Sep Hendrickson's Rockfish/Crab Combination Trip Aboard The California Dawn Yields Hefty Rewards   By: Cal Kellogg December 27, 2008 More Articles by Cal

The ocean wasn't flat. The surface was covered with six foot swells, but due to the fact that the swells were widely separated and with zero wind, it felt as if the California Dawn wasn't moving at all.

With blue skies overhead and the bleak foreboding Farallons looming a short distance away, I free spooled my 6 ounce anchovy pattern P-Line Laser Minnow jig straight down off the boat's bow for my first drop of the day. Watching the shiny jig plunge downward, I noted that the water was exceptionally clear and the drift was slow.perfect conditions for jigging!

It took several seconds for my jig to hit the rocks 110 feet below. When it did, I immediately engaged the reel, retrieved about and yard of line and started lifting and dropping the jig just above the bottom, doing my best to imitate a dipping, darting, disoriented baitfish. The presentation must have been close to perfect, since the jig had only been on the bottom for about 10 seconds when the first savage strike occurred.

One second I was lifting the jig upward and the next second my powerful Lamiglas Big Baits Special rod was doubled over and braid was pulling out against the nearly locked down drag of my Abu Garcia Big Game reel.

By the shear ferocity of the grab you can usually distinguish the strike of a lingcod from that of other bottomfish, but you can never be sure how big the ling is immediately. All of them make a hard plunge for the rocks when they feel the hooks and in the first moments of the fight you can't gauge whether the ling you've hooked is 8, 18 or 28 pounds!

After the initial burst of power my fish started for the surface. While the ling fought me all the way to the boat, I knew it wasn't the double digit denizen I was looking for. Nevertheless, at 26 inches the ling would provide plenty of top-notch eating and I enthusiastically maneuvered it into my sack.

Seeing my quick success with the jig, Captain James Smith joined me on the bow and we went to work. I landed a second ling on my very next drop as James cranked up a feisty ling of his own. I've been in the ling zone before, but on this day the bite was ridiculously good. I jigged up 6 keepers on my first 8 drops. James busted 3 quality keepers in limited fishing time and Rudy Palacios fishing near the back of the boat nailed a pair of big lings weighing 12 and 18 pounds!

Seldom have I seen such hot jig action. Of the 24 anglers aboard, only myself, James and Rudy were dropping jigs, yet during the first hour of action we boated 11 quality keepers!

While us jiggers were whacking our lings, the other anglers aboard were rounding up a handsome array of big rockfish, while dropping shrimp flies and live anchovies. On our first drift, the rockfish bite had been a little slow, but on successive drifts the rockfish bite got so hot that it interfered with my lingcod fishing.

Every time my jig hit the bottom I would hook a black, brown, china or starry rockfish almost immediately. Sometimes, my jig wouldn't even make it to the bottom. Instead it would be bushwhacked 30 or 40 feet below the boat as it dropped.

With the red hot rockfish action we experienced, it didn't take long for the anglers aboard to complete their 10 fish limits. It wasn't even noon, when James announced over the boats speakers that it was time to stow the rods and head back toward the Golden Gate to pull crab pots.

I'd learned about the November 5 Sep Hendrickson California Sportsman Radio Show trip back in mid October while hosting a Cal Kellogg School of Fishing event aboard the California Dawn. Of course, I wasted no time asking James and Sep if I could tag along with Sep's listeners. Jigging for lings and eating crabs are two of my favorite pastimes, so how could I go wrong?

As we motored back toward Captain Smith's strings of crab pots, I headed back to the boat's cabin to see what delicious treats, Tawny Houston, the California Dawn's chef had prepared for us.

Sep loves to fish, there is no question about that, but as anyone that has attended an event organized by Sep knows, he also loves good food. As a result, I wasn't surprised when I found platters of tasty chicken wings, gourmet nachos, piles crab in the shell and sushi inside the cabin. It was an impressive spread, but in reality it was just another day aboard the California Dawn with excellent food and outstanding fishing!

Captain Chris Smith is visiting California from his home base up on the Kenai Peninsula in Alaska and was our acting deckhand for the day. As we approached the first string of crab pots, he organized the anglers so that everyone had a job to do whether it was helping him bring the pots aboard, measuring crabs or preparing fresh baits.

James and his brother run a very smooth and efficient crabbing program. The crab pots come aboard, the crabs are removed and the trap is rebaited and back in the water in the span of a couple minutes.

The crab season had only been open for three days and the weather had been bad, keeping most guys off the water. As a result crabs were plentiful and almost every pot held from 4 to 8 jumbo Dungeness crabs. With the crabs being so numerous and the speed with which the pots were handled, I don't think it took an hour to bring in full 6 crab limits for every person on the boat including the crew.

With the fish box full of crabs and the pots back on the bottom of the ocean there was nothing left to do but head back for Berkeley, gloating about the bounty we'd pulled from sea!

Captain Robert Gallia of the El Dorado has set of a crab cooking and cleaning station on the back of his boat to assist anglers returning to the Berkeley Marina with their crabs. I was pretty impressed with the way it worked.

The California Dawn's crew placed our crabs in vinyl onion bags. We took our bags of crabs across the dock to Robert's boat. He attached numbered chains to the bag and then lowered them into one of his three large propane powered boiling pots. 20 minutes later, Robert sends you on your way home with a bag of cooked, cleaned crabs that are ready for the table.

I'd like to thank Sep, James, Chris, Tawny, Sarah and all the California Sportsman Show listeners that attended the trip. It was a great time for all, and I can't wait for next fall, so we can do it again!

If you want to experience the excitement of a rockfish crab combination trip, you've got to book your trip soon. Rockfish season is slated to conclude at the end of November and it won't be long before the commercial crab season gets underway.