Christmas Break!!

So yeah, Christmas finally came!! I totally needed a break. I got about a week and half off from work. It's been so nice not to think about anything technical. My wife and I rented kayaks from OEX in Sunset Beach. We fished with artificial bait as we were mainly focused on the kayaks. We were considering picking up a pair with some kayaks as a late Christmas present for ourselves :)







We toured Huntington Harbor for a bit, and as we were heading back in, I caught this 15" spotty. My amazing ability to misidentify fish reared its ugly head once again as I failed to realize it was a spotty, not a sandy until I got home.

Regardless, it was my first fish from a kayak!!










I carved up my best looking fillet to date. I was happy so my wife decided to take a picture. I guess it's kind of like a framing a 2 year old's first finger painting or something. Anyways there it is:













I fried it up using a recipe my wife found online. It was brilliant.














The next day we went to Redondo Beach Pier because I felt like take a cruise down PCH. It was pretty cool; I'd never been there before. There was a band at a bar playing CCR and Sly Stone covers, a girl singing karaoke in restaurant, and a Mariachi band playing around tables at a fresh seafood stand.

I really felt bad for the people fishing. They were packed in like sardines and were only catching an occasional mackerel or small croaker. I thought Newport Pier on a weekend was packed but this was at least twice as jammed!!

I took some time taking photos of the sunset with my wife's new Canon SD790. I really wanted to get the sun right before it went down and it ended up costing me two extra dollars for parking, so really enjoy the pics!!

Sargo

So this weekend I talked my wife into stopping by Newport Harbor for a little fishing on our way home from running some errands. I grabbed some mussels off the bottom of a dock for bait and proceeded to catch 6 perch in an hour. As we were about to leave my wife hooked into this sargo. On a 4' rod with light line it actually put up a brilliant fight! Dinner was good as well!!

Sitting on the Dock of the Bay...

I spent some time fishing a dock in Newport Harbor last weekend - 12/7. Unfortunately for me the front of the dock was mostly taken so I was forced to fish off the side.

One lady fishing from the front of the dock was

catching a ton of perch, an occasional short bass,

and at least one opaleye.

Fishing off the side, I caught several smelt, several perch, a sea snail, and what I believe was a baby striped bass!

It wasn't a bad day considering where I was fishing from. I also had the chance to observe someone who really knew what they were doing. This was cool since I really have no clue what I'm doing.

Anyways, I fried up all of my little fish, and was able to make enough fish tacos for dinner.

Row, row, row your boat...

Last weekend I went fishing with my wife in our "new" rowboat. It's actually pretty old - I picked it up on Craig's List - but it's new to me. We went fishing Saturday and Sunday in Newport Harbor.

Saturday was the first time using the rowboat so it was a real learning experience. The first issue was getting into the boat. We launched from a little public beach in the harbor, so I got my feet soaked, while pushing the boat out. The next problem was that the rubber oar bushings that I had just purchased at West Marine slipped constantly, making rowing difficult. (I'm going to try the metal ones instead.)

Once we got out, we anchored towards the middle of the channel. The rowboat is less than 6' long and is not very stable so every boat that passed by gave us a thrill with its wake. Less than two hours of fishing produced 4 calico bass and a very sore posterior for me. Two of the bass were keepers and two were shorts.

Sunday, we went back out about 2 hours before sunset and fished the far side of the channel near some kelp beds. The first cast of the day produced a small calico that was released. Not too long after that, we caught a 12 inch halibut that was immediately released. However, upon further research it may have been a sanddab instead; next time, I'll know what to look for. (For those of you who don't fish, halibut have to be 22 inches to keep; sanddabs are like mini-halibut without the size limitation.) The next fish up was a 10 inch ray, followed by a 14 inch sand bass. I thought the sand bass was a calico but the people on the dock assured me it was a sandy.

So yeah... the sun had set, the fog had rolled in, my hinder parts ached exceedingly and we were almost out of bait, when my wife's rod bent over almost to the water's surface. She just about threw her rod at me as the drag was singing away... I didn't know what it was but it was definitely bigger than anything we had hooked into thus far.. It turned the boat around several times before I finally dragged up a 2.5' ray. It was dark and I had no clue where the barb was on one (this being the first one caught ever), so I didn't want to bring it into the boat. Since I had heard that bat rays tastes like scallops, I wanted to see this was true.

Not knowing really what to do, I ended up rowing back across the channel with my wife dragging the ray behind the boat. It was complicated but we made it.

As it turned out, I'm pretty sure it was a round sting ray and not a bat ray!! While it may not be immediately apparent, there is actually quite a bit of difference, but I'll leave that for a later date..

Lessons of the day:

Urinate before sitting in a 5' dingy for two hours in moving water.

Floatable seat cushions can save not only your life but also your bum.

Fish identification is a difficult art to master.

