Humbolt Squid Caught While Rockfishing

Just like Forrest Gump once said, "Life is like a box of chocolates...You never know what you're gonna get". Lake Pacific has provided me, once again, with this fascination. Saturday was no exception. . .

I had the invite from Brad (GreenButtSkunk), to go fish for some rockfish and maybe in-shore halibut. I jumped at the opportunity! My friend Dylan (ZodiakFisherman), and I cruised over to Little Italy early Saturday morning to join Brad and Dan (74 CJ5). It was so cold Saturday morning, that the walk ramp going down to Big Tuna Marine was iced over. Sliding down with rods, bags, food, etc, we clumsily made our way to the boat, like deer on ice. Once it began to get light, we made our way out of the marina.



We found our depth, shut down the boat and dropped the baits. We were in search of in-shore halibut.
Not more than 5 minutes later, a loud PFFFFSSHHHHHHHH sound came up RIGHT where I was staring! A baby humpback whale peeked its head up, took a breath, and I swear it was staring right at us, curious as we were. Brad looks and says, "I wonder where Mama is..." A few seconds later, here comes Big Mama, swimming behind her calf. Such a massive and beautiful creature! Unfortunately, I didn't have my camera at the time...only a rod and reel...
Once we found our halibut spot, we made a few drifts at different depths. Unfortunately, they didn't produce. What we did notice, is TONS of jellyfish floating below us. You could see them at all depths.


We decided to run up to a reef he knew of and tried a few drifts there. A few drifts brought numorous rockfish, quillbacks, and lingcod. Here's Dylan with one of the smaller Lings.


Dan also got into a nice ling on the same drift.


We picked up lines and ran back up for another drift and Dylan hooks into a pretty large fish... or so we thought. He said he couldn't feel any real headshakes...just long pulls. but fought him good. Line would peel off the reel at times. He finally got it up to color and we noticed it was a HUMBOLDT SQUID!




We honestly didn't know what we should do with it. I grabbed the underwater video camera and started filming. It was amazing the way this thing would shoot down 20ft, but get pulled right back up. What looks like its mouth, is really a vent...for the mouth is really the beak in the middle~



I actually got some pretty good video! Had great clarity in the water!
We decided not to keep the squid, and it eventually popped off the line so we didn't have to deal with it!

That reef produced all kinds of 'creatures from the deep'.
Another fish pulled up this weekend was this Ratfish we caught, while fishing for some inshore halibut.






This was another first for me, aside from the Squid and the Humpbacks.

We didn't have a lot of time to fish, and we wanted to be back inside before the bar started standing up. Although we didn't get our halibut, we still had a great time, a few firsts, and a few Lings for the dinner table.

Hope its not the last run of 2008!
Had to end the day with an Ice cold Fat Tire.

Thanks again, Brad!