Posted on August 20, 2020

The trip coincided with one of the most severe heatwaves I have experienced here in Northern California. My home in the Central Valley often records thermostat readings above 100ºF, sometimes in excess of 110ºF, but there's an easy remedy for us: travel two hours west until you reach the coast and you may find yourself freezing in a fog bank.

I had 10 days off and wanted to make the most of it. Rather than heading straight up to Shelter Cove I stopped in Bolinas, then in Fort Bragg and eventually would make it to the ultiamte destination on The Lost Coast.

Bolinas

When I arrived in Bolinas the first light of the day was just breaking. It wasn't hot but still quite warm for this early morning. I rigged up, paddled out and came across large schools of anchovies. I jigged up about 40 or 50 of these silvery little fish and drifted around mooching anchovies in hope of a salmon bite. Nothing happened, though, and after serveral hours I decided to go back to the beach.

It was getting warmer and warmer throughout the day, unconfortably warm in my drysuit, and once I got back to my van I realized that I was beginning to overheat in a serious way. I was completely exhausted and found myself trapped. On one hand I didn't have the energy to pack up and leave, on the other it would only get worse if I stayed. The early afternoon sun was right on the side door. When I stashed away my leftover anchovies I noticed that the ice which I had prepared for a week-long trip was almost gone on the first day.

I blocked out the sun as much as I could, rested for a while and finally summoned all my remaining energy to get out of Bolinas. In a way this was my worst trip to Bolinas yet and I was close to giving up on the road trip altogether.

Conditions remained far too hot while traveling north. It was dark when I arrived in Willits which felt like a boiling inferno. Only when I turned west on CA-20 to crossed through Jackson State Forest on my way to Fort Bragg the redwood forests finally gave some relief.

I spent the night in the old part of Fort Bragg, right in front of the house we had rented the previous year, and woke up a few hours later to meet up with Steve.

MacKerricher

I had barely eaten and slept since the Bolinas meltdown but I was excited to fish MacKerricher together with Steve. I drove to where I thought the launch point would be, in the area where Pudding Creek flows into the Pacific, but I had it all wrong. The launch is actualy several miles further to the north and without Steve's guidance I would have never found it.

Steve came from Willits together with Mike, Mendo Mike. These are their home waters and I was in good hands. After a chat and some coffee we made it down to the beach. This is a very steep beach. When you take a step or two into the ocean you're already in waist deep water.

The paddle to the fishing grounds was short. After five minutes I baited a cut-plug herring and let it flutter to the bottom. It immediately got bit, probably a good-size lingcod, but the hook came out and the fish was gone.

I paddled furher out to where the fleet was trolling along the coast. When I saw a bait school on my sonar I let my line out and immediately connected with a salmon. It was a heavy fish but the fight was brief. Again the hook came out and left me empty handed. Fishing with barbless hooks can be quite frustrating. Just a couple of minutes later Steve crossed in front of me. He was trolling for salmon and reported a good takedown, a short fight, and then the fish managed to spit the hook.

We moved up the coast and fished in deeper water over muddy bottom when Mike began to hook into Petrale Sole. We had talked about this fish but I don't think Mike had much experience with this species. Indeed, these were beautiful Petrale and now I know where to find them in the Fort Bragg area as well.

By mid afternoon I had enough. Depleted from the previous day and long hours on the water I went in. Mike followed me but Steve stayed out and went on another trolling tour.

Late in the afternoon I heard that Steve had found what he was chasing, a beautiful Chinook Salmon. This was many hours into the quest and at a time when the odds were not favoring a salmon catch any longer. What a tough pursuit Steve had just pulled off!

Great fishing with Steve and Mendo Mike, we finally got it done after rescheduling a number of times due to the pandemic and treacherous marine conditions I would have loved to give it another shot, my salmon was still swimming out there, but the time had come to say good-bye and to travel onward to Shelter Cove.

Shelter Cove

I stayed the night at a rest area south of Garberville. It was still way too hot but more bearable than a couple of days prior. Morning coffee in Garberville and then I crossed over King Range to arrive at Shelter Cove.

