Fishing Trip Report!

I have so much exciting blog material this week, I had a really hard time choosing what story to present today! In the end, I decided to start with a quick fishing trip report, since I ended last week with a "I'm going fishing!" post...

On Saturday morning, I got up at the crack of dawn (6 AM) to get my butt down to my friends' place in San Jose, where another fellow novice fisher was staying over for the night. As soon as I got there, the four of us packed into our fearless leader's car to get down to Capitola.

'Fearless' is the perfect adjective for our leader, Ted, who drove and assisted two complete novice gals and his near-novice girlfriend (who had gone fishing only once before). Not only were we a bunch of novices needing a whole lot of hand-holding, but also the other two ladies had apparently stayed up 'til 1 AM the night before, getting sloshed and rowdy. Undeterred by the possibility of having to baby-sitting three girls (two of which could get sick any minute!), Ted arranged for our equipment, put weights and hooks onto all of our rods, drove the motor boat, and made sure all three of us caught something!


The water was generally calm with an almost metallic shimmer to it. Our boat sped along a little over a mile away from the shore before we settled on a spot. There was a peaceful quiet that settled in as we turned the motor off and let the ocean surround us as we sat in our wooden boat. I felt the hectic pace and accumulated stress from the week prior slowly release with the gentle rocking of the waves.

Although the day started out a little bit on the cloudy side, by 10 AM, the sky was blue and the sun was shining strong. There was a lot of laughing on our boat as it became evident that I was a master calamari fisher. You see, calamari was our bait, and somehow I managed to think I'd caught a fish when all I had after reeling in my line was... calamari. This ability to fish for calamari was contagious, and my friend also started fishing calamari a lot too! Sometimes, our calamari came back without its legs, which meant that the 'nibble, nibble' we felt actually were fish picking at our bait, but most of the time, we managed to fish completely intact calamari. I think I was confusing the movement of the weight bouncing with fish nibbling, but even when I actually felt the 'nibble, nibble', I couldn't translate it to actually catching the fish...

Luckily, I had started my day on the right track because Ted had given me my rod with a fish hooked on it already when he first prepared my rod for me! All I had to was reel it in, and as pathetically novice as I am at fishing, it's hard to fail at that!


Although I thoroughly enjoyed my absolutely lovely morning on the boat, sharing both laughter and meditative silence with my friends, I ended up with just this little guy - a rock cod - as my catch. Thankfully, my companions managed to score better, and we ended up with two different kinds of rock cods and seven king fish - more than enough catch to feed four adults!!


Ted, our fearless leader, continued to amaze us by driving us all back, while the three tired gals slept. And as we continued our naps back at his place, he cleaned and prepared the fish for dinner!!

Check back tomorrow to see what a feast we had!