Pacific City Saturday Report

Got out with YakYak and Wannabe this morning at PC. Somebody drained lake pacific and filled it with an ocean. I guess it only was about a 4' swell from the south, but the waves bouncing off the headland made it ,,,interesting. Let's just say it was bigger.
Getting out was a bit more challenging but no real biggie.  YakYak and Wannabe were almost out to the Haystack by the time I got out of the impact zone.  Just before I caught up with them, the ff jumped from 40'-50' up to 25' and my jig got hung. I turned the boat around to pull it off and got my only rockfish (nice 2-3lbs black). Fishing was a little slower today than last time and that was the only fish that came home. YakYak got a nice black to the boat, but couldn't get to his net before it came unbuttoned. He and Wannabe were fishing on the outside of Haystack and got tossed around pretty good so we called it early and packed it in.

It was still fairly early so we decided to practice what I'd preached and do some re-boarding and surf landing drills.
Well, there was surf and we had to land.
YakYak nailed it and strolled out of the water like he was stepping out of the bathtub. He's done this before. Mike decided to work on his deepwater exits and let his boat go in on its own and eventually he caught up with it (and yes, he was dressed for immersion and quite comfortable in the water as well as on it). I followed his lead, but I dumped (ahhh, I mean practiced my surf exit and inspection of the bottom of my boat) closer to shore and I walked in with my boat. The dry-top/neoprene waders worked GREAT. They did not take on much water and got pounded in the surf. The water that did get in warmed up quickly and it worked like a wet suit. SWEET.

Since we were wet, we dumped all of our gear and played in the surf for a while. As I said, YakYak has kayak surfing NAILED. He wheeled  his FnD around like a short board and made it look easy.

[youtube=425,350]coLl9WWTIko[/youtube] 
 Mike,,,,practiced his impact zone, deep water re-entry skills and my hat is off to him as that has got to be the hardest place to "practice" getting back on. And he's about got it mastered! He ended his day with this pro-stylee ride in that just made it look easy.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=t3ZeG17116w

I got back out and rolled around (ok, got rolled around) for a bit. But I was about beat, so we went in. Not lots of fish, but everybody's skills got kicked up a level.


NOTE: This is the first time I have used youtube and I stumbled onto these 2 vids that have some great tips

Reading the Surf
http://youtube.com/watch?v=6pVOSqq84tQ

Surf Launching
http://youtube.com/watch?v=h8JyJolUrOE&mode=related&search=

Didn't know you were taking movies! Great stuff. Gotta get out there again soon!

Nice report.  And good for you guys for practicing.

I just enabled the mod that lets YouTube be embedded in the post.  So here's what you can do.

[youtube=425,350]t4sVPznVTQk[/youtube]

Just click the YouTube icon and embed the funny characters in the actual YouTube link.   In this case, the characters are t4sVPznVTQk.

-Allen

Even with the lean fishing, a good time was had by all.

Here's FFTW demoing how most of our landings went. He looks good right up to the end...

[youtube=425,350]fEfCJ0w84cc[/youtube]

--
Mike

FFTW!!! I'll give you 5 style points ... don't ask me on what scale.     Good effort though, not meaning to pick on you (too much).   

A couple pointers.  Perhaps paddle faster/harder, keep your yak moving forward and don't give the front end a chance to turn on you.  I'm always paddling as fast/hard as I can when going through the surf (both ways).  If/when you start turning, paddle hard to correct on the inside of the turn.  Sometimes I'll even shift my paddle in my hands to get a longer reach (which means more power to the turn).  I'll even grab the opposite paddle blade to get full extension.  I see you started to paddle on the outside of the turn.  It's instinct to try to paddle/brace on that side, but all it did was turn you more, start your lean, and continue the roll.  Paddle on the inside to correct and lean into the wave.  It will often times keep you upright and if you can't manage to correct the turn, leaning into the wave will allow you to side surf in, at least long enough to do a graceful exit.

I had similar problems when I first started surfing, mostly because it's instinct like I say, and also my whitewater training led me to "flash my butt" to the current, exactly opposite what you want to be doing.  Well, sort of.  It's kind of hard to define current in a breaking surf.  The water is actually rushing up the face of the wave, but your getting pushed forward by the wave itself.  So which way is the "current" actually going?   

-Allen

Allen, you sound exactly like YakYak. He really did give good instructions. But I was spanked before I even started paddling. That was as fast as I could go and all the bracing I had left. I received my lunch right on cue (sand sandwich).
I think Mike put that one up because I wouldn't do the fish dance for his son. But that's okay, I got more video