Sept 27th - Lobster opener

We did try our hand on the Opening day for Lobster. Did the Hoop Net thing. We got some good sized legals out near the Santa Monica pier breakwater. We did a easy method of dropping the anchor and letting the hoop nets down from the back of the boat. It worked. Not very easy to put down a lot of nets this way but I only had four nets. So it worked.

Having a bigger boat this is a better way to go I think. Not a likely to pick up a rope on the prop. The many boats I saw out there working the nets were smaller boats and skiffs (and Kayakers) with outboards mostly. They have more room between the prop and the line coming over the side I think.

We used chicken for bait. Zip tied the bait into the nets with an extra weight to help the center hoop with the bait to land strait. Worked OK. Got one crab, several fish and 5 lobsters. 3 shorts were returned to the sea. The two big legal lobsters were really nice sized.

Thomas was out there with us. Hunter C. and I did a lot of the pulling. It went OK. Even though the current and waves were kinda funny and hard on me. We called it early.

KL.

I ate my lobster with dinner the next night.

Labor Day weekend Cruise

Forgot to post about the family cruise to Catalina - Cat Harbor - for the Commodore's Cruise the weekend between the successful and the not as successful marlin trip. I. E. Labor Day Weekend 2008

We loaded up the family and towed the JetSki over to the Island. Nice weekend. Good fun.

I wanted to troll some marlin lures out near the west end but the prospect of dealing with the jetski as you fight a marlin off the stern was way out there. Not a pretty picture. Had the makings for all sorts of disastrous outcomes. So logic won out.

Trish and the boys had a good weekend. We made some new friends and the boys did more snorkeling than usual. We even got more time in on the dance floor over at the Two Harbors bar and Reef rest.

Boat did well. Was able to make good headway even with the tow.

Team Ramblin’ in KHMT

King Harbor marlin Tournament. We searched far and wide but no marlin for team Ramblin. Did get a very nice Tuna. And had a interesting close encounter when an Orca charged in our lure pattern out at the Mackerel Bank! Was he chasing the EAL (beeper) lure or was he chasing the fish that was about to hit our lure?

Trip Review… Team of Keith, Gary D., Steve L., Derral P.

Thursday: Traveled to San Pedro and picked up 4th team member Steve. Topped off with fuel and headed to Catalina West End and hoping to maybe do a little explore northwest of the island. After a bit of running into the head swell and head on to the wind it become apparent that the day would be over before reaching the fish grounds so we headed to Cat Harbor for a god nights rest. At Cat we decided to go in to Two Harbors for dinner. After messing around with the mooring and inflating the dinghy etc. we just made it. They almost closed.

Friday: Day one of the tournament… Fished north and west of the island looking for the warm water that was holding fish (marlin) just a week or two before. No luck on the 172 and kept going all the way up to the 175 above and inside SBI. Then started coming back down towards Catalina and the inside warmer water. We looked at a lot of paddies but found no life. So we were convinced that the fish were way south. And the chatter on the radio indicated that was the case. We held a team meeting and decided to make a big run that would need a little extra fuel and a big shift in fishing grounds. The vote was to do it. We picked up our lures and ran for Avalon and took on an extra 50 gallons of diesel fuel (we shared the cost equally) then ran south of the island to the hot area in the vicinity of The Mackerel Bank.

Once there we found life and paddies holding bait and tuna and Really Really Really big seas. Big rough water was a little bit of a problem. But we managed to hold on and really batten down the hatches etc. and pull it off. Gary Downie did land a beautiful yellowfin tuna.

And we saw whales. And we had a very interesting experience of a Orca following the boat. Right in the lures! I was calling for the beeper lure to be reeled in so that he would not bite that expensive one. He may have been up to see that lure or to eat the fish that were about to eat our lures. Wow that was an exciting moment. It was big and right behind the boat. Shortly as we neared the end of the fishing day we headed to safe harbor down at San Clemente Island at a anchorage called Pyramid Cove. It was a sweet anchorage and flat water. We chow’ed down on a very nice dinner (lasagna) and rested up for another day of hard fishing. The sky was clear with lots of stars and the milky way showing clearly. Out that far from land the sky was simply amazing.

Saturday: Day two of the tournament… As we came out of the lee of San Clemente we again experienced some rough water and returned to trolling speeds. We worked out into good fishy grounds. Eventually we were with other big sportboats that were playing the ‘Run and Gun` with a big pod of porpoise that feeding. A sport boat out of Dana Point that was able to toss lots of live bait. And even then they were having a very hard time to get the tuna to rise up and bite. Another large private boat was there working the same school called the Gamb ler. They too could throw more bait than we could and were also not having good luck. We trolled our lures in front of the porpoise and holed that the tuna would bite. Eventually we gave up and went back to marlin hunting. Shortly we found ourselves at the 277. We found the boat “Exta Sea” from the King Harbor Marlin Club (who was the top boat in the tournament) so we were confident that we had covered the marlin areas thoroughly. Unfortunately we did not cross paths with a marlin. We searched hard with Binoculars and fished up to the last minute.
Back in Avalon we took up a nice mooring in the Descanso Beach area outside Avalon. Inflating the dinghy went much better and we were able to go shower on shore then return to ch ange and relax. Then we went in to the awards party at The Landing with the rest of the KHMT teams.

Darrel and Gary were lucky in the raffles so we did not come away empty handed.


Sunday: We were fishing again by 8 something and worked close in for bait with no luck. Then when moving on to the Avalon Bank we found lots of bait under kelp paddies. Saw more fins but only of sharks and mola-mola. We trolled for marlin and eventually turned for San Pedro to refuel and head home.

We did everything we could but the marlin were found by the other guys. All in all it was a great trip as we had a lot of fun. Next time we will get a fish or two and take home a trophy.

Photo at San Pedro...
Keith, Steven, Darrel, Gary

Keith L. -<”><
MV Ramblin’

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