July 11: Coronado Deep Sea Fishing

Another reason why I didn't go out Friday night. I had to be up at this time.


Mission Bay at 5am.




5:45am...damn I'm tired!




Jessica, Vic, and Jeff got the rods ready.


Bryan, Stephen, and Harrison slept.


Vic and Jessica are fishing pros. They fish at least twice a month. But this was the first deep sea fishing trip this year.


It was a 2-hour ride from Mission Bay to Coronado Island off the coast of Mexico. Our boat had about 45-50 passengers, about 5 crew members, 2 bathrooms, a small galley with a kitchen, and plenty of deckspace for people and fishing rods.






This was my 3rd fishing trip with Vic. Trip #1 and trip #2 were both major failures. We better catch something this time.
"Jomo, if you don't catch anything while deep sea fishing, you should just stay as far away from a fishing rod as possible." -Vic



We used live sardines for bait. You had to hook them right between the nose and the eye so that they wouldn't die.


Vic was one of the first and few to catch a sand bass. Showoff.


A few hours later Stephen caught a barracuda.


Lucky! He hasn't gone fishing since he was a little tyke.


After two different fishing spots however, there wasn't much action. Onward to a new position. The boat was equipped with radar to track down schools of fish.




Gulls followed the boat around for leftover chum bait.

There was a lot of napping going on.

The next spot was pretty much the hot spot. We caught a bunch of sculpin which are just ugly orange fishies with spines. They weren't the prettiest, but at least made the trip worthwhile. I FINALLY CAUGHT A FISH!

Lines were often crossed causing catches like these.




Well I guess it's kinda pretty... Among the 7 of us, I think we caught 30 of these.


The catch of the day: Vic caught a pelican.




The kitchen supplied breakfast burritos and sandwiches for breakfast and hamburgers for lunch. Super good.


A little break from fishing.



One last spot to try and catch something other than sculpin.


Not only were the birds trying to take our bait, there was a seal following us around as well. One of these actually got a bite of my hook and ripped my line way out. I thought I caught a shark... fail.



My double S syndicates are taking a beating these days.




We got back to Mission Bay around 6pm.





"Eat me."

A successful (but expensive) fishing trip. Thanks for the invite Vic. I think I'll stick to pier/lake/river/boat fishing from now on though. Unfortunately, I was still deathly ill and spent a lot of time below deck napping on the bench.