BarbaryCoast Newsletter

page 3

Winter Dive by Mike Walsh

Hey gang,
I'm doing cartwheels today after coming back from a great day in Carmel. My elation is due the great weather we had with no wind, bright sun, 30' vis, plenty of fish, but most of all, due to outgunning Brian the Great for the first time in my career. We launched from Stillwater around 11 AM, after running into Gene Kramer and Curt Haney in the parking lot. We paddled over to the Arrowhead area and jumped in I dove closer to shore and Brian dove a little farther out. After a few minutes in the water I spotted some dumb bass from the surface in a large open hole. I dove down and shot and grazed one of them. Didn't get him, but the commotion attracted a ling who looked at the fish, looked at my spear, looked at me, and decided this would be great place to settle down on a ledge and wait for some more action. I watched him from the surface as I reloaded, then dove down and provided the next bit of action by sending my spear through the top of his head. With him on my stringer I continued to look and in a few minutes I got a couple of rockfish and another ling. Right about then Brian swam over and asked me if I had seen anything. I replied casually that I got a couple of lings. He said something like: "Oh yeah, sure..." and I invited him to go check out my stringer. "What??? You're outgunning me already???" Aaaah, that felt good! Last time Brian and I dove was in Linda Mar, and there we were right next to each other for a couple hours and he had two lings

and I had not even seen anything worth shooting. I filled up my stringer with a few more rockfish and proceeded to head in as Brian and Gene went to check out one more spot. Brian did finally manage to get one good size ling as Gene did. Curt got two big lings, one of them a real fat monster, at least 15 lbs, I guess. All in all, it was a great day. We all came out with plenty of fish and had a great time.

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updated 1/15/04