Summer Study Abroad Pictures (B-Sides)

I am still organizing my laptop and external hard-drive and I came across the pictures from when I studied abroad. Here are some of my non-tourism related shots:


This was the official shirt of of the canyoning guides in Riva del Garda. I really like the idea of illegal time.


I posted a couple weeks ago that I broke the FLSHING pole that I got in Italy. Well here it is, fresh out of the box.


This guy had a pretty rad OC back pack. You have to wonder if he liked Marissa or Summer. If I had to choose, I would say he is a Summer guy.


Do Italians eat pizza? Yes, but we clearly ate it much more than they expected us to.

How Does This Happen?

This was the only thing I caught on Saturday morning in marine stadium:

That is an actual fish, probably a baby sardine, that I caught using that lure. I snagged its belly on my cast when the hook hit the water. . .Pretty shocking.

What is more shocking is how much I am liking pop music. I am liking it more than my sister, who swoons for acts like Nsync, Hanson, Christina Aguilera, Britney Spears, and O-Town.

One of the songs that is topping my charts is Shakira's SheWolf. The video is out of control for these reasons:

• Sick intro with brass on a Daft Punky bass groove.
  
• Robot-with-a-limp combined with pop-and-lock-bellydancing in a ruby cave.
• Cage gymnastics in a flesh toned leotard

Today's Lesson: Don't Fish on the Docks

Last time I fished from the docks, I had a great day. I caught a leopard shark and walked home with some serious game fish.

Today I fished the docks at Alamitos Bays, looking to catch a bat ray. I ended up catching 3 Long Beach Police Officers and a warning.

There is nothing like hearing an armed officer say, "Sir! Please put the fishing rod down." like it was some sort of weapon. It was a good thing I wasn't cutting bait or it would have been a much scarier, "Sir! Please put down the knife!"

Once I was "un-armed" they started asking me questions. The first one was easy:

Q: What are you doing today?
A: I am fishing. Are you Fish and Game?

then it started getting complicated,

Q: We are with LBPD. Do you have a boat around here?
A: One on gangway 16B.

Q: So you don't have a boat on this gangway. What are you doing here? Did you see the "NO FISHING" signs?
A:I don't have a boat here. I came to fish by the park, but I saw all the signs, so I moved over to the docks.

Q: So you saw the signs?
A: Yes, and I thought it meant I couldn't fish from the walkways, so I picked a spot where I wouldn't bother anyone.

Q: You said you had a boat here, so why aren't you fishing by it.
A: I wanted to fish this spot by the park.

Q: And the boat is in your name?
A: No, It is in my grandparent's name.

Q: Do they know that you use their boat?
A: Yes, they own is specifically so that the grandkids can use it. It is on 16B do you want me to show you?

At this point they probably think I am lying. So I give them a data dump.

Q: What is the name of the boat?
A: Summer Salt II. She is a 31 ft motor-sailor. Slip 634 I think. It is registered to William and Gertrude Carroll. They are my grandparents.

He takes my ID and scans my record.

As it turns out I am clean. I have no criminal record, warrants or parole, and I start class tomorrow. This all adds up to someone who will take a stern warning to heart, so they let me off easy.

One of my Best Weekends

Having just finished my first week of work for Viterbi Admission and Student Affairs and learning that it is my last weekend before school starts, I made sure to make the best of every day this weekend.

Friday night I met up Graham and Brendan in Newport. We did some midnight surfing at 36th. There was no moon, tide or surf but it was an awesome session. This is what is looked like:


The next morning we went out to Harbor House for omelets. Then I went out to fish Newport Bay near a spot called "The Rail". I wanted to catch a spotted bass. I had just learned about spotted bass a week prior so I specifically was hunting for one. After 45 minutes of throwing plastics, I nailed one and released it.


Then for the first time in 6 years, I got new swim trunks. Surprisingly not from Kanvas by Katin(that will be my next pair). I then went to a friend's going away party.

Sunday morning I made plans to go fishing in the Back Bay of Newport with my cousin Michael and my bro Andrew. We fished the docks looking for bat rays, but ended up catching a leopard shark. Andrew had the urge to swim with the shark, so he did.

If that wasn't enough of a good weekend, a boat came to the dock and handed over a yellowtail and two dorado. We rolled up the fish in Andrew's towel:



And to top it all off, I am setting up interviews with an aircraft interior manufacturer and a medical device manufacturer so that I can have a full time engineering job in December.

Not too bad...

