Personal best white seabass

Posted March 12th

We have had a lot of rain and windy weather over the last week, with the prime fishing days being washed out. Thursday was the first good window of opportunity. Based on the weather reports, it looked like the wind and swell had dropped off enough to be fishable. Well, the wind had calmed, but the surf at the launch was a little hairy. Not South Africa hairy, but hairy for us. I'm used to paddling out through gentle little ankle-slappers, not fast-period, thumping breakers. I have some sort of mental impairment that prevents me from identifying and timing sets, so this was quite a challenge. After watching two or three folks charge out ahead of me, I thought that I had the sets timed. I saw a gap and jumped onto the yak. Just as I started paddling, three close-stacked waves started to hump up out of nowhere. Nothing to do but grit my teeth and dig in. Three to the chest and now my yak seems really heavy. I'm just not moving very fast. One after another, I get pummeled by these beasts. Just when I think I'm clear, the big one rears up ahead of me. I can't get up enough speed to meet it before it breaks. Just as it reaches me, the lip curls over into a beautiful tube. I look up at it and cringe. Blam! The bow of my Stealth 14 cut cleanly into the face of the wave just as the curl dumped on my head. So much for my hopes of getting out dry. I popped out on the back side and I notice that my bow hatch is a little tweaked. I put the hammer down and got clear of the breakers before the next big one came through. Quite the roller coaster ride. As I moved away from shore I started to notice just how big the swells were. The depth readings on my FF were oscillating by 10ft as I rode from peak to trough. Fortunately, I stayed out long enough for the swell to die down.

The first three hours were unproductive and then I started to see some bird activity. I made the 2 mile paddle over to the birds to see what was shakin'. At first I thought that I had just wasted an hour of paddling. When I got to the birds, most of them were just sitting on the water. It looked like the bite had died out. There were no meter marks and no diving birds. After trolling through the birds for a while, I realized that they were just sitting on the water eating bait. There was an enormous amount of krill on the surface and the birds were just picking at them. Soon, the bait fish (Pacific chub mackerel) started rippling the surface; feeding on the krill. Still no meter marks on bigger predators. I trolled through about 5 miles of birds without seeing anything.

From The Overloaded Kayak Images

I made a wide, slow turn back to the north and came back in slightly shallower water (80'-90'). Jackpot. I started seeing meter marks everywhere; bait balls and strong arches. I trolled back through this very fishy area for over an hour with no success. I had a few baits taken, but nothing stuck.

From The Overloaded Kayak Images

A little after noon, the clicker on my port troll rod starts screaming. I put away my jig stick and got ready for the fight. I wanted to reel in my other trolled mac, but I was losing line on the other so fast I decided not to. The fish fought extremely hard and had me a little confused. It seemed to be stronger than the 75lb thresher shark that I had C&R a few days earlier, but I couldn't feel the tail beats. Eventually, it ended up in a vertical battle under the yak. I would take some line and the fish would head back down. It was a stalemate for while and then the fish began to tire. I quickly got it to the surface and saw a nice sized white sea bass. I gaffed it and dragged it onto my lap.

From The Overloaded Kayak Images

It was little too big to fit in the insulated fish bag.

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I did the 'happy paddle' in with this beast between my legs. I'm glad the surf had died down, as I might have had some difficulty landing with it in my lap.

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46.5lbs on the certified scale at OEX

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Lots of meat on this pig. The vacuum sealer was busy into the wee hours of the morning.

From The Overloaded Kayak Images