Easter Ling Hunt

[Eric C.]

Figured I'd add another Cencal report to the already awesome string on North and Central coast reports.

Made it out to Big Sur on Sunday hoping to get into some lings. I have put a number of hours in this season specifically targeting lings, and while I've seen tons of shorts and one or two barely legals, I hadn't been able to connect with a nice one.

Conditions weren't spectacular with heavy drizzle and green vis ranging from 6 to 8 hazy feet, but the ocean was pretty flat and the south swell was manageable. Fish were pretty scarce and holed up, but I also stayed fairly shallow between 20 and 30ft. My friend found a cool cave full of an assortment of little fish with a wolf eel in the back.

In shallow I found a few rockpiles that looked promising and sure enough, back in a tight little hole at about 18 ft I saw the face of a ling, but it looked short. My friend swam over and checked it out and seemed more excited about it than me, so I went down to have another look. The ling had been farther back in the hole than I had thought and when I shined my light back in I was greeted by a much larger head. I poked it a few times to try to see side profile to double check its size, and when it turned I got a decent shot behind the gill plate. The hole was pretty tight and it took me one more dive to work the fish out, as it had tried to make an escape up another deeper cave.

While its far from the lingzillas I've seen in the other threads I'm still stoked to get my first ling of the season.

[Myrran]

Good looking fish. Congrats!

[North Star]

Nice fish! Yarding them out of holes is always fun! Good job!