Extremely late report from my last trip to Avalon, conditions have likely changed since. This will also be long winded with some tangents on non-fishing related things, with fewer pictures than usual.
After graduating in June, this would be my last summer break (ever!), so what better to do than fish Avalon? I had only a short window of time, since I would be starting a summer job a week after commencement.
6/21
Hashem and I had planned to meet up at Avalon a month in advance, and of course I nearly blow it the morning of by nearly missing my 6 am ferry. I thankfully caught the boat, and we were off. Naturally, we started off at the Cabrillo Mole, and, with a brisk walk, managed to beat out the bonito hunters to a decent spot at the Mole. The conditions were beautiful, flat calm, with a light breeze at our backs, surely this was the start of a great day. I started off fishing the jig, for no luck, while the bonito hunters made a killing with the splasher. Taking the cue, I switched over and pulled one schoolie. The fishing for pelagics was slow and very intermittent, so I switched to fishing the float rig for little guys to kill time.
I had also come with an ulterior motive: catching some specimens to take back to Davis for a graduate student. The Swallow damselfishes (Azurina hirundo) that frequent the Mole had apparently been extirpated from their normal range in Mexico following a strong El Niño, leaving the ones at Catalina as the only known population. It also just so happens that as far as damselfishes go, they are very unusual, having many morphological adaptations for pelagic zooplanktivory. The graduate student in question is studying damselfish evolution and functional morphology, and while it's easy enough to get specimens of more typical damselfishes, getting your hands on a hyperendemic, possibly threatened temperate damselfish for CT scanning was a tall order. That is, until it turns out there's an easily accessible population right here in California. Why did I force you to read all of this? I have no idea, I think this research is compelling. Anyways, the swallow damsels were everywhere and weren't too hard to catch with a float rig as long as I could avoid the hordes of blacksmith, baby halfmoon, señorita, topsmelt, and amberstripe scad.
One of the swallow damsels. As plain as they are, I think they have a subtle beauty to them.
Throughout the day, I dropped live topsmelt and scad down by the pilings to tempt some of the calico and sheephead I had been seeing around. At one point, I saw a big sheephead circling my bait in the crystal clear water. It then suddenly rushed forward, grabbed the smelt by the tail, and ripped line off the clicker before dropping the bait. This played out a couple times with other unknown fishes, while Hashem had a similar experience fishing frozen crayfish for sheephead. At the same time, I also caught many just-short calico, with one 15" legal hopping on at 11 am.
The one legal calico caught during the day.
Fishing for little guys was pretty consistent all day, and while I saw some opaleye, especially later in the day, they were exceedingly hook shy, likely due to the clear water. I tried a few times to fish for whitefish, but only caught a few dinks or short sheephead. Every now and then the live baits I dropped by the pilings got eaten by small bass, and at one point, a big moray, which I could not have landed and safely unhooked without Hashem's gracious assistance and netting skills.
Big angry creature. Props to Hashem for the lip grippers
Bucket with a couple of scad and swallow damsels. I call this the "2015 El Niño Special".
The day wore on, and while some of the bonito hunters were able to catch a few sporadic fish on LC's, including a couple short barracuda, fishing was relatively slow. This all changed around 6 pm. I tried flylining some amberstripe scad around the kelp line with a relatively light setup to see what was around, and immediately got crushed by another 15" calico. I caught two more calico ranging from 14.5"-16" in rapid succession. Again, kudos to Hashem for coming in clutch with the net job and for allowing me to store fish in his seal-proof bucket since I had forgotten to buy ice in the morning.
The first day's catch.
Being a wimp, I retired to my hotel room at 11 pm while Hashem braved the chill out on the Mole alone.
6/22
I woke up at the crack of dawn and got out to the Mole by 5 am. The forecast looked rough today, with high winds forecasted around 12 pm. Not wanting to waste a minute, Hashem and I started throwing the splasher as the sun came up, with no luck for many hours. In between fishing for bonito, I continued to fish for whatever little critters were around, and caught my one and only garibaldi of the trip.
Perhaps the ones I only saw as enemies were, in fact, my closest friends.
The timeline gets a bit hazy, but at around 9-10 am, I finally hook up on some bonito on the splasher. I caught three schoolies in rapid succession, while Hashem is haunted by the Bonito Blues once more. After this short burst of activity, fishing remained pretty slow the rest of the day, with me continuing to catch lots of goobers to kill time in between casts for pelagics. At 12:30, the LC I was throwing got absolutely crushed by a big fish. After a harrowing fight that brought me too close to the pilings for comfort, it was deftly landed with Hashem's immaculate netting skills (are you seeing a theme yet?)
This "jumbo" (as the bonito hunters would call it) taped out to 24". Don't mind the hat.
The weatherman LIED to us, the wind didn't truly start up until around 4 pm, and even then it wasn't nearly as terrible as I thought it would be. Unfortunately, it was still windy enough to prevent me from catching and flylining live baits, so I began packing up. I continued to throw the LC, the wind at my back giving me some much needed extra distance. At 6 pm, I got another very good bite on the LC, which turned out to be a slightly less "jumbo" 20" bonito. I packed everything up by 7pm to catch the 7:30 boat home.
The second day's catch.
On a more personal note:
This was an epic two days of fishing, in no small part due to Hashem's preparedness for every possible situation and his inexhaustible wellspring of knowledge and generosity. Thank you forever for the assistance and the many enlightening and entertaining conversations we had out there. I am glad to have closed out my time as a college student with a bang, and will definitely miss the many days I have spent out on the Mole.
