I enjoyed a fun series of trips out to sea over the weekend, and after a night’s rest, my most sore spots are my cheeks from smiling so much.
Thanks to calm air and a placid sea, the trips were comfortable, and it was a joy to be at sea catching dinner and enjoying our amazing coastal views.
The first trip was Friday evening, with a good friend on his yacht with a few colleagues. The goal was to do some hooping for lobster, and we got a few of the scrumptious critters. It is fun to watch them crawl and then scoot underwater by flapping their tails. They scoot surprisingly fast, as any diver can tell you who catches them underwater with his or her hands.
We headed for Goleta Bay and set some baited hoops along the rock covered pipeline near the fabled Goleta Pier. We stayed a respectable distance from the end of the pier where a group of teenagers were night fishing for thresher shark. Goleta Pier has a reputation as a top-notch thresher shark fishery and threshers taste great.
While giving the hoops about an hour and a half to soak (hoops must be checked at least every two hours), we motored across Goleta Bay and tried some shallow water fishing among shallow reefs and kelp stands. That area is in serious need of a kelp restoration project and the one I believe in is the Fish Reef Project Goleta Bay Kelp Restoration proposal, which needs funding for permitting and construction.
After pulling the hoops, we headed back to Santa Barbara Harbor for the night. At dawn the next morning we headed up coast, armed with a bag of breakfast burritos and pastries, plus a tackle box full of fishing gear from Hook, Line & Sinker fishing center on Calle Real in Santa Barbara. I know some magical fishing spots up off Hollister Ranch and those spots did not disappoint.
It only took a few hours of drift-fishing over rocky reefs to reel up limits of dinner table delights such as red snapper (vermilion rockfish), copper rockfish, olive rockfish, and various other red rockfish and brown rockfish, plus several lingcod.
Once we had our limits of rockfish, we began a leisurely cruise back down the coast while we filleted our catch and packaged it up for either the dinner table that night or for the freezer and consumption over the next couple of weeks.
Well into October, the summer crowds of boaters are way down, and it seemed for most of the day like we had the sea to ourselves. Nice to have plenty of elbow room out there, yet when another boat was nearby, there was plenty of good spirit for smiles and waves. All-in-all, it was a memorable couple of trips, and I can’t think of a more fun way to spend an autumn weekend.
— Capt. David Bacon operates WaveWalker Charters and is president of SOFTIN Inc., a nonprofit organization providing seafaring opportunities for those in need. Visit softininc.blogspot.com to learn more about the organization and how you can help. Click here to read previous columns. The opinions expressed are his own.