Freak Fish

I was fishing plastics in the river mouth at Seal Beach, and found 3 fish washed up on the sand, each semi-alive.


This is a lizardfish. It is super slimy and prehistoric looking. Some people where trying to convince me that it was a catfish, but I knew better. Catfish (even the saltwater variety) have a fu manchu like this:
The other fish, below, is one that used to annoy me at Newport Dunes. It is a needlefish, although I have never seen one as big as the one washed up on the beach.

The fish probably could not handle the bathwater type temperatures that the powerplant creates as it cools its generators. I put them out of their misery and used them for bait, fishing for sharks or bat rays.

Logistical Issues(Catalina Canceled)

I was supposed to sail my relatives over to Catalina this weekend, but for "logistical issues" the trip was canceled. That is as far into the details that I have been told...pretty vague...pretty lame.

I then say screw em, I'll take the boat over with a small 1 or 2 person crew. I already booked some nights to camp in Little Harbor and had visions of spearfishing. But no, they want to go for a day sail on Sunday. Weak.

My Uncle Cliff is in town, so I convinced him to go fishing on the whaler. Smart choice. We had the most productive day of fishing I have had all summer(for him the past 3 years). We pulled in about 10 bass each and other assorted fish. We had another octopus spit onto the deck. We fished the octo-bait but no real hits. The action was on live-anchovies and it was relentless. Here is a shot of Cliff with the knife for a scale(I forgot the measuring tape again) with a nice calico bass.

The action was soo hot that I broke the pole that I got in Italy when I tried fishing on Lago Maggiore. I wish it had broken on a fish hookup, but sadly it was when I snagged the rocks. I found out that the pole was made of carbon fiber, ultra low quality, but carbon non-the-less.

While we were on the water, I saw the Bell Family sailing over to Catalina on Seeker. I yelled out to them and they stopped by the boat for a "stop and chat". I wish that I could have hopped a ride with them, but I had "logistical issues".

Engineering Awesome Moment (Thanks Mechoptronics and Senior Project Lab)

After looking up that the legal size to keep a cabezon is 15 inches, we became curious as to really how big the fish was. We were thinking it may be just about a legal size fish.

As it turns out, with a little photo analysis, simple ratios, and the dreaded Pythagorean Theorem the cabezon is a whopping 24 inches. We used the sinker as our reference length in the plane of the fish. Here are our quick scribbles (which resembles my drafts for engineering assignments before I clean them up):


We double checked the numbers and it looks like my dad landed a pretty rad fish. Do any bored recent grads want to double check my work? The size of the sinker is 27/32 inches.

We let it go, but according to fish and game,

They are one of the most sought-after rocky shore inhabitants.

And if Donald Trump wrote the description

They are the most sought-after, gold-plated, Italian marbled, rocky shore inhabitants money can buy. Really a great fish, all around a truly great fish.

Fishing Report: LB Breakwater 7/19/09

After receiving the "you need to get a job" talk with my parents, I needed to take my dad fishing and share some of the good life with him. I wanted to make it as easy as possible, so got his reel restrung with some 15lb test and cleaned it. The boat was ready in the water with gas, and all the tackle and tools were ready to go. We had a party at my cousins' house last night, so we went to bed easily when we got home. We left the dock at 5:45am.

Anchovies again and straight to the weather side of the breakwater. My dad pulled in a big sand bass on his first anchovy, and not too much later I pulled in a small calico bass.

My dad landed a big cabezon with an octopus in its mouth. After setting it free, he hooked up the octopus and had a huge hit from probably another rock fish but "farmed" it. My dad said that growing up being called a farmer on the water was a serious putdown.


We then shifted spots and I wanted to fish plastics, so I tossed a color that I have never used before, all red and speckled. I worked 4 calicos into the boat on the red lure.


The live bait was bringing in the bigger fish, but fishing plastics is super fun. Today was the best day of fishing that I have ever had with my dad. It was constant action on different kinds of bait and excellent conditions. I had some fish leftover from lunch on Friday, so we are gonna eat 8 fish tonight.

Keeper Kount brought to you by the folks at Mackerel Hunter:
4 Sand Bass
1 Calico Bass (and 3 released legals)

Fishing Report: LB Breakwater 7/17/09

Left the dock at 5:30 with my buddy Danny Bluth, Servite '05, same as Wednesday.

