Memorial Day Holiday (abalone/crabbing/fishing and camping)

[seasicknes]

Memorial Day outing:
This is a yearly event that FishInfo Group does.
We take this 3 day holiday to do a get together with our families and friends. We do a bit of abalone diving, crabbing and a little bit of fishing.

Three seperate caravans meeting up at different times and locations to head up to point arena.

We were in the first caravan up. We made it there before 1:00 pm and set up camp. We quickly got 2 boats ready with dive gear and crab pots. We towed our boats down to the point arena hoist. This is where they lift your boat straight up then over the pier and into the water. Watching this is so nerve racking for the boat owners.

We were on the water late afternoon, the winds were howling. Khanh - call sign "Back Brace" and I pushed through and got to our crab spot. We threw down 10 traps. Then we headed back surfing the waves in. We both ducked into a cove. We dove down and got quick limits of abalone and then quickly headed back to the launch facility. Abalone for dinner tonight ! Back at camp our wifes made us a snack and we met up with the other friends that just came.

Saturday,
We dove again. Quick limits of abalone. Then we headed up towards our crab trabs. the swells were high. Felt like 10 feet tall or more. Khanh - call sign "Back Brace" and Thanh - call sign "Young Andy" and my boat all headed out to pick up the pots. We ended up with 30 crabs. Enough for dinner (we have a rather large group). We were expecting over 100 crabs, but I think the swell was the cause of the low numbers.

Sunday,
We dove again. But, this time the seas were really tough. In the cove the swells were high. I was very concerned of the new divers. This kind of water needs experience guys to get the abalone. On my boat, I held off one guy from jumping in. I let the other guy go. Very difficult diving on this day. Ended with only half limits for all the divers.
Since it was so tough on the inside (meaning close to shore), I decided to drop off all my divers. I picked up Lyle Ryan and we headed out WEST on a 240 degree heading. Water temp was cold for salmon being 48 degrees. We noticed as we kept on going west that the water temp rose. We hit a 50 degree patch of water and we started trolling for salmon. Water was pretty good, but large swell. As long as there are no wind, we were ok. We parallel a commercial salmon boat hoping that we can get some salmon. But after 3 to 4 hours of nothing, we decided to go back to the harbor. Meanwhile, the other two boats picked up the crab pots and scored another 30 crabs.

Menu items were:
pork ribs, beef tri tip, bbq chicken, abalone, vietnamese style crab, cioppino, pea shouts, korean noodles, dumplings, sweet rice, sushi, grilled corn, egg rolls, calamari, sea urchin, tarts, fortune cookies, venison, sausages, rum cake, ice cream, cookies, smoked salmon, halibut, watermellon, apple pie, bacon, eggs, bread, etc......

Beer, lots of beer. All kinds of beer. And that smirnoff ICE (thats good)

Photo's :
http://www.angelfire.com/stars3/pacific ... epics.html
*32 photo's. Click on photo to enlarge.

http://photos.yahoo.com/bc/fishinchips/ ... manchester
*30 photo's. Click on "Show All" to view all 30. click on photo to enlarge.

Ken