Went out near the Farallon Islands thanks to Skunk to do a little rockfishing. It was raining & sprinkling slightly in the morning on land, but the weather was considerably nice out at sea. Skunk caught his limit early in the trip, I caught my limit too, but had 2 small dinky ones which I replaced with skunk's extras that he had caught. The only catch worth mentioning for me was the vermilion rockfish I caught, which people claim that it tastes better than than others ones, not to mention it was a fatty. Skunk lost a couple fatties as well. The biggest I hooked were 2 seals or sea lions that took my whole rig including the 1lb weight... Hopefully they were able to ditch the hook and weight. Overall, it was a great day at sea.

nice BangBang........have some fish fry and enjoy the Giants game tonight.

Yeah it was a great trip. The weather had me nervous but we got some sunshine. I limited out real early and ended up with a total count of 22. Gave the rest away. Bangers didn't listen to me and hung out next to some old dude who kept snagging his line every 5 minutes. That dude handicapped his fishing pretty hard.

It's not really "fishing" in the sense that the party boat (New Salmon Queen out of Emeryville Sportfishing) has all kinds of radar and sonar and Cap. Shim yells "ok, huge patch here, 20 feet off the bottom" but it's still lots of fun.

I can't wait for next season to start. If you guys get a chance, I recommend you try it sometime. My boy owns the New Salmon Queen but I hear good things out of a lot of those charter boats.

here's my biggest of the trip





someone on the boat from napa landed this brute. at least 15 lbs. rockfish grow really slow. the captain said this guy is (was) 40-45 years old!

hahaha...skunk, why you post only your super dink?

but yea, that last picture, that fish was a beast.

Rockfishin is so much fun when you hit those patches. The fishfinder screen looks like ants on a piece of candy, it's nuts.

I went out with a friend earlier in the year and we landed 32 between four of us. It was pandemonium at times. I can't wait to do it again.

Looks like you guys had a great day though. Those are some nice fish, and they taste great too!

oh man they taste awesome!

lots of people make chips out of them but i prefer steaming them whole. the meat around the bones is the best.

my boy's boat has radar, sonar, all this crap he uses for tuna fishing. it's easy peezy once he gets over a patch.

where'd you go out joe? farallons? santa cruz?

We went out of Santa Cruz. In hindsight, it was one of the dumber things in life I was willing to do, but brilliant in the end.

My buddy I grew up with bought this old 70's Fabuglas boat for like $900, and he, his brothers, and I decided it would be wise to take it out in the ocean for it's first journey with us. Shotty fiberglass patches and all.

I don't think we ever had to make it further than 3 miles out the fishing was so good where we were. Everytime we'd move th boat we'd end up on a school.

i didn't take an inventory pic like bangers but here's the haul all cleaned up

6 whole


4 filleted

I usually filet em, and bread and fry em.

So what'd the trip cost? And what gear did you use out there?

I have a surf rod I used, but it really jyst ripped em out of the water without any fight at all. Don't get me wrong, it was still awesome, but it's that extra fight that's exciting.

We used rental gear out there, cheap heavy duty baitcasting setups. I wasn't sure if any of my gear can handle the 1lb weight + having to pull the fish up as I had a spinning setup with 20lb line on it so I just went with their rental. Not to mention, we were fishing in deep areas where a spinning setup wouldn't have been ideal when trying to find the bottom.

But yea, not much a fight on these fish as they come up practically dead from getting pulled up too quickly.

I had a ten foot surf with a spincast spooled with 20lb. test. We used three -5 ounce balls depending on the current, with shrimp fly rigs loaded with squid. I had no porblems feeling out the bottom or bringing the fish up.

i think the trip's $85 per person, plus a $10 rod rental (if necessary), and a $2 burlap sack (to keep your catch in as you fish). lucky for me i know the owner of the boat and he hooked me up after a trade we made on some saltwater reefing equipment.

you could use a surf rod. we were using 1 lb weights on a bottom rig so there wasn't much of a fight either (other than that slam we got when sea lions stole our catch). since they're 120-200 feet off the bottom the rocks get decompression issues and are typically toast by the time they surface. shrimp flies and squid were key for us too.

good to know your setup worked joe. i like lighter gear as well. next season i'm going to play around with some diamond jigs for the lingcod. we saw someone using the shimano lucanus jigs last time we were out with no success but it was rough that day. from what i read online, they're very successful.