Deep dropping 1500 feet from the kayak

The surf and wind forecast for Wednesday looked too good to pass up, so I used my last vacation day of the year to go kayaking in La Jolla. Launching on a weekday is great, because you pretty much have the beach and parking spots all to yourself.

The night before I plotted out GPS locations along the center of La Jolla Canyon, with the deepest one at 1500 feet. The wind typically picks up around 11am, so I planned to fish the deepest spot first and then work my way back towards shore. What did I expect to find at 1500 feet? Honestly I wasn't sure, but I hoped to pull up a weird species like hake, eelpout, cusk-eel, or one of the many species of flatfish that prefers deeper water.

Unsurprisingly, the fish finder had trouble with depths more than about 550 feet. It didn't register the bottom at 1500 feet, but when I moved up the canyon to the next spot it briefly picked up 1325 feet, and I took a quick photo. If you look closely, you can see the bottom on the contour plot, but there was no way to see structure or fish hanging out at the bottom.

Dropping to the bottom in 1500 feet was no problem when there was no wind. I used a 28 oz torpedo sinker, 500 meters (1640 feet) of 65 lb braid main line, and a Penn Fathom 2-speed Lever Drag. My terminal tackle had four #4 circle hooks on 10 lb mono branch lines, so really not much bigger than a sabiki. I couldn't legally fish for rockfish because of the depth (and because of the four hooks), so I had a descending device ready to go in case I caught any off limits groundfish incidentally.

I swapped out fresh squid strips on every drop, but I didn't get a single bite. I also alternated between using and not using a deep drop strobe light. I know lights are important for catching large predators like grouper, but I wasn't sure if they'd attract the smaller less aggressive species that I was going for.

My one fish of the day was a mackerel that grabbed one of the baits in the top 30 feet of water.

Pacific Chub Mackerel (Scomber japonicus)

The wind picked up right on cue and put a stop to the fishing. The paddle back was kind of rough. I was coming back at a 30 degree angle to the waves, and the bigger waves would push my bow to the left, while the wind wanted to push my bow to the right. The wind was more of an issue, and I pretty much paddled the entire way back using only my right side. I think I'll have to invest in a rudder if I'm going to keep doing these long distance paddles. This was my longest paddle to date, and I felt it!

Miles: 12.70
Hours: 7:32

I try to keep my blog posts heavy on the fish content, so to make up for the lack of fish in the actual report, here's a few photos I took underwater with my camera on a non-fishing kayak trip in the La Jolla marine reserve a few weeks ago.

Zebra Chub (Kyphosus azureus)

Garibaldi (Hypsypops rubicundus)

Here are the stats for that trip.

Miles: 4.37
Hours: 3:00

And don't worry, I won't give up on deep dropping in La Jolla Canyon! Those weird fish are down there, so it's just a matter of finding them. One of my redeeming qualities is stubbornness, so I'll keep trying until I figure it out.

Safety Extra:

If you kayak in the ocean, make sure to practice capsizing and self rescuing! After paddling in the marine reserve I did three intentional capsizes before coming in to land. The water was surprisingly cold, and by the third re-entry I wanted nothing more than to be on land, dry, and warm. When I got home I ordered a pair of neoprene wetsuit bottoms to wear during the cold months.