The next day I found myself alone off the Shelter Cove coast fishing for salmon. I had been mooching for several hours but didn’t get a bite. As I was venturing out into deeper waters I decided to change things up before going back to my salmon hunt. There was a large octopus in my bait box, almost 20 inches in length, which I had grabbed from a lingcod the day before. Typically, I would cut an octopus of this size into many smaller baits, but this time I threaded it whole onto my mooching rig with two barbless circle hooks. Per regulation the hooks, when mooching for salmon, cannot span more than 5 inches and my rig looked quite ridiculous with one hook through the head of the octopus and the other one still close to the head, at about the neck line, leaving almost 15 inches of tentacles dangling below. I sent the rig down and within a few seconds felt a pull.

"Patience", I told myself, this is a lot of octopus and the fish needs to gobble it up to get to the hook. I slowly began to reel, the other side started to pull a little harder, a gentle tug-of-war ensued and the fish was hooked. It turned out to be a nice-sized lingcod and after dispatching it the octopus was still intact.

I sent the octopus back down and immediately felt another pull. I repeated the sequence from before and soon my pole was bending like a rainbow. It felt heavy, very heavy, in fact I couldn’t get the fish off the sea floor. The braid transmitted intense pulses back to topside and my mind began to race. I knew where I was. This was Pacific Halibut territory. Could it be? And what was the status of this fishery? I suddenly remembered, Pacifics were closed. At least I could get a picture or video footage from this catch and reached for my GoPro. Oh no, out of battery, there will be no more than a mental picture of my first Pacific should I get it to the boat.

I kept solid pressure on the fish and eventually it came off the bottom. Suddenly it didn’t feel so heavy anymore. Still a good fish, but not a heavyweight. The pulsing sensation continued and I was still thinking flatfish, perhaps a nice Cali Hali skating up towards the surface.

Moments later I had one of the biggest surprises in my kayak fishing career. This wasn’t a flatfish after all but rather some kind of eel. It had very snake-like movements, twisting and turning its way through the water column, and throwing in wild head shakes every few seconds. My mind once again went into overdrive. I knew about the major eel species on our coast and they all would be fair take. I could rule out the Monkeyface Prickleback which doesn’t grow this big and has a different kind of face. But what was it? A Moray Eel which comes in many different colorations and sizes or perhaps a Wolf Eel? What would they taste like, are they good food value? I had eaten other types of eels before (which I loved) and wanted to give it a try.

The challenge now was to land this creature. I was on a narrow-beam sea kayak and my landing options were limited, but I was determined to not let those jaws come close to my fingers and planned to thoroughly kill this creature in the water before taking it into the cockpit with me.

The eel was close to 5-feet long and managed to entangle itself in in the leader which also measured 5 feet. It began to wind itself off the hook while the eel’s jaws were constantly opening and closing in search of something to grab. This was turning into a big mess. I pulled the fish to the side of my kayak, stuck my knife behind its head and tried to pin it against the hull of my boat. The eel summoned all its remaining strength and kept turning.The jaws now were dangerously close to my forearm and my knife began to slide out. Just at this moment I felt the eel’s life forces fade and the fight was over.

After stowing away the eel I found the octopus still fully intact and I sent it down again. In short order I hooked a canary and a vermilion, two beautiful specimens in their own rights, before the magic octopus finally slid off those barbless hooks.

I continued fishing for salmon for another hour or two but my focus wasn’t quite there, and neither were the salmon. My legs were starting to go numb under the weight of the catch and it was time to paddle back.

On the way home the sky suddenly darkened. We were going to pay a prize as the extreme heat wave had turned large swaths of Northern California into blazing infernos. The smells were unbelievable, there were multiple widespread fires along the way and I started to get concerned that my little town wasn't far from the blaze I saw south of Altamont Pass. Later I learned that the fire had taken out the fields on the other side of the freeway just a couple of miles down the road but that our neighborhood was spared.

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P.S. If you ever wondered what Wolf Eel tastes like, think Sablefish with a thicker and tougher skin. The flesh is white, full of precious oils and exquisite.