Had the privilege of hoop netting aboard Latimeria's boat the other night.
Soon after launching I realized how awesome the conditions were: A beautiful full moon was rising and greeted us as we made our way to the hooping grounds. The was barely any wind, and very few people on the water. The current was a bit strong but we worked through it. The only negative thing about the night was the sea lions....but I'll talk about them later
The lobster didn't show any type of patterns. This is only the second time I've ever done it from a boat and don't know the habits of these spiny creatures. Some were caught shallow, and some deep. One round we would have a bunch while the next pull produced few. I'm sure that if I kept an accurate hoop netting log book like I do for fishing that I would start to see some patterns...
Eventually it seemed like we were able to maneuver our nets to productive areas based on where we were getting the most luck and we picked away at them.
Wish I kept track of our totals but we caught a ton of shorts in proportion to the legals we got. Other critters included an almost legal halibut, an octopus, a bunch of sting rays, some assorted crabs, and a rock
The sea lions were absolutely infuriating. There were times when they were around but didn't seem to affect the catching, but more often than not they were in the way wreaking havoc. Had they not been around, I'm very confident that our numbers would have been much higher.
During the soaks we had a few minutes to fish and talk about fishing. I managed a few spotties and Tom got rocked by something big. All in all I had an excellent time even with the sea lions around. It was great to take a break from work and school and do something different.
I had an excellent time fishing with you Tom, hope we can do it again sometimes. I learnt a lot and am glad that we were able to get on some bugs!
Totals for the night: 6 legals and a crab