Name These Fish!
Written by Eric Keener
June 24, 2019
What an excellent weekend! Spent all Saturday filming at the aquarium on a segment being produced about handicapped kids getting to "Scuba dive" in the aquarium tide pool then got to go on a date (just the two) for the first time since Squiggles was born almost five months ago! On Sunday, I had a super short window after church to dive, clean fish, make ceviche and show up to a potluck at 4pm. I knew huge fish probably weren't in my cards and I needed enough meat to make a hefty portion of ceviche. I typically only take two to three fish on a given dive, but knew I'd have to go for more today, especially if I didn't find any lunkers. So I decided to charge a local spot instead of going down to Sur. Been a while since I dove it, mainly because of how far of a surface swim it is and how deep you have to go to hit bottom, but I'm REALLY glad I did.
First, as I was pulling up, there was another dude solo diving. Since I was short on time and I prefer to always dive with buddy for safety, I asked what his plan for diving was (comfortable hunting depth, time frame, etc.). He wasn't familiar with the area and was keen on buddy diving, so I pointed us out to sea and we were greeted with decent sized rollers and pretty poor visibility. Not a problem! Where we were diving was super fishy. My carbon fins were being cleaned and re-glued so I broke out my plastics and man I forgot how hard you have to kick with those things! (If you’re kicking plastics right now and want carbons, hit me up! Fin + Forage is planning a raffle of our custom line of DiveR carbon fins!). Carbon fins are life changing—or at least dive changing, as you use so much less energy to get down and hunt.
The surface swim alone was pretty tiring. My very first drop after catching my breath, I dove down, couldn't see, couldn't see, couldn't see then finally some structure started to appear. I landed right on a nice little crack and at the bottom was an unmistakable fish! One I had hoped to see, but had not yet seen in the wild - (the stripy one near the reel) but I won’t give away the name because you have to guess it! I did what any reasonable, sustainably minded (hungry) diver would do, and shot it in the face. Then a rather admirably sized olive was swimming in a school of blues - sleepy time for him. A rather poorly camouflaged cabezon was sitting out on top of a couple rocks, so with full lungs, I de-cocked one of the bands, and gave him the night-night spear. Next, a curious kelpie basically swam up to me and put itself on the spear. The last fish, was the unfortunate one. I can't be the only one who dives into a school of blues, takes his sweet time finding the biggest one on the outskirts of the school (where the big ones like to hang out), and shoots it only to discover it's actually pretty small. Darn optical illusions. Still, look how blue it is! Beautiful stringer.
It was about that time that I knew I needed to head in, so I swim over to my new buddy Joe (knowing he wanted to find his first CA Sheephead) to inform him that we're actually on pretty good structure (lots of tall pinnacles and kelp) for his target, so keep an eye out. Right as I get up to him he starts hollering about shooting a sheephead but it was stuck in a cave on the bottom! I swam down, dislodged it for him and he reeled up an admirable female. He hollered even louder when he saw the size. It was probably in the 10 - 12 pound range (24"). The wind was strong, the visibility was bad, and the waves were building, so we called it and went back in.
I was four for five on stone shots and came home with a rainbow of a stringer! Quickly cleaned the fish, blanched them, chopped a ton of veggies for ceviche, jumped in the shower, helped the wife get Squiggle-Bum Monkey Child ready, and off we went to a great evening of food and community.
What a weekend!
I try not to spot burn the only 1/2 way decent dive spot near my house, so I tried to take the photo in hopes you don't recognize any landmarks. haha!