13lb Lincod, Salmon Season Closure

We went fishing on fishing on Sunday and had a great trip. We decided to fish out of the Half Moon Bay marina. Normally this time of year we would be Salmon fishing, but as many of you know the Salmon season has been closed for 2008 off the coast of California for both Recreational and Commercial fisherman. The closure was done to help reverse the catastrophic disappearance of the King Salmon population. So instead of Salmon fishing we went out in hopes of catching Lingcod, Halibut and rock fish. See the video at the bottom for some of the action.

We left Tracy at around 4:45am, got gas and headed to the Half Moon Bay Harbor to launch my Dads 21ft Wellcraft fishing vessel. I towed his boat with my 03 Dodge Cummins to help cover fuel expenses. We launched his boat and headed out in search of anchovies, hoping to net or catch some live bait. No luck. The bait just wasn’t thick enough apparently. There was a recent and mysterious die-off of Anchovies at Half Moon Bay recently that you can read more about here. There is a Video here as well. Some theories as to the die off include depleted oxygen and methane gas that is created when they die. I heard the stench was pretty bad for a while in the Harbor. The birds enjoyed it I am sure. I guess the bait goes in the Harbor entrance and doesn’t know how to come out so more and more come in and the rest is history. At any rate we headed out without fresh bait.

Since we can’t fish for Salmon we were targeting Lingcod, Halibut and rockfish. The weather conditions were ideal. We started the day with high fog, very little wind and just a 1 or 2 foot swell. We headed out and north towards the fleet and started fishing near the south end of what I believe is Montara St Beach. We were able to go in closer then usual due to the excellent sea conditions. We drifted and slow trolled over sand and eventually some rocks. There were no Halibut to be found, but we manage to catch what turned out to be a personal best Lingcod trip.

The best bait I know of for catching big Lingcod is Squid. You can buy it by the box in your local grocery store. I used a two hook rig consisting of a single hook followed by a treble hook. Although this rig can increase the snag potential it did well in catch rate for me. It wasn’t long before I hooked into a large Lingcod. He turned out to weigh in at almost 13lbs. Not bad for the 1^st fish in the boat. He would have been more, but he decided to upchuck two small octopuses which together must have weighed at least a pound. It is common for Lingcod to do this. We love it cause we know whatever they upchuck might be able to be used as bait assuming it is in relatively good condition. I know this sounds gross, but this is exactly what I did and it paid off. We managed to catch at least one or two more Lingcod on the two Octopus that the 1^st one gave up.

We also used large sardines which are a favorite of Halibut. We didn’t find the Halibut, but Rock fish like them two. We boated several small rock fish and the largest Cabazon I have seen. We ended the day with 6 Lings, one Cabazon, and 5 small rock cod split 4 ways. We ate the Cabazon that night and I think it might have been the best rock fish I have ever had. We also heard of one guy that limited on Cabazon. I wish I knew where he was fishing.

I also had what must have been a shark on my line. Although we never saw it, based on its behavior, it must have been a shark. The speed at which the line came of my line was just to fast, smooth and long to be anything else. He immediately took my line towards and around a rock and almost took all the line off my spool. I had braided line or it would have snapped in an instant on the rock. We managed to back the boat up enough to get off the rock. I had a ton of line to real up and although it felt like I still had something on my line eventually things went limp. The line broke off at the knot. Wish I could have seen what it was. It wouldn’t have been the 1^st time we have hooked up on shark in this area so that must be what it was. On a previous trip years ago we lost several shark and but managed to bring two of them near the boat that weighed in at around 60lbs each. Species is unknown, but could have been a Brown Smoothhound or something similar.

La Paz Fly Fishing

I spent a week in La Paz which included 5 days of Fly Fishing organized by Jay Murakoshi of Flies Unlimited. This trip titled Isla Cerralvo Adventure which you can read more about here was well organized. Although I have not gone on any of what my dad calls rich man trips, I am betting this one would be listed near the top overall. The price was very reasonable too. Although I consider myself an excellent angler I learned a ton thanks to Jay’s tips and the experience.

The 1^st two days looked really promising. My dad and I both lost big fish. My dad lost a big Mahi Mahi the 1^st day. You have to move with the fish and he didn’t move fast enough and his line caught on the out board motor causing the line to break. I managed to catch a small one around 5 lbs shown here. Out captain Beto is holding him. Had I known it would be my last Mahi Mahi I would have held him for the photo I presume, but there were other fish around. We just couldn’t hook anymore up. We both caught some decent sized Black Skip Jacks.

