Fishing around Diablo Canyon

Last week, Kohei invited Chris and I to go fishing off of the coast of Avila for 3 days. The conditions are very different from Southern California, as the winds and waves make anything other than fishing in the morning prohibitive.

The place is an ecological gem off the coast of California, and the fishing is unrivaled in terms of size and number of rockfish that you can catch. A professor at UCSB told me of the phenomenal fishing to be found here when I was an undergrad, and I finally got to check it out for myself.

The first day, we used nothing other than Sabiki rigs, and used the smaller fish that we caught for bait with quick results. We released all of the other fish that we caught that day.

The second day, we caught 2 ling cod and over 30 rock fish between the three of us, off the coast of the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant. You aren't allowed to get within a mile of the facility, so with this in mind we fished its perimeter with great results. The lingcod and many of our larger rockfish were caught by yo-yo'ing blue and white candybar jigs off of the rocky bottom. The rest of the rockfish, and a Cabazon, were caught by using bait that was, itself, caught off of Sabiki rigs.

This is the first Ling Cod we got. It was too small, so we tossed it back.

Ling Cods look like giant mutsugoro, but taste much better!

This is Kohei's Ling, which required the use of a gaff to land. It was not so lucky as the first one, and made for a delicious dinner along with the other rockfish that we kept. It had a nasty chomp mark on its flank, likely left by a bigger one. This is one fish whose mouth you don't want to stick your fingers in.

This is Chris' ferocious trout from Lake Lopez, on a trip we took the following day. Sweet!

Kohei filleted these suckers in record time, and attracted a medium size crowd in the process. The de-filleted carcasses were quickly snatched up by rival flocks of gulls and pelicans, as well as a sea lion. They started out noisy as all heck, and by the end they were silent, each animal content with their abundance of good fortune. We ended up with well over 20 pounds of fillets!

A view down the mouths of the Ling and a Rock Cod. The rock cods seemed to be eating a lot of juvenile decorator crabs, judging from the stuff that they regurgitated onto the deck.