After graduating in June, this would be my last summer break (ever!), so what better to do than fish Avalon? I had only a short window of time, since I would be starting a summer job a week after commencement.
6/21
Hashem and I had planned to meet up at Avalon a month in advance, and of course I nearly blow it the morning of by nearly missing my 6 am ferry. I thankfully caught the boat, and we were off. Naturally, we started off at the Cabrillo Mole, and, with a brisk walk, managed to beat out the bonito hunters to a decent spot at the Mole. The conditions were beautiful, flat calm, with a light breeze at our backs, surely this was the start of a great day. I started off fishing the jig, for no luck, while the bonito hunters made a killing with the splasher. Taking the cue, I switched over and pulled one schoolie. The fishing for pelagics was slow and very intermittent, so I switched to fishing the float rig for little guys to kill time.
I had also come with an ulterior motive: catching some specimens to take back to Davis for a graduate student. The Swallow damselfishes (Azurina hirundo) that frequent the Mole had apparently been extirpated from their normal range in Mexico following a strong El Niño, leaving the ones at Catalina as the only known population. It also just so happens that as far as damselfishes go, they are very unusual, having many morphological adaptations for pelagic zooplanktivory. The graduate student in question is studying damselfish evolution and functional morphology, and while it's easy enough to get specimens of more typical damselfishes, getting your hands on a hyperendemic, possibly threatened temperate damselfish for CT scanning was a tall order. That is, until it turns out there's an easily accessible population right here in California. Why did I force you to read all of this? I have no idea, I think this research is compelling. Anyways, the swallow damsels were everywhere and weren't too hard to catch with a float rig as long as I could avoid the hordes of blacksmith, baby halfmoon, señorita, topsmelt, and amberstripe scad.
One of the swallow damsels. As plain as they are, I think they have a subtle beauty to them.
Throughout the day, I dropped live topsmelt and scad down by the pilings to tempt some of the calico and sheephead I had been seeing around. At one point, I saw a big sheephead circling my bait in the crystal clear water. It then suddenly rushed forward, grabbed the smelt by the tail, and ripped line off the clicker before dropping the bait. This played out a couple times with other unknown fishes, while Hashem had a similar experience fishing frozen crayfish for sheephead. At the same time, I also caught many just-short calico, with one 15" legal hopping on at 11 am.
The one legal calico caught during the day.
Fishing for little guys was pretty consistent all day, and while I saw some opaleye, especially later in the day, they were exceedingly hook shy, likely due to the clear water. I tried a few times to fish for whitefish, but only caught a few dinks or short sheephead. Every now and then the live baits I dropped by the pilings got eaten by small bass, and at one point, a big moray, which I could not have landed and safely unhooked without Hashem's gracious assistance and netting skills.
Big angry creature. Props to Hashem for the lip grippers
Bucket with a couple of scad and swallow damsels. I call this the "2015 El Niño Special".
The day wore on, and while some of the bonito hunters were able to catch a few sporadic fish on LC's, including a couple short barracuda, fishing was relatively slow. This all changed around 6 pm. I tried flylining some amberstripe scad around the kelp line with a relatively light setup to see what was around, and immediately got crushed by another 15" calico. I caught two more calico ranging from 14.5"-16" in rapid succession. Again, kudos to Hashem for coming in clutch with the net job and for allowing me to store fish in his seal-proof bucket since I had forgotten to buy ice in the morning.
The first day's catch.
Being a wimp, I retired to my hotel room at 11 pm while Hashem braved the chill out on the Mole alone.
6/22
I woke up at the crack of dawn and got out to the Mole by 5 am. The forecast looked rough today, with high winds forecasted around 12 pm. Not wanting to waste a minute, Hashem and I started throwing the splasher as the sun came up, with no luck for many hours. In between fishing for bonito, I continued to fish for whatever little critters were around, and caught my one and only garibaldi of the trip.
Perhaps the ones I only saw as enemies were, in fact, my closest friends.
The timeline gets a bit hazy, but at around 9-10 am, I finally hook up on some bonito on the splasher. I caught three schoolies in rapid succession, while Hashem is haunted by the Bonito Blues once more. After this short burst of activity, fishing remained pretty slow the rest of the day, with me continuing to catch lots of goobers to kill time in between casts for pelagics. At 12:30, the LC I was throwing got absolutely crushed by a big fish. After a harrowing fight that brought me too close to the pilings for comfort, it was deftly landed with Hashem's immaculate netting skills (are you seeing a theme yet?)
This "jumbo" (as the bonito hunters would call it) taped out to 24". Don't mind the hat.
The weatherman LIED to us, the wind didn't truly start up until around 4 pm, and even then it wasn't nearly as terrible as I thought it would be. Unfortunately, it was still windy enough to prevent me from catching and flylining live baits, so I began packing up. I continued to throw the LC, the wind at my back giving me some much needed extra distance. At 6 pm, I got another very good bite on the LC, which turned out to be a slightly less "jumbo" 20" bonito. I packed everything up by 7pm to catch the 7:30 boat home.
The second day's catch.
On a more personal note:
This was an epic two days of fishing, in no small part due to Hashem's preparedness for every possible situation and his inexhaustible wellspring of knowledge and generosity. Thank you forever for the assistance and the many enlightening and entertaining conversations we had out there. I am glad to have closed out my time as a college student with a bang, and will definitely miss the many days I have spent out on the Mole.
