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All the other stuff / Fish Tails — 1 Comment
22
Oct 13

The Shark Girl Chronicles

My daughter is off school the next two days and that could only mean one thing… we were going to go fish the pier.

Love this girl

Love this girl

As always, I’m amazed at her stamina out there. We got there just shy of 10:00 AM and left just a bit after 3:00 PM. We didn’t touch a fish until about 2:00 PM. That’s a whole lot of waiting.

Today was interesting in that we got there as the tide was coming in and we found the end of the pier full of rods and fishermen. We took a corner I knew wasn’t in prime position and we waited. While we wanted the guys down in the far corner, where I wanted to be, crushed. They had a fish on about every 15 minutes. We were doing nothing but watching one guy catch fish after fish after fish. It was humbling.

When the tide turned, hours later, we immediately hooked up and then hooked up again 2 minutes later, and then 5 minutes after that and then we missed a few fish in the next 20 minutes.

Amazing how much the tide can influence the fishing even when you are only measuring spots 60 feet apart.

A day well spent, even if no flies were used in the creation of these memories.

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All the other stuff — 5 Comments
03
Mar 13

First of the year

Took my girl out to the pier today and we managed to pick one up early (and then lose several later). Good to get one in the book for 2013.

The girl reeled this one in (mostly)

The girl reeled this one in (mostly)

There are pretty awesome animals.

 

2013-03-02 13.51.06

Beautiful fish.

The girl was especially happy to be able to collect a couple of copepods from the shark in a little container with rubbing alcohol. This is now on her nature table. Yes. My girl is awesome.

Also witnessed being caught today were two broadnose seven gills and a ray. Cool.

Funny thing was a couple of guys who started fishing by us. Five minutes after they get there one guy lands a small leopard shark. His buddy had brought him out to catch his first fish and he did. A neat thing to see.

Take a friend fishing.

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All the other stuff — 5 Comments
15
Oct 12

I’m doing it wrong

I have no idea what I’m doing on a pier. I didn’t grow up with them and have spent precious little time on them in the years since. The idea of pier fishing is really foreign to me. The whole bait-cast-sit-wait thing is just not what I’ve generally considered fishing.

Enter the Dumbarton Pier. It is about 4 minutes away from where I live now. My girl wants to fish. Heck, I want to fish.

So, I get a rod (the rod/reel combo was $50) and some hooks and some swivels and some shrimp and I’m good to go… right?

Oh, but I don’t have any idea what I’m doing. I can figure out the rig easy enough, but I don’t know what to do beyond huck the rig out as far as I can and then sit there and wait for “something” to happen. There are new things to learn, new rigs, new environments, new tactics, new things to look for, to pay attention to. I’m not likely to become a devotee to pier fishing. I still want to fish with a fly, but when life gives you lemons (and the Bay Area is pretty much lemons from a fly fishing perspective), you might want to learn to fish off the pier.

Luckily, others weren’t as incompetent as I was and my daughter got to touch a Seven Gilled Spotted Cow Shark, which was kind of awesome.

Cool shark.

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