At the fuel dock, the bait guy didn't like the fact that we were getting anchovies, while everyone else was getting sardines. Most the boats looked like they were going out for 1+ days of offshore fishing, so sardines were their pick. This meant the bait guy actually had to open the anchovy tank and move his net to a different location. There is no amount of Pabst Blue Ribbon at 6 in the morning that can make that an enjoyable activity. I also found out that if you give the bait guy some hats and a T-shirt from your fishing sponsors, you can cut in front of every boat. Anyone interested in my new venture Mackerel Hunters LLC? We have apparel! We asked for only $10 of anchovies, rather than the $20 I have been accustomed to and found that this was the right amount. The bait stayed alive longer and still had enough dead guys to chum the waters.

Limited by gas, we chose to fish the breakwater just past the bait barges. We fished the inside of the breakwater and hooked into 3 legal sandbass, 1 octopus, and 1 queenfish. We dropped anchor about 5 times, but never pulled more than 1 fish from each spot. There was action, but not as constant as the other side of the breakwater.

We left for the other side of the break water at around 10am. There was a zoo of 3 small boats anchored and 2 more trying to get in all trying to fish the end of the breakwater. Knowing that these goofs probably saw some boats and thought that it was the spot tried to squeeze in. I did not want a fouled anchor and crossed lines, so we went down the breakwater about 100 yards. We anchored 20 yards off the wall and we easily dropping our anchovies into the surging rocks. There was less thick kelp as the bay side, just some light growth, so for the most part we could get our bait into the rocky surge.



The action was hot on this side of the rocks. We were getting constant hits on the anchovies. We experimented with the couple of sardines that made it into our scoop and found that they were awful, which explains why every boat jockeying for position at the end of the wall were skunked and resorting to trolling.

We pulled in lots of calico bass, 1 sand bass, and 1 barracuda. You were either getting caught in the rocks or hooking up on the weather side of the rocks. We ended up running out of bait and tired by about noon.

Plastics and irons were not working, and really not needed because the live bait was so hot. I was working one pole with 10lb test and outfishing Danny on 2 poles with line in the 20lb range. The largest bass was landed on 10lb test.

The Keeper Kount brought to you by the folks at Mackerel Hunter:
4 Calicos
4 Sand Bass (largest 16.5 inches)

Fishing Report: HB Flats 7/15/09

Went out to HB Flats by the two oil rigs off Bolsa Chica/Huntington Cliffs. At least ten 1/2 day boats and about 20 private boats were working the area past the rigs. We stayed inside by the platforms and had a consistent action. The 1/2 dayers never held a position and we could see that they were not doing well. Barracuda were in the area the day before, but none today.

Picked up sardines from the bait dock with some squid. The live bait did not do well for a couple reasons:

• No Pump, only buckets of water
• Sardines were a month old
• Too much bait
  
• Mixing varieties
  

Got bait in the water at about 5:20. First sardine hooked a calico withing a minute. Saw color and the calico spit the bait. It was possibly legal sized.

We were plagued the whole day by fighting fish to the boat and as soon as they saw it they spit the bait. We are gonna try again tomorrow with live anchovies. We are hoping to set the hook with some smaller bait that can easily be swallowed.

I snagged a 12 inche halibut jigging a squid head on the white/glow iron by one of the rigs. I got the Tady blue/chrome and worked the surface every now and then. No action on the blue/chrome.



My legal sand bass was caught on fresh dead squid hooked on a 1/4 ounce lead head.

I landed a short sand bass on fresh dead squid.

Sand bass seen but not landed, roughly 5, were all in the possible legal range and all sand bass on either squid or live anchovies.

I filleted my sand bass at home and cooked it on the stove with 1 part olive oil, 1 part butter, and 1 part white wine with bay leaves. It was some of the best fish I have had in a while.

We are heading out tomorrow at about 5am probably back to the flats with frozen squid and live anchovies or small sardines. Hopefully the bite will open up and we can catch our 10 fish limit.

Fishing not Catching

I went out fishing last night on Summer Salt II and the night before on the south breakwater at Seal Beach. I always have fun getting ready, picking what kind of fish to go after, which gear to bring, what bait to use, etc. I run into the tackle shop to get bait and a quick pep talk from the guy at the counter,

"...You know a buddy of mine just caught a 20lb. halibut there with the exact setup your using."

Despite friends of the tackle guy catching fish, I did not catch any. Getting skunked 2 night in a row is not fun. I got some got nibbles and some molested bait, but no fish. Fishing is fun, but it can be frustrating.

I might go out to the grunion run next week and check out all the fish making babies on the sand.
If I am really feeling down on my luck, I may just grabs hands full of grunion and yell to the heavens "I CAN CATCH FISH!"