After ending my latest quest to catch something while surf fishing, I needed to stay on the Emma Wood State Beach side of town for a few hours so I could run an errand in the afternoon. Instead of just prowling around all the interesting shops in Downtown Ventura while I waited for the time to pass, I went over to the Ventura Pier during the interim.
The weather could not have been better for the way I fish and there were surprisingly few anglers around. I didn’t have my ultralight with me since I had not planned to use it, so I put the line on my Shakespeare ATS 350 reel & Shimano Saguaro rod outfit on the ocean bottom looking for sharks, rays, or a stray Halibut and fished over the side with my Shakespeare Contender reel & 8-foot Shimano FX 2803 rod. It is a pretty big outfit, big enough to haul in a 5-foot Tiger Shark, but it is not really suited for drift lining. Still, I had to use what I had on hand.
When it was time to go, my catch for the few hours I fished was 3 Mackerel, 1 Smelt, 1 Croaker, and the guy pictured above. I am not a crab expert but apparently a passerby was, he was also a lover of crab meat.
He told me that this is a Dungeness Crab which are very good to eat; he had eaten hundreds in his lifetime. He also asked me if he could have this one. I told him that I was going to let the guy go back into the ocean after I took his picture for my blog. As if he knew what was going to happen, once the crab finished posing for the picture, he scuttled sideways to the edge of the pier and jumped in which gave all of us observers a good laugh.
The now crab-less passerby stayed and we talked fishing. He is from Atlanta, GA, maybe a 75-mile drive from where my sister lives. He told me of a great place to fish which is about 4 hours from Atlanta but worth the trip.
So, I am thinking that maybe its time to pack up my gear and pay sis a visit…
