a big fish myself.

We stopped at one more spot and worked it a while, but the vis was pretty bad so we decided to come home early and celebrate Andrew's fish.

When we weighed the fish in the boat with the big swell, I estimated the average bounce to be around 56 pounds. But when we got back on the dock, Robin and I held the scale up steady and the fish weighed 60 pounds. Not bad for a second white sea bass.

The first photo show that it was a good holding shot, with the slip tip toggled on gill cover. In the vertical shot you can see the entry wound on the other side quite a ways back. I guess the fish was turning away as he pulled the trigger.

Andrew used a Wong 55" GR gun with a Mori 9/32" shaft, a Mori 9/32" slip tip rigged with Spectra, and a JBL (I think) reel.

But enough of this gracious host crap. What do I have to do- make everyone wait in the boat until I shoot one?

[MahiMan]

Man thats a nice fish! Got to be careful with all that kelp and line, as I'm sure your well aware of. Neat story and nice fish, congrats to your buddy for the shot and you for the recovery !

[Mongrel454]

Nice story mate(great read)
Maybe u should make a movie 27 DIVES