Today was a swell day (pun intended). Today, we had a private charter of 10 anglers who were ready to try their hand at a Rockfish/Dungeness crab combo trip. The weather started out pretty mellow and pulling crab pots was the first order of business. The pots were coming up with 2-4 crabs each for the most part. 2 pots went missing and a couple were empty which, fortunately were offset by the fact that a couple of the pots had 5 or 6. We had several, several small crabs that we had to throw back, but that’s not a bad thing as it means later in the season they will be around and ready for harvesting. We ended up with 40 crabs in total.
Okay, on to the rod and reel portion. Fishing was on the slower side again as the pyrozome invasion continues and the water stays on the cooler side. Unfortunately 5 of our 10 anglers were down for the count because of the big blue rollers we had coming in on us at a steady pace. The wounded soldiers were optimistic for the rest of the fishers who were determined to get their fish. We found some fish that were willing to help us out a bit in Carmel bay. The remaining anglers (5) caught 53 fish before the consensus was to pull the plug on the trip. The downed anglers were happy to head home and the anglers that stuck with it were proud of their catch.
-Captain Danny Frank for the New Horizon