It was early November, but the weather was warm and sunny.  The marine forecast for the next day called for calm seas.  For various reasons – none of them good enough – I hadn’t been out fishing in my kayak for quite a while.  So I readied my gear and excitedly set my alarm for 5 a.m.

As dawn broke, the sixty mile drive to Santa Cruz was fast and picturesque – down the Peninsula past the beautiful reservoirs filled with Hetch Hetchy water from Yosemite, following the contour of the San Andreas Fault, then winding up and over the Santa Cruz Mountains.  I sang along with some favorite music as I drove, happily embarked on my day’s adventure.

In the early morning light I passed the now-quiet Santa Cruz Boardwalk as I made my way to the harbor to the south.  After a quick stop for supplies at a decent tackle shop just a block from the harbor, I readied my kayak and fishing gear, pulling on my wetsuit to keep me warm and, perhaps, alive if something went badly wrong.

The launching site at the harbor is about a quarter mile in from the bay.  Passing a huge dredging rig, I quietly made my way to the narrow mouth of the harbor, over some mild swells, and into Monterey Bay.  The forecast was right – the sea was very calm, with gentle two-foot swells spaced far apart.  My plan was to head south about two miles, to fish in and around the kelp forest off Soquel Point.  Once out of the harbor I trolled a blue Rapala minnow as I made my way toward my destination.  I wasn’t sure what might be interested in it, but figured it couldn’t hurt.

Within ten minutes I heard a familiar whooshing sound to my right, turned and saw water spouting into the air.  A moment later the whale breached the surface – no more than thirty yards from me – moving quickly northward.  Always a good sign, at a safe distance.

As I approached the first kelp beds, the sea lions, harbor seals, and sea otters appeared in great numbers.  Sea otters tend to stare.  Sea lions pop their heads up for a look, dive, and then pop back up to take another look from a different vantage point.  I’ve had them pop up so close to my kayak that it gives us both a good scare.  Sea lions can be pesky stealing fish off your line, but I still find them enjoyable fishing companions.  The otters are particularly fun to be around in their home environment, sometimes tying themselves to the kelp while they nap.  They’re curious and playful.

About a quarter mile off Soquel Point, I rigged a large rubber jig below two feather jigs baited with a little squid and dropped it to just off the bottom, about forty feet deep.  I hoped to entice a big lingcod out from the kelp to take the large jig, or to get a rockfish to take one of the smaller jigs.  As I drifted I quickly lifted my rod then let it sink back down, yo-yoing.  The mild swell pushed me very gradually toward the shore.  I had to be careful of snags as I drifted over the kelp.  In short order I lost my entire rig when it got hopelessly snagged.  I rigged a new set up, with a two ounce weight below two dropper loops each with a hook baited with squid.   I dropped it carefully between kelp plants.  When the kelp piled up on the surface I could let the kayak drift over it, then be held in place by the kelp as I fished around the edges.  But nothing was biting.

I moved back offshore, just outside the kelp beds.  Using a metal jig that looked like an anchovy, I jigged up and down, between twenty and forty feet deep.  At Soquel Point, where the bay turned in towards the east, I hoped to encounter a White Sea Bass, turning the corner as it made its way along the coast.  Recent reports said sea bass up to sixty pounds had been caught in the area.

I’ve never caught one, and they’re high on my list.  But they’re elusive and mysterious – sometimes called ghostly – as they seemingly appear out of nowhere, then vanish.  One of my best, oldest fishing buddies and I have gone after them twice on multi-day trips out of San Pedro Harbor in L.A., out to Catalina and San Clemente Islands.  Sea bass were caught on only one of those trips (and not by us), when a school appeared suddenly.  Nine were hooked simultaneously and six – each five to six feet long – were landed after brutal fights.  Then they abruptly disappeared.

San Francisco Bay was full of White Sea Bass – until they were devoured by hungry Forty-Niners during the Gold Rush.  They were gone from the Bay for one hundred years.  Their ecological niche was filled by Striped Bass, brought to San Francisco Bay from the east coast in train tankers.  Fortunately, White Sea Bass have recently begun to re-appear in the Bay in small numbers.

