October 9th, 2004

Deva and I went fishing over the Santa Cruz Reef. We rented one of the skiffs from the pier. Rough water. Really big swells coming in. Good surfing day at steamer lane. I was a bit nervous about it, but the other boats headed out there, so we went with.

Nice and sunny out.

Deva was dropping big lures over, and fairly quickly caught a rockfish. Kindof small, so it went back. Hopefully it did ok. Me, with leadcore and amnesia running line didn't do well out there.. line wouldn't sink, and I found casting difficult. Next time I'll have some 1oz sinkers with me to help it along, I think. Just in case :). We were drifting pretty fast. Deva got his line caught in the prop once, and we snagged some kelp in it another time. I'm glad he brought his serrated kitchen knife, so I didn't have to try using my leatherman knife on it. I don't think it would like saltwater much.

We stopped the motor, of course, when we got to a location we wanted to try. Sometimes I thought it was a little hard getting the thing started again, but we always succeeded. I think it flooded a couple of times, so it just had to sit for a minute, before trying again.

Having had enough out there, we headed in close to the wharf. I needed to pee, so I got dropped off at one of the landings (big sealion hanging out on that same landing too), did my errand, and back in the boat. We then fished in the calm area a little outside off the end of the pier, in front of the boardwalk. Whilst reeling in line, I felt a grab (wow) and caught a nice jack smelt. Cool. Felt a whole lot better now. First saltwater fish and first monterey bay fish on the flyrod. It took a chartreuese and white clouser minnow.

The other boaters apparently didn't do so well either. The guy at the dock commented that it was 'really rough' out there. Guess another day would have / will be better.