Dolphins, Whales, and Sea Dragons
Written by Eric Keener
Oct. 14, 2019
Emmanuel, Giray, and I went on a full-scale mission carrying kayaks and gear up and down huge cliffs in Southern Big Sur on Saturday. Emmaunel slept in his van Friday night and was in the water 2.5 hours before Giray and I got out to him. My muscles are still barking at me two days later while I write this, but it was well worth it! We all got toads! We debated if we should participate in the Bring the Ling contest that was happening that weekend but decided to just have a blast down in Sur and not focus on competing (even though my two lings that got me first place last year probably didn’t weigh as much combined as the one I got on this trip). I’m really stoked we had such a great and exhausting trip! We dove for over 7 hours and have some great memories and fish to show for it. Emmanuel got the biggest ling, I got a nice ling with a fatty scallop and Giray pulled a 22" Cabezon. While out on the water on our yaks, we saw whales breaching, dolphins coming up right in front of the yaks, and lots of various schoolies.
The ocean was glassy, visibility was a milky 25'-30' and temp was around 54f. Emmanual and Giray are both excellent divers and it was a ton of fun doing some deeper drops at the first few spots and then moving into the shallows to hole hunt, which is where all the big fish were hanging out at. After I got my ling, I took a drop to about 25' and looked way back in a thin deep cave and saw what I thought was a nice pair of ling lips. I left my gun and asked if Giray wanted a ling. In his typical happy go lucky, ocean wild man fashion, I watched him go down to shoot it. He took the awkward shot and I saw him struggle for a moment. He came back up with the spear still in the cave. The "ling" had swam sideways and lodged itself behind another rock in the back of the cave. I dove down to assist him in the retrieval and literally had to stuff my whole upper body in the cave with my arm fully extended just to grab the shaft. It was pretty stuck. It took us 5 drops each before I finally just hulk-jiggled it out. Turned out to be a monster grassy. Giray was hooping and hollering - fully stoked - man, I love diving with that guy. While he was putting the fish on his stringer, I made a drop and bam, right out in the open, I found that grassy's older brother. Stoned him.
We had an absolute blast on the water. The only miserable part, outside of skipping lunch to keep diving, was getting the gear and yaks back up the mountain. It took us several trips and I was way beyond exhausted by the time I got the yak on the racks of my SUV. Thankfully, there was a cool hippie gal that was selling homemade ciabatta bread with toppings. I offered to share one of my blues with her and after putting it in her cooler, she was kind enough to give my buddies and I some ridiculously tasty bread. She was really stoked on the fish and the bread was great and so needed!
The last funny part of the story was driving home at sunset. I passed a big vista point with a lot of people taking selfies. I thought it would be funny to get a sunset pic with my fish (the one at the top of this story) so a 1/4mi later flipped a u-turn and pulled over in the pull out. I said to one cute couple that I'd take their picture if they took one of me with my significant other. They looked around for whoever I was with but then just handed me their phone to take a picture of them. I took a few, then they asked for my phone, and I said I’d be back in one moment, I need to go get my gal. I got a lot of laughs from onlookers when I pulled out the fish.
Good times, great people, quality fish! That’s what Fin + Forage is all about.