Job: 123 Fake Street, Anywhere

For the next hour or so we were getting hits, catching some, losing some. The fishing as far as we were concerned was great. Almost all of us had landed fish and we were almost halfway toward catching our limit. The sun was all the way up by now and the skies had lightened a bit. It was still a little bit overcast but that seemed to help keep it from getting terribly hot.

Just when we thought things couldn’t get any better the captain came out of the wheelhouse and told up to bring in all the rigs. We looked at each other, shrugged and grabbed our poles. Once we were stowed he put the hammer down and made a run toward an offshore rig we had seen in the distance. It was a natural gas platform we could see in the distance.

Now, this is why you hire a charter instead of going it on your own. Apparently another captain had called Simon and given him a heads up about the location. He throttled back and once again we got the gear in the water. Almost instantly we were getting strikes. Not just one but every pole on the boat was taking hits. Yeah, we were missing some but at one point we had fish on five of the six poles in the water. The captain was having a time hauling fish so they were flopping all over the back of the boat for sizing. I’ve never seen anything like it.

Now we knew that we would limit out the boat. If a fish was only just legal, over it went. No sense in putting them up if we would just catch another. After the initial slam things slowed down a little and we were back to a fish or two on at a time. One of my buddies even got a double. Both fish were pretty small but it is a real thrill to pull up two at a time. The picture of him bringing in the fish turned out to be the one. I wish I wouldn’t have put up my camera and got a picture of the two being brought aboard.

But my rod was taking a hit and I had a fish to land.

We finished up that part of the trip taking all the Rockfish we were allowed and the captain getting his as well. They ranged in size from 20 to 26 inches. All told, we probable caught close to 30 fish, keeping only those in that range. We lost almost as many as we caught since it seems that rockfish don’t really want to come aboard, but they just can’t seem to stay away from the rigs. They were on to us and after a bit of a fight many of them headed back home without ever getting close.

I wouldn’t notice it until cleaning up once I got home but the butt of the rod had left a bruise the size of a softball on the front of my hip. Ah, the joy of bringing in the rocks.