Kayak Fishing in Monterey  -  May 19th, 2008 2:16pm

I figured that if I was going to go through all the effort to fly to Santa Cruz and stay for a wedding I might as well get some fishing in too.  After checking out my options for small boats/guides (I'm not into cattle boats) I decided to go Kayak fishing with Alan Bushnell

Unfortunately, Alan's bones - particularly the ones in his left arm had a moment of weakness and failed during an attempt to skateboard.  Alan however is quite the guy and went out of his way to arrange for some friends of his to take me fishing free of charge loaning them equipment for me and even giving them bait and rigging a tackle box up.

So it was without Alan that 5 of us set out at about 6:30 Saturday morning in Monterey bay.  The surf was really small and it was refreshing to launch in 1-2ft waves as I usually had to contend with much worse in San Diego.  The water however was much colder than what I was used to.  We all had on wetsuits, booties and jackets to keep us warm even though it was almost hot on the beach.

I can't say the fishing was good but I saw some pretty great stuff.  After getting jelly-armed kayaking into the middle of the bay, we fished and rested for a bit when the humpback whales moved in.  Sitting in a Kayak a hundred feet from a living creature the size of a circle K is a humbling experience.  Just hearing them breath and breach was stunning.  Honestly though had we seen the whales later that day I wouldn't have been so quick to paddle up to them.

We kept moving along around the bay fishing for Ling's and rockfish at various rock piles.  It was really peaceful and at one point we were all just sitting in a big circle talking and waiting to get bit when a sea-lion burst up through the middle of the group just like a dolphin.  It scared the crap out of me as I didn't know what it was at first.  It dove back down and we all just kind of looked at each other laughing.  A few seconds later though, that same sea-lion came roaring out again and tried to beach itself on one of the guys Kayaks.  I really didn't know what to think this time and sat there stunned as he fought this sea-lion that was hell bent on trying to dislodge him from the boat.  It was almost laughable as he was punching the thing in the face and neck but the animal was really going at him and tried to bite him over and over.

Finally after really pimp slapping the thing with the butt of his rod both the kayaker and the sea-lion fell off the boat.  None of us could believe what we had just witnessed, but before things could calm down someone yelled out that "it" was probably trying to get away from a shark.  Apparently there are great whites in the area there so this freaked the guy out all over again and he almost dumped all his gear off the kayak scrambing to get out of the water.  I didn't know whether to help or die laughing.

Once he got back in the boat, we were all laughing.  No one got hurt, and I finally managed to catch a couple of rockfish off of the kelp before we paddled back in.  We all had a beer and agreed that it was a great way to spend a Saturday morning - fish or not.