Kayak Fishing Forums

[Saba Slayer]

This is a long post...so if your'e not ready for a long story push the
"Back Key" now.
This weekend was such a great adventure I've got to tell the whole story.

The Promar office got a call from Inside-Sportfishing asking if we could help them put together a Hooping segement for their TV show.
We decided to film it at Catalina as the Buggin over there has been pretty good this year.
Ben and Patrick from the Promar office and myself traveled over Saturday morning in Ben's 24' Cuddy Cabin and planned to meet the guys from the show at Two harbors around 3:00pm.
Before we left we stopped at Inseine Bait and Larry showed us an 11 pounder he had caught the night before.

We traveled over with visions of Huge Bugs in our heads...which was not to be ! ! ! The ride over was as flat as I've ever seen it!
Mark Olsen, Ryno and Jason were there at Two Harbors for the weekend on their kayaks to fish and we thought we'd hookup with them for some hooping and include some kayak footage too.
The plan was to shoot some product footage on the back of Michael Folkes 61' yacht the "Vintage" then start hooping off of Bens boat and also take the zodiac as a camera boat.

The "Vintage" is a beautiful yacht with all the toys...Zodiac, Jet-ski, and 2 Ocean Kayak Prowlers.

We shot the product stuff first before the sun went down.

When we finished shooting I went back to Ben's boat to bait up the nets and get them handed off to the Yakers.
Ryno was the first to get his nets at sunset with the "Vintage" behind him.

Jason was next as the "full moon" was coming up.

MO was the last to get his nets as it got dark.

I didn't take any pictures of the hooping as we were pretty busy with the pulling and filming but you're not missing much as it was one of the worst nights I've had at Catalina. The Bugs just weren't crawling.
Jason saved the day by pulling up a nice 3 1/2 pounder from the yak.
The cameras got some really good footage of him pulling up his Bug, including an underwater camera.
The movie type lights we were using attracted a whole bunch of Squid and some of the underwatershots of Jason's Bug have some cool shots of the squid swarming as he pulled his Lobster up.
The kayakers quite about 7:30pm. so that they could make it to the restaurant before it closed.
We motored about 5mi. towards the West End to look for a new spot and stayed out until about midnight and it payed off for only a few Legals. Nice Bugs but nothing big... at least they were big enough not to have to measure them!

When we got back to the "Vintage" they had the underwater dive lights on and the had the Squid floating.

We thought we'd load up on bait and Calamari so Patrick and I filled a couple of 5 gal. buckets pretty quickly with the braile net, while Ben got the BBQ going for a late dinner.

While we were eating dinner the macks moved in and chased the Squid out.
After we ate we decided to try and jig enough live Squid off the bottom for the next days fishing.
It was pretty easy and we jigged about a scoop for the days fishing.
We had too many Barley Pops and finally hit the hay about 2:00am.
I was the first one up Sunday and WOW was it pretty that morning.

The birds were still picking at the Squid which would come up once and a while.


After breakfast we shot some more footage on measuring a Bug and how to clean them.

Before we left Michaels beautiful yacht and his great hospitality, we posed for a group photo.

We went to the West end to look for some exotics WSB or YT, but NO LOVE!!! We did load up on lots of really clean looking Rockfish and Sand Dabs.
The ride home to MDR was as flat as it gets in the Channel.

We had a beautiful sunset to cap off a really great trip to Two Harbors again. We are so lucky to have such a beautiful island right in our back yard.

JASON... THANK YOU!!!THANK YOU!!!!
You really saved the day with that big Bug. The shots of you pulling it up in the Prowler really looked good... especially the underwatershots of it coming up in the net.
Jim / Saba Slayer

[Rhino]

First for me was catching squid from the kayak. Our fishing was a little slow, but good quality. Calicos were from 2 to 5-1/2 lbs. all on live squid or live macs. Two Harbors is choke full of many types of bait. Big fish should find it sooner or later. I hear the other side out of Cat Harbor is the place to be, we didnt make that side on this trip. Next good weather window may have to head back, always a good time at the West End! TL Rhino