Trophy Abalone Mission

Wife and kids were out of town for the weekend and I wanted to dive so sent some buddies a text to see what they were up to.

My buddy Charlie wrote back “Abs on Sunday. Secret spot. Come up.”

: )

Left the house at 4am with Joe who had just got back from his Dad’s funeral in Guam and was in need of some water therapy.

We met up with Charlie, Adam and Matt and loaded the yaks on Wheelez and set off towards shore…

This was the roughest terrain I have used my Wheelez on yet and they did great!! Through a thick forest, down steep rocky slopes, across rough bouldery terrain, uphill, and finally over the sand to the waters edge.

Launched my Cuda14 out through the surf with no problem and paddled out to sea under majestic cliffs and bluffs…one of the prettiest stretches of coastline I have ever paddled along!

Once we started diving in the right area we found good structure and a lot of BIG abs! Within 5 minutes I had a little cabbie on the stringer and a 9+ inch ab in the goodie bag.

Dropped down in about 15 feet of water and saw a BIG abalone up under a little overhang…left my gun to mark it and went up to make sure my GoPro was on.

Went down and gauged it and it was easily over 10 and it popped off nice and easy.

Calipered out to 10 5/8 and my biggest ab so far!! Stoked!!

Right after I finish putting the 10 in my goodie bag I see Adam raise an ab over his head and know he has gotten one as well! Adam is an outstanding abalone diver and gets THREE tens by the end of the day!

I keep hunting and manage to take some decent Black Rockfish (up to 18 inches) and then find another nice looking ab at the base of a big boulder. This one is harder to gauge but when I wrap the gauge around the back I can just feel it click so go ahead and pop it.

At the surface it is close, but it definitely clicks and is my second ten of the day, and my third one ever!

We move spots and I am looking for some more big black rockfish for DOTY and since Charlie has managed to spear multiple blacks over 20 inches already…but I can’t seem to get my fish mojo working and have to settle for a chunky 27/28 inch Ling.

Joe and I are feeling tired so we head back in and Matt paddles in with us…along the way I see some guys fishing off the rocks and hooting and hollering cuz they caught a fish. While I looking up at them I paddled right over a barely submerged wash rock…and right then a wave comes DOH!

Try and hang on while the wave breaks on the boiler but end up going in. No worries, flip the Cuda back over and jump in super fast and paddle away. Only thing that came off kayak was my bottle of gatorade and I just paddled over and picked it up. Humbling taking a spill, but good to know that I can flip yak and jump in nice and easy and very fast. : )

The landing went very smoothly..the hike back out pulling the yaks (now loaded with abs and fish) on wheels was pretty brutal but a good workout. ; p

Back at the car we had a few beers, took a few pics, shared some uni with a van full of lost enviromental educators and talked about what a fun time we had.

I ended up with two tens, Adam with three, Joe got one, Matt got a limit of 9.75s…and Charlie apparently is good at spearing fish but sucky at ab diving cuz he couldn’t find any. ; p

Here are a few pics and a vid:

Thanks for looking!

Sincerely,

Jim