We tried our best to stay away from the needle fish like the one shown here, but they managed to take several of our flies on this trip. They are toothy critters and if you are lucky and they don’t take your fly you will at least have to retie your fly as they will do damage to your leader almost every time.

Day two of fishing was better then the 1st day aside from rookie mistakes. It was windy and we weren’t sure we would fish, but someone recommended an option that would get us out of the wind so we headed towards protected waters for bait. We got bait and immediately started fishing and hooked into around 7 small rooster fish each give or take a few. It was an exciting start and good practice as I was new to big game fly fishing.

We had aspirations for bigger and better fish and with the strong northerly decided to make a move around the south side of a point where big roosters sometimes hang out. It turned out to be a great move. We had the place all to our selves at 1^st. The captain threw bait and it wasn’t long before big roosters were circling the boat. We boated one or two Pacific Jack Crevalle’s before my dad hooked up with his 1^st big rooster. He fought the rooster for around a half hour. He had the drag set pretty tight and eventually the ling broke at the knot. Jay was on the boat with us and estimated the fish at around 50 or 60lbs. My dad was plagued with broken leaders on this trip and as it turned out the 20lb leader material we were using was lucky to withstand 14lbs. Although it was recentl purchased, we theorized that it must have been on the shelf too long. I was using the same leader material, but I think I used less drag then he did. I was religious about checking for abrasions on the line and always retied with the slightest imperfection.

On Saturday before our 1^st day of fishing Jay gave us the lowdown on what to expect, fly’s, tackle and technique along with some photo’s to get us excited. He brought up a story was a guy that lost a big fish. The fish took enough line to get down to a spot where a knot was. I guess the guy knew about it and forgot to fix it. He lost his fish as a result. I didn’t think anything of it, but that was a mistake. I was borrowing a reel and had faith that it was setup properly and didn’t check the backing to see that it was wound on tight. This turned out to be a mistake as I too lost a big rooster. As soon as it pulled enough line out to get down to the loose backing it somehow managed to tangle under another strand and the reel froze and the line snapped instantly under the pressure. Needless to say I will be removing the entire backing and putting it back on tight. If you roll your thumb over the backing, the line should be tight and not move. Lesson learned.

Day 1 and two turned out to be our best opportunity. We mainly targeted Mahi Mahi since we wanted to take home some fish. We caught more fish, but none of the good eating variety until the last day. A school of African Pompano moved in and I cheated. Since they were deep I put a sinker and a live bait on my fly rod and dropped it down and hooked up and boated a nice one around 10 pounds. We ate him up last night. It was excellent. It was like tuna only softer like a salmon.

We saw some amazing things while out there. We drove by a bird sitting on top of a turtle floating out in the middle of nowhere. A whale passed by as well only about 300 yards from shore. We saw flying fish. We watched needlefish scoot across the water like it was on ski's. Pretty amazing. What was even more spectacular was the large Manta Rays that would jump 10 feet in the air and perform aerial acrobatics. They would flip two or three times in the air sometimes before crashing down. You have to see it to believe it. Scary thing is sometimes they have been known to inadvertently jump into a boat. Most are 50lbs and bigger. Many were well over 200 lbs I am sure. I wouldn’t want one of them in the small panga’s that we were in.



Fly fishing takes a lot out of you. We were using 10 weight rods with heavy sinking shooting heads. You are casting all day long and the 1^st few days were grueling. There was pain in the back, shoulder, forearm and wrist, not to mention the normal tired eyes from being in the sun all day. We would take Aleve at night and by Thursday I was feeling less pain, and by Friday I don’t recall any pain. Guess your body will recover and build up those muscles. So why do we do it? Honestly if it were up to me I would have enjoyed using some conventional tackle, but there is more honor and respect if you can catch the fish on a fly at least amongst the fly fishing crowd. In hindsight trolling around with conventional tackle would have produced more fish, but with day 1 an 2 being so good we really thought we had a chance at the big one during the remaining three days.

It is amazing how many varieties are out there that people don’t eat. There are a lot of rock fish that are good but we were not targeting them. I did catch a small Cabrilla which I let the captain have. We tried to avoid catching Ladyfish. I free dove on Saturday out in front of our hotel La Concha. Saw several species including a puffer fish, a couple trigger fish.

We had great weather for most days. Some things in life unfortunately require you to learn the hard way. As a result the big fish got away on this trip. This however just makes you want to go back. If it was easy catching big fish you probably wouldn’t fish as much. It was a great trip regardless and I look forward to doing something similar again. Thanks for the Birthday present dad.

