Ben Cantrell's fish species blog: Kayak deep dropping for sanddabs

Sunday, January 19, 2020

Kayak deep dropping for sanddabs

On Sunday I gave deep dropping in La Jolla Canyon another try. My primary goal was to catch something new and interesting from the deep, and my secondary goal was to break my record for deepest fish caught from the kayak. My official targets were sanddabs, which are always in-season at any depth, and I had a descending device ready in case I caught any incidental rockfish, which are closed in January and February. As an extra precaution I tried my best to avoid any spots that looked rocky on the bottom.

There was a descent sized pod of dolphins moving through as I paddled out.

My deepest kayak fish (a sanddab) was from 315 ft, so I started out in 400+ ft near the head of the canyon (making sure I was outside the marine reserve). I upped my PR to 410 ft with this little guy.

Pacific Sanddab (Citharichthys sordidus)

I moved deeper to 500+ ft. The fish finder was having trouble deciding on the depth because of how much the signal cone spreads out before returning to the transducer. It bounced around erratically from the low 500's to the high 500's.

The screen said 540 ft when I hooked into this guy, so that's going to be my new PR. I think for anything deeper I'll have to use charts to come up with an estimate.

It wasn't the weird fish of the deep I was looking for, but it was still pretty weird.

After that I tried dropping at 600+ ft, 800+ ft, 900+ ft, and 1000+ ft, going off GPS pins that I had pulled from a depth chart ahead of time. The wind was almost nonexistent, so I only needed 16 oz to hold bottom in 1000 ft. Most days aren't like that. Eventually I gave up with the super deep and came back up to the edge of the canyon to catch a few more sanddabs and call it a day. Between 350 ft and 400 ft I got into a few out-of-season rockfish. The vermilions I sent down immediately without a photo, but this one I took a quick picture of because I wasn't sure of the species. I looked it up when I got home and determined that it's a greenspotted rockfish. It was also sent back to the bottom with the descending device.

Greenspotted Rockfish (Sebastes chlorostictus)

I moved spots to avoid the rockfish and succeeded in getting some more sanddabs. My record was three on one drop. After a few more I called it a day and paddled back in.