I did nothing to deplete their numbers on this fine November day.  The ghosts left me alone.

But the kelp did not.  In making my way through the kelp beds I apparently caught a long strand in my rudder.  Trying to work it loose by raising and lowering the rudder, I managed to snap the plastic pin that holds the rudder in place.  My kayak is propelled by an ingenious foot pedal system that operates flippers underneath the boat.  When the rudder is working, I control it with a small handle at my left hand, while I pedal along at a good clip, with my hands free to fish.  I only use my paddle if the water is too shallow for the flippers.  But now I’d lost my steering mechanism at the furthest point out.

The weather and sea being so calm, I wasn’t worried.  But I knew it would be slower going on my way back to the harbor, needing to use my paddle alternately on one side then the other to keep me moving more or less straight as I pedaled.  And since I hadn’t had a bite, I figured I might as well start fishing my way back.

Between the Point and the harbor I’d passed some sandy stretches I thought might hold halibut.  When I reached a likely spot about half way to the harbor, I drifted again, first trying to catch some live bait.  I set up a Sabiki rig – a series of six very small hooks spanning about five feet of line up over a weight.  Each hook has a bit of plastic material to make it look like a shrimp or other tiny creature.  On each hook I added a small piece of squid to, hopefully, make them irresistible.

Once again, no bites at first.  But I was joined by a female seagull that flew in and landed not six feet from my kayak – just watching every move I made.  She wasn’t the slightest bit skittish and kept me company for hours.  I shared my squid with her.  Clearly she’d had good experiences with kayak fisherman in the past.

I started getting taps on the Sabiki rig – two very small rockfish and a sand dab.  The next time, two small croakers.  Suddenly, I got strong hits.  As I reeled up, a fish, maybe fifteen inches long, was pulling hard and diving under the kayak.  It was a jacksmelt – long and slender, but very strong for its size – shining silver with a bright yellow spot over each gill.  After releasing the fish, I dropped my rig to the bottom again and within seconds had another on.  As I brought it up, in the last fifteen feet of crystal clear water I could see an entire school attacking the Sabiki rig, lunging in and darting away.

For the next two hours I did nothing but catch and release dozens of jacksmelt.  Sometimes I had more than one on my line at a time.  Often they jumped more than a foot out of the water, after streaking back and forth in the water, fighting with all their might.  I was amazed at how hard they fought for their size, and some of them reached twenty inches long.  The schools were thick and watching them go after my line all the way up to the surface was a joy to behold.

When I finally caught a small one – about the size of a large anchovy – I rigged it live to my other rod and let it bounce along the sandy bottom, in hopes of attracting a halibut.  What it caught was a keeper size olive rockfish, which swallowed the jacksmelt whole.  On a small anchovy I caught a larger rockfish.  My dinner was taken care of.

And so was the seagull’s.  Still close by my side, she seemed perplexed I was just letting so many jacksmelt go free.  I thought the smelt were pretty large for a gull to eat, but I knocked one senseless and tossed it to the gull.  In three quick swallows the entire fish vanished.  Unfazed, the gull stared me down until I fed her another.  And another.  And another.  I stopped after four, not wanting the bird to explode.  Seagulls are apparently an enormous mouth and wide throat atop a huge stomach.

At one point during the smelt fishing frenzy, an immense flock of small sea birds – thousands upon thousands of them – located a school of baitfish fifty yards to my right and descended on them.  Their screaming and the fluttering of their wings as they landed and took flight over and over again was nearly deafening.  One moment the tremendous flock would appear bright white from the late afternoon sun shining on their undersides; then the flock would change direction and instantly turn black as coal.

Chuckling to myself at my good fortune, I kept catching jacksmelt until I could catch no more.  Contentedly, I finally bid adieu to my gull and resumed my trip back to the harbor as the sun started dipping toward the horizon.  No glamorous sea bass or halibut, but it had been a memorable day in a fine, wild place.