Lake McSwain Campout May 2008

The family and I went camping at Lake McSwain, Ca this past weekend. It was a fun and eventful trip filled with Trout fishing, potluck’s and wildlife viewing. Check out the video. This was my 1st attempt at video production with the new CyberLink PowerDirector Ver 7 software that I purchased so cut me some slack. The jury is still out on the software though. I am not too happy yet.



I have had several crashes already and I can’t find a simple fade out feature on a video clip. It crashed the 1st time I attempted to use it right after the installation. I believe it was due to the FFDShow software. As soon as I uninstalled the FFDShow software PowerDirector ran fine. It does look promising but there is much to learn and it has crashed several times. I recommend you save and save often.

I attempted to use the feature that allows you to upload your video to YouTube, but it doesn’t seem to want to take my Google login id. So I had to do the upload manually. The nice thing is that it creates the video in a format that YouTube will accept. If I were using a normal YouTube login, it would most likely work fine.

We arrived at the lake Friday evening and pulled into our designated RV camp site. We were greeted by my parents who were already up there. My dad had already been fishing so he had the technique down. Although I wasn’t expecting to fish that evening, the offer was made so I took it. There wasn’t much light left in the day but we went out for an hour or so. Roland caught all the fish on this trip. I had a few strikes, but the hook wouldn’t set. We were slow trolling rusty colored wooly bugger style fly’s. We theorized that the tail on the fly’s we were using was too long.

The next day after a nice breakfast I took my wife out for some tolling. I used an old favorite fly of mine. I was not confident in the rust colored fly that I had used the night before. Not long after setting the lines I hooked up and caught a nice sized trout on my fly. After that we didn’t catch a fish for an hour and a half or so. We were kept entertained though by some of the local wild life. My wife was also reading her ladies magazine and sharing what she read.

We were trolling along and I heard some twigs breaking behind me. I turned around and saw a Deer strolling along the shoreline heading for some shade less then 50ft away. It was approaching 100 degrees so I can’t blamer her and was actually surprised to see a deer up and about this time of day. I quickly grabbed the camera and caught the tail end of her as she went behind a tree.

While filming her I glanced up and to my right I saw a Bobcat, just 50 yards away from the deer. I got some good footage of the bobcat as well which you can view on the video as well. Perhaps the bobcat was looking for an easy meal and woke the deer up from her resting place. Had the deer had a small fawn with her, then I bet the bobcat would be eating, however the doe appeared to be alone.

We were finally reached a point as we were trolling up the canyon where the water temperature started dropping from 57 degrees. Lake McSwain is fed by Lake McClure. The water from McClure must be taken from the bottom of the lake cause it is really cold. As it fills in lake McSwain the water temperature will change significantly throughout the entire lake. In a short space the water temp went from as high as 60 down to 51 degrees. Once we neared the temperature change around 11AM, the fishing improved. I caught two more trout on the same Rusty colored fly within 10 minutes. I had shortened the tail by ¼ inch and I didn’t miss any fish on this trip. The fish we caught were slightly larger though so this may have had something to do with it as well. It was 11 and we needed to get back for the potluck so we had to call I quits for now.

While back at camp I cleaned the fish, filmed a small cottontail rabbit and a California Whiptail lizard that seem interested in me. Perhaps he was waiting for a hand out. We enjoyed a potluck lunch had a long nap and then I decided to do some free diving.

I needed to try the wet suit without my hooded vest to confirm if the suit would still fit. It is still much too tight. So I will be looking for a new suit before my next dive in cold water. The water in the lake was around 55 degrees so there was no way I was going in without the suit. By the time I was done, my face was numb. I can see why the hood is important to be comfortable.

I didn’t see much underwater. Visibility was low and it wasn’t an ideal dive spot, but this was just another learning dive for me. I started with 20lbs which was what I thought would be good for this dive. It was too much. I ended up being most comfortable with only 10lbs. Diving in fresh water is different then salt and I wasn’t wearing the hooded vest so this must be the reason for the difference in weight requirement. I did see a carp that appeared to be guarding his nest. I forgot batteries in the underwater camera so no pics. But it wasn’t all that interesting. The rest of the dive consisted of mud, weeds, clam shells and rocks.

We went on a couple more fishing trips. One Saturday evening and Sunday morning and caught more trout. We saw a Coyote on Sunday morning taking a stroll. Trout fishing was decent and we enjoyed the fish Sunday evening. The fish was fresh and tasty. I will be having the rest for lunch today. Mmmmm. I have to apologize for the quality of photo's. They are all video snapshots.

