Ling Cod opener at Neah Bay! (pictures)

[Rob Holman]

Ling cod opened at Neah Bay a couple weeks ago! Weather was crap, but we had a blast. First night we were there, I put a plastic tub outside overnight. the next morning, there was 3 inches of rain water in it! That’s what you get for diving in a rainforest I guess.

Limit was 2 ling each, and we all limited. Picked up a few Cabezon, and shot black rock fish until we got bored.

We also took a whack at picking up some Rock Scallops. Wow. Fresh rock scallops are fantastic. the chunk of meat is bigger than a silver dollar, and an inch thick! Tastes like chewy Dungeness crab.

Here are some pictures.

[Rob Holman]

Pictures attached

[Slay Ride]

Nice haul Rob. Man those ling are some nasty looking creatures underwater. I bet they're mighty fine in a Teflon Coated pan though!!!

[Rob Holman]

White, meaty, flakey meat! one step below true cod.

great stuff.

Can't wait to head out and give the middlegrounds a shot in June! Thanks for the tips!

[element]

Nice catch! Those rock scallops look tasty. We used to dive for them down in San Diego and they were great!

[OregonSpearo]

Congrats guys! How was the viz?

[Bill McIntyre]

Nice catch. I really envy you the rock scallops. That is one thing I really miss about scuba diving down here. I used to get a limit of 15 scallops the size of a salad plate at some deep pinnacles not far outside the harbor, but I would often take 5 minutes and a lot of air chipping them out of the rock. No way I could do that freediving.

[Rob Holman]

Viz was the usual 15 to 20 feet.

Water was OK. 4 foot swell with chop on top on day one, but day 2 and 3 saw the chop go away and left us with the swell only.

[Allanon]

Wow, I really need to get out there and get some spearing / scallop gathering goin! Looks tasty!

BTW Rob you did a good job stacking up the blocks @ the park, made it easy to get the lanes made up!

[Rob Holman]

Did you find the missing one? I found 54 of the 55 blocks and stacked them in groups of 11. I was just too low on gas to find that last block. I figure it might have been lost when Kevin took the spill in the kayak! Did he tell you about the spill? Kevin in a t-shirt with 5 cinder blocks, all tipping into the 48 degree water at the same time! Worth the price of admission just to see that! He had that kayak flipped back over and was back in it pretty fast!

He said you guys made pretty good progress with the shooting range. Should be good to go in one or two more dives.

[Allanon]

Heck no Kevin didn't talk about that! Wish I could have seen it though :D

We went through quite a few blocks, but didn't see any "strays". From what Kevin was saying the vis was a LOT better when you 2 were doing your dives, so that kinda sucked... I'm sure that lost one will show up though!

I'm just looking forward to checking out the different gear and local techniques. BTW I saw the Dept F&W got the rule change in, good job! Now I just need to pick up some tips on getting shrimp and I'm ready!

[Rob Holman]

E-mail me and I will give you the run down on technique. You have my e-mail from the Derby, right?