B
Billamicasr
0
When we arrived at Charleston this morning the first thing I noticed was Tuna tails sticking up out of the garbage cans at the fish cleaning station. The clean up crew was there getting ready to load the carcasses in the Marina's boat to be dumped in the ocean for recycling. I asked about taking a couple and was invited to take them all. Took a few for crab bait, put the boat in the water and motored out about 1/4 mile from the jaws and placed all six pots in 40 to 45 foot of water.
for the next four hours we hit scattered rock piles in the 50 foot or less range for some shallow water rockfishing. Released several small lings (under 22") and kept 6 black rockfish and one very nice Cabezon.
When we pulled the pots after just a four hour soak we found ourselves not only collecting two limits of Dungeness, but being able to cull the smaller one for bigger ones with each of the pots pulled. I know crab love tuna parts but this was ridiculous; every one of the six pots had half a limit or more of big crab, not to mention at least 20 or so females and undersized crab... a banner day for sure.
I just got through processing my limit of crab and vacuum bagging a full 3 1/2 pounds of crab meat and that doesn't include the couple of crab I gave the neighbors.
Tomorrow is supposed to be an even better day ocean and weather wise than it was today and today was excellent. We will be at it again in the morning to see if tuna still brings in the crab, plus we've decided to go a bit deeper to see if we can find a couple of big lings... we'll see.
P.s. saw one Hobie Outback kayak about 1/2 mile offshore with a safety flag that had a happy face on it. Not sure if he was rockfishing or what, but looked very comfortable - now you know the ocean was pretty calm.
for the next four hours we hit scattered rock piles in the 50 foot or less range for some shallow water rockfishing. Released several small lings (under 22") and kept 6 black rockfish and one very nice Cabezon.
When we pulled the pots after just a four hour soak we found ourselves not only collecting two limits of Dungeness, but being able to cull the smaller one for bigger ones with each of the pots pulled. I know crab love tuna parts but this was ridiculous; every one of the six pots had half a limit or more of big crab, not to mention at least 20 or so females and undersized crab... a banner day for sure.
I just got through processing my limit of crab and vacuum bagging a full 3 1/2 pounds of crab meat and that doesn't include the couple of crab I gave the neighbors.
Tomorrow is supposed to be an even better day ocean and weather wise than it was today and today was excellent. We will be at it again in the morning to see if tuna still brings in the crab, plus we've decided to go a bit deeper to see if we can find a couple of big lings... we'll see.
P.s. saw one Hobie Outback kayak about 1/2 mile offshore with a safety flag that had a happy face on it. Not sure if he was rockfishing or what, but looked very comfortable - now you know the ocean was pretty calm.
