8/20/05 - kid's fishing day, 3 gigglers, 50 rockfish and 3 lings

[alantani]

prepped the boat friday night for another kid's fishing day live bait rockcod run out of hmb. i rousted my kid up at 3:30am , grabbed my stuff and went out to pull the boat cover. i heard giggling in the car. the three girls were already in the car, rarin' to go....



so we're on the road at 4am, on schedule, we launched out of hmb at 4:50am in just 5 minutes, just minutes ahead of a huge crowd, grabbed a scoop of beautiful bait, headed out of the jaws under cover of darkness. by 6am, it's light and we're on station in 50 feet of water off pescadero, greeted by this....



were were in 60 feet of water, but the fish were so thick that the fish finder thought we were in 8 feet of water. i got out 13 year old neighbor's line into the water, and before i could get my daughter's rigged, she had a fish on. this 13 year old actually caught three before the other two girls had their first. we had quite a variety if sea creatures come up. my daughter caught her first squid....



jeff, the dad from next door, caught his first star fish....



lynna, the 13 year old, kept on catching fish after fish after fish....



and sandra, the 15 year old, just kept plugging along....



allison actually caught the biggest rock fish, a huge olive....



but the rest were average size. by 9:20am, we had out limit of 50 fish, which meant that i now had 50 fish to clean.



we motored back at half speed. this way i could clean them and the kid's sleeping on the bow wouldn't get beat up too badly. we still had a quarter scoop of bait, so we stopped at the ritz looking for halibut. the scope was empty, showing only flat bottom, but sandra scored first with a 28 inch ling...



allison scored next with a 25 inch ling, and poor lynna sat there doing nothing. i finally finished cleaning all the fish and hollered "reel em' up!" and then lynna got a bite. it pulled a couple of times like a rockfish, then that poor little reel started to sing. i pull the rod out of the holder for her and worked it out around the engine to the windward side of the boat. and the fight was on!



poor kid! a couple of times, she was ready to give up. it was like bringing up a rock, that would suddenly decide to strip out 10-15 feet of line just as she was making progress...



she finally worked it up to the surface, and i saw a HUGE ling cod that was hitchhiking on a 12 inch brown. she eased the ling into gaff range, just like a pro, i stuck him, he coughed up the brown who immediately spit the hook, and the brown was gone! when i hoisted that fish over the rail, you should have heard the screaming!!!!!!!!!



this ling tipped the scales at 19#'s. and here's the final shot of the crew with our last fish of the day!



just another kid's fishing day aboard the eddie's brother!