Rubber oarlocks DO slip no matter what they say on the package.

It's quite difficult to fit two adults and a stingray in one rowboat. (I don't know how they ever fit the butcher, the baker, and the candlestickmaker in a tub.)

The Harbor with a Red Hat

So yeah, I had Wednesday off so I went fishing in Newport Harbor using live bait caught with an umbrella net (baby smelt, I think, could be way off).

Notes on umbrella nets:

- It's hard to catch fish at night.
- It's hard to catch fish if there's too much current.
- Keep chumming and be patient (Little fish like wheat bread, but not shrimp crackers.)
- Drop the net down at least 3 feet.

It was a productive day even though we didn't end up with any keepers. I caught two calico bass on a high low leader and my wife caught a baby shovelnose. Some people next to us caught 3 big shovelnose, a bunch of rays, and couple bass. It was a good day overall, nice weather and not too crowded.

I installed Red Hat EL4 on one of my home computers I use primarily for development. I was able to connect to the internet immediately which was nice because previously I was using Fedora 7 and had problems getting PPPoe to work correctly. I tried upgrading to Fedora 9 a couple days ago but I had problems burning the CDs from the downloaded ISOs. (I'm not a big fan of Fedora right now.) Anyways, now I'm trying to update Firefox to Firefox 3 and it won't work because Pango's not installed or something like that.

Lesson of the day:

Linux is for people that like spending a lot of time with their computers getting simple, everyday things to work!!

Mac Attack!!

This evening I took my wife and her parents fishing off Balboa Pier.  There was a stiff, cold breeze coming off the ocean so everyone was pretty cold.  Evidently the fish were cold too because they weren't biting much.  There were a couple people fishing the surf and a several more people fishing mid-pier; best I could tell they were all pretty much striking out.  

There was a slow but steady flow of mackerel coming in on the end of the pier, so I changed a couple of the poles from high-low leaders set up for shovelnose to sabikis with 'chovies.  I figured my wife's parents would rather catch mackerel than nothing at all .  (I also threw a glow stick on the line that I got on clearance at Walmart.)

Sure enough, my wife caught a decent-sized mackerel.   Everyone was excited because they felt they could now escape the cold without leaving empty handed.  

I usually avoid mackerel because they have the reputation of being stinky, strong tasting fish, but I figured since everyone was so excited we'd give it a try.  My wife's family is from Vietnam and eat a variety of fish on a regular basis, so I was curious to see how my mother-in-law would prepare it.  She cooked it stove top with lemon grass, Costco seasoning (how's that for very authentic vietnamese cooking), chile pepper sauce of some sort and onions for garnish.  She served it with rice and cucumbers.  

Meanwhile my wife cooked mac & cheese a burner over.  I asked my wife's mother if they had mackerel in Vietnam.  She explained to me that they didn't have that kind of noodle.  I didn't quite get it, but my wife who was listening to the conversation busted up.  I guess my mother-in-law thought I was talking about the macaroni instead of the mackerel.  I suppose you had to be there, but it turns out there are mackerel in Vietnam for those of you who are curious.

As it turned out, we had the mac with the mac and the dinner was a success!!  

Lesson of the day:

Mackerel can actually be pretty good when prepared properly and cooked fresh. 

Balboa Pier

So yeah, tonight I went fishing at Balboa Pier with my wife. I've been on somewhat of a fishing kick of late even though I don't really know what I'm doing. I've been reading a lot online and talking to people out on the piers to try and figure out what I'm supposed to be doing. Monday, I fished with two guys who showed me how to catch shovelnose guitarfish (or something like that). They caught quite a few but I just got my bait stolen. So anyways, tonight I went back and got a few more bites but no luck yet. A note to anyone who cares, some guys were catching some nice sized surf perch on blood worms. (They had like forty poles.) Some people were catching mackerel down at the end as well. I've still yet to catch a mackerel, though it seems some people catch them by the bus load. (That was humorous since fish swim in schools.)

So even though I'm not catching anything yet, I'm learning a ton. 

Today's lesson:  If you leave a frozen squid in your car on Monday, your car will reek to high heavens by Thursday.

cout << "Hello World";

I am writing this blog because I have something very important to say...  I have something that must be shared with the whole world!!  Actually, I'm writing this because I just got my account set up and feel compelled to write something.  I hope I can actually keep this thing going and that it might actually be interesting to someone that stumbles upon it. 

Anyways, I guess I'll start with a short introduction of what I expect to write about in this blog.  I live in Orange County, Ca and like things local.  This includes but is not limited to:  old buildings, geography, museums, the Lakers, farmer's markets, live music, the Dodgers, the piers, the mountains, galleries, history and anything out of the ordinary.

I'm also somewhat of geek so I spend a lot of time with Linux, DSP algos, Ajax, and a bunch of other technical stuff...  

Alright, I feel I have written enough...