Thread: Challengers Angling Club – Truline – 4/18/09

We arrived on Friday night to find the docks at 22nd Street Landing heavily under construction. They needed it, but it was a bit of a mess. The Truline was tied to a dock section, and several sections lashed together with ropes. Capt. Jon Watanabe was there waiting for us, and gave us the option of boarding at our own risk (it really wasn’t THAT bad…) or waiting and they’d move the boat up a dock right next to the landing office… after the Freedom docked and unloaded. We all opted to just go for it, and the crew pretty much escorted us, under poor lighting, across the docks and onto the boat with no incidents.

Waiting for us on board was a half ham and sliced cheeses with rolls. Darn! I ate before I got there. It sure looked good, though, and I remember them having chicken wings and other snacks for departures on other trips.

I was also quite thrilled to see Capt. Jeff Jessup would be our second captain, and Manny, also from the Outrider, would be in the galley and helping on deck! AND three more deck hands as well. We were certainly going to be well taken care of!

We left the dock a little before 9:00PM. A quick stop at the bait docks for some huge sardines and we headed for Catalina to meet a light boat for squid, and after that headed for San Clemente Island. When I heard the anchor drop I was up and on deck, soaking squid on a headhead in Pyramid Cove by the kelp line. We had 57 degrees and no current, with a lot of seals. Three of the guys managed to hookups seals, I landed and released a few nice calicos, and really got frustrated with that as it became harder and hard to get the bass back in the water without the seals grabbing them. At gray light one of the guys hooked a bat ray, and then the perch started attacking everything that hit the water.

So we headed out for some rockfish, but still no current, and no wind. So no drift to speak of. We caught some whitefish and small rockfish, but that was about it. The weather all day was beautiful and flat calm conditions, and everyone had a good time. Most of them this was their first trip since late summer or fall, so everyone was just happy to be out. Jon made a batch of fried rice for breakfast that was to DIE for! I had that with a couple of eggs over easy on top. And of course a cheeseburger for lunch.

Well… Some days you get ‘em, and some days you don’t. It certainly wasn’t for lack of trying on the crew’s part. Our total was only 180 fish, and 45 were blue perch. We caught a few starrys, chuckles, whitefish, treefish, 7 sculpin, small soles, 16 sheephead, and 9 calicos (and at least several more of them released, too). The Jackpot was caught by Joey Davis, son of Joe Davis, with a 5# sheephead. My camera never even made it out of my backpack…

The Truline was very clean (as always) and in great shape. Jon did a lot of work in the bunk area this year over the winter. Thanks to Captains Jon and Jeff who did their best to put us on some fish, Manny in the galley (and on deck) and deckhands Chuck and Ethan (missed the other guy’s name).