Reserarch Fishing- Whoo Hoo!!!

Hi Everybody! Happy New Year!
Usually there is no fishing in January or February as the rock fishing is closed - Except if you go fishing on a research trip.
I was lucky enough to be invited to go by Capt. Jason Diamond of the Stardust out of Santa Barbara Harbor to help with research on Thursday & Friday, Jan 28 & 29.

It was a beautiful day, there was still snow on the mountains from last weeks storms. The 12 mile reef ( aka. The Dome) is an hour out of SB harbor. The chili's were plentiful and we gathered a good variety of sizes, males & females some with larvae. I did not know that chilies birthed live microscopic young. So Cool!

The team kept detailed notes of exact locations of each fishing spot - GPS location , depth, what was caught, species, quantities etc.

Our Research team is Sabrina and Noah from UC Santa Cruz, they are contracted through the University by the state to conduct these studies - collecting fish spieces samplings and studying their growth and reproductive and other factors. All of their data goes into a larger data base that goes to tracking trends in fish populations.

The target fish on Thursday was the Chili Pepper, they wanted about 50 of them and of those about 10-12 that were large and mature.

We did well and got done and were back at the dock by 2pm.

I am gussing we had about 8 anglers, 3 crew and our 2 scientists on thursday. On Friday we left at 6am and drove to San Augustine a 3 1/2 hour drive from SB- the target spiecies was Yellow Tail Rockfish, I was told it was like a Johnny Bass. I had only been to San augistine once before and it was too windy and current too strong the drifts were too fast. This tiem however it was really nice and the current was going the opposite direction to the breeze soe we had almost no drift. I fished with light tackle and no more than a 5 oz weight. I have never caught so many fish. every drop a got hit immeciately mostley small rock fish. I did get one relly nice Whitefish on my lightacle it was really fun - sorry no photo. All fish not taken for studies were released and most had fin clips taken for DNA studies.

On Friday we fished really hard and caught a lot of fish may be 80 to 100 each. Of the Target Spicies we only collected 6.

I fished hard and brought home no fillets - but it was a great experience and I learned a lot.