The other side of Elk 08

You've seen the fishing side of the tourney but there was plenty of other distractions.....coincidentally, I've been yakfishing for about 5 years now and my first actual yakfishing shirt was an NWKA shirt donated to the raffle....thanks fellas.  This was my weekend....


It started off right, I pulled up at my boy Angel's pad in Sunnyvale just before 8 o'clock and he had all his gear waiting on the curb.  The man needed a uhaul truck instead of my long bed so we decided to forgo a carpool and he took his own rig.  About an hour later he's all done packing and tells me, "oh yeah, I need to gas up also...."      At the pump.


We cruised the concrete jungles, I love this spot on 19th avenue, just as you get to the top of a hill you can see the gate towers.


But it is still guerilla driving style, people speeding, people driving slow, changing lanes, cutting people off and every now and then you have to deal with the morons who pull their cameras out to snap photos.....tourists.




Petaluma and Santa Rose were stop and go traffic but once you get off 101 and onto 128 the scenery is awesome.  People still drive crazy, people tailgate through the windy parts, people don't pull over to let traffic pass them, people pull off the road at random spots and at high speeds, and half wits pull their cameras out to snap pics....sheesh.



Then it happened, we crossed the Navarro, cruised south and found base camp. The week prior I started buying camping gear and my big purchase was a new tent. I didn't realize how BIG of a purchase it was till I tried to set it up. Yowzers, a 6 man tent for one dude didn't seem like a bad idea at the store  :smt003 The peanut gallery had their way with it but what the hell, I'm a go big or go home kind of guy and in this case I went big and took my home with me.  Thats me....the guest cottage on the side was Angel and Liz.


After camp was set up we had a 3 on 3 indoor soccer tourney in the tent.


and the tent also hosted the afterparty.


After we finished all the work......we went to work.





This is Joel, his regular beverage of choice is a Mike's Hard Lemonade or Schmirnoff Ice, for once in his life there was someone with a wussier drink...


But he refused to be outdone......



One taste and he said it was too strong....the champ lives on.


And then.....shots


followed by shenanigans.  clean surface.....check


backing off, apply corner.....check


Smooth it out....check.


Thumbs up while sticker bombing OK Frontman equipment with Hobie stickers.....check  (Joel is sponsored by Ocean Kayak and regularly talks trash about Hobie, I could care less but covering his equipment with stickers while he was drunk was fun.)


Bro started walking a little crooked so we cut him off.


Later we found him running around with a speargun....do not adjust your screen, after all those lemonades he was spinning in circles.....this is him mid flight.


Here he is lining up on a BIG ling cod......we didn't have the heart to tell him that he wasn't in the water.



It started to get close to dinner time and manning the man fryers were none other than master rodsmith Eric Kunz and ChuckE.  Eric was working the vegies, seems like a difficult task to hook each mushroom out of the grease with a gaff but he got it done in rockstar fashion. (Kunz makes killer gaffs and custom Rods)


Chucke is a true artist and hands down the best fry cook on the planet...screw spongebob squarepants its all about ChuckE Smalltuna.  Next time your kid cranks up nickelodeon and you hear the question "who lives in a pineapple under the sea?".....Its Chucke Smalltuna. (Chuck recently went on a kayak trip to Mex and caught a bunch of bruisers....mixed in his quiver of big fish was a tiny yellowfin which led to endless harassment)

Chucke Smalltuna minding his own business.


The fryer musta said something he didn't like cause he responded....."you talkin to me?"


Then sprung into action.



It was getting late and a jam session was brewing....



Morning, it was a bit misty out


But everyone treked down the hill and prepped for launch.



The swell was small but it had a weird doubled up chop on it.  Everyone who prefished pretty much avoided the north like the plague.....but not us....and we paid for it.  I'm always in the zone when fishing so otw action shots are scarce.  You're not missing anything anyways, I spent most of the day dragging around a trap rigged blue so action was non-existent till I worked the iron.  About noon the wind kicked up and the swell seemed to be growing a little. 

Every now and then a macker came through.  Peaks looked like this...

and the pit made the rocks disapear.


We came back in, grabbed a quick bite to eat and headed back out for an afternoon of diving.  The wind had picked up considerably and when it gusted I was in full sprint mode and going nowhere, crazy.  We got in some nice shallow 10 foot water on the lee of the northside rocks and the abs were everywhere.  Unfortunately for dive master Angel his bottom time has decreased from 2 minutes last year to about 12 seconds this year.  Even though I was spotting them for him, drawing him a map to them, marking them with an iron/float and actually lifting the rocks they were attached to right out of the water and onto his yak for him he was only able to get one I directed him too.....in the pocket of 50 abs.  He ended up finding 2 more 7's in like 5 or 6 feet.  I bashed him a little for popping such tiny abs but he said anything over 7.25 is too gamey for him. 
The beast

   

He's been independently doing his own recruitment studies and the number off offspring this season was insufficient so he's now making them mate in his tankwell....just to make sure babies are being produced.


We had company


Freddie topside hocking some defog into his mask



Dinner was great, the award ceremony was cool and the raffle was better.  I scored some nice parting gifts including a pack of Dominator plastics, model: ball breaker....color: white trash, with the busty cartoon dominatrix on the front.

Day 3 we had plans for fishing, possibly diving but woke up at a leisurely 8:30 and just kicked back at camp.  Angel may not be in the same class as Chucke Smalltuna but I know better than to bite the hand that feeds me.....he makes a mean scrambled egg and toast.


Joel was gearing up to go diving.  Its not very often you see people regress but Joel here started off freediving.....then went to scuba.....and this day he was rockpicking.
He wanted to make a fashion statement so he started by wearing 2 different dive socks....tre chic.


Its getting harder and harder to get the good paparazzi shots of this guy cause he's catching on.....but I still got him.  He ate too much at the potluck and struggled to get his suit on.


He tied the pool noodle around his waist for extra flotation while wading the tidepools.


Showing Brian how to properly spear air.

He split and we hung around at camp the strolled down to the beach to see how he was doing.  Adam showed us the way.



Angels keys fell out of his pocket and he had to go in after them.


Joel stalking snails


and doing handstands


And a clean re-entry.





Zee, you're alot taller in person....nice to finally meet ya bro

Zee, you're alot taller in person....nice to finally meet ya bro

I try not to stand out but NCKA is vertically stunted.. Right back at ya AG. As usual that report was some serious comedy. Thanks for posting.

Z

Great post!!  Thanks for all the pix!