The big one got away

I am finally getting around to reporting on last Friday’s fishing trip. We went Striper fishing again and we did slightly better then last time. Unfortunately the big one got away this time. We got an early start launching in Antioch and immediately went to my favorite spot, a sand bar on the San Joaquin which didn’t produce any fish. As it turned out it was still the tail end of the Incoming tide but I still expected to do better here. We hit another spot upstream that we had heard held fish, but no luck either. The seal we trolled by in this photo didn't seem to mind being bothered by us. He barely lifted his head after his sleep was rudely interrupted.

We shot by Brannon Island and started trolling up the Sacramento River near the old Dairy and caught our 1^st keeper. It was caught on what must have been an antique. It had a white jig head with a spinner and long ribbon styled white rubber tail. The remaining fish were all caught on my rod for some reason. This trip out we were all were using various colored Yo-Zuri shallow running rebels with worm trailers. I was using my favorite with an off white with sparkles curly tailed grub which I shortened a bit to make sure if I do get a hit that it sticks.

We caught two more just north of the Rio Vista bridge on the East side. One around 22 inches and one that went 7 lbs. We then headed south and I ended up hooking into a large striper near Decker Island. I was just about to fall asleep after a long day when my rod started to thrash from the striper attacking the Yo-Zuri shallow runner. I jumped up and grabbed the rod and fought the fish up to the boat. He took a dive and I held him, and the second time he came up he turned hard and dove and the lure popped off. This was the second fish to pop off today for me. My dad said my drag was set to tight and I agree. I am always learning. The fish was definitely over 10 lbs, of course there is no proof of that. You just have to take my word. J

We hit my favorite spot one more time since it was on the way home and caught one more, so we had three fish in the boat. All fish were caught in Shallow water in the 6 to 10 foot range. I found two more area’s that hold fish now, so this is good for future trips. This will just about do it for striper fishing for a while. This weekend we will be camping on a lake catching trout, and after that I am off to La Paz Mexico for 5 days of fly fishing for big game. Should be exciting.

Dave's Trophy Room

The two photos shown in this post came within a couple weeks of each other. Talk about some incredible luck. A 41 pound Salmon and an amazing 4 point buck.

It was late October 2004 when the 41lb Salmon was taken right around the time my daughter Alyssa was born or about to be born. The actual dates are a little fuzzy. I just remember having to plan carefully to avoid missing out on the birth of my daughter. I didn't want to be out to sea when my wife went into labor. In any case I managed to sneak out for a day.

We fished out north of the San Francisco Golden Gate Bridge in an area called Duxberry. It is commonly known to hold large salmon late in the season, so if you want to catch them big this is the place and the time to go. The odds of catching a 41 pounder is still very rare though. My previous record was around 24lbs, so this was a step up.

It was an amazing battle. Salmon have sharp pointed teeth and the longer the salmon is on the line the more likely those teeth will do harm to the line. Not to mention seals are known to come steal the salmon off of your line. This bruiser made us work for it. It was a three man effort to get this monster in the boat. One on the rod, another driving and a third with the net. The fish would circle the boat and it was a constant effort to keep the boat line up with him. I can remember seeing him come close several times teasing us only to turn away effortlessly leaving a trail of blood in its wake like sports car leaving rubber on the road. It is one of those moments that you never forget.

41 Pound Salmon


We waited to go hunting until after Alyssa was born. This kept the wife happy. :) We chose a D zone knowing we would want a short drive to get to the hunting grounds. We hunted what was probably the last weekend of the 2004 hunting season right after a big storm hit. We camped just below the snow level waited out the rain and walked out of camp in the late afternoon. I was nearing the end of a semi open ridge line and nearing the point at which I would want to turn around. I was able to walk fairly quickly and quietly as the ground was wet. There was some tall bushes that I was traversing through and as came around a bush a deer came into view about 60 yards down the ridge. At this point it's head was down. I remember thinking it must be a buck as I could see branches of a bush being rustled as he ate, but in the end I think it was just it's antler's. I had never seen antlers on a Ca black tail that big before accept maybe on someones wall or in pictures.

The gun came off my shoulder, safety switched off, and I aimed my Remington 247 all in one smooth motion. This wasn't my 1st time doing this. simultaneously the buck raised it's head and turned to stair at me. About the time he caught eyes with me I had him in my scope. It was over in a matter of a second or two. 2004 was by far my best season for trophy's. Most hunters are lucky to see any buck and a nice 4 point like this is rare. The timing was right and luck was on my side.