Decided to do a little pre fish for the upcoming Semana Nautica tournament next weekend at Haskell's. I also decided to take my nephew Sean out for his first float tube trip ever. We launched about 6:30 in small to medium (by float tube standards) surf. Unfortunately the tide was all wrong with a super low tide at about 5:30. Otherwise the conditions looked good with light winds, green water etc. I statrted Sean out throwing the crank as it is easier to fish then the Big Hammers. In the first 2 hours I managed 2 short flatties between 20 and 21 inches. Then Sean nails his first float tube flattie, about 20 inches. Then about 10 min. later he nails his first WSB about 22 inches.

http://www.calfishing.com/dc/user_files/1234.jpg

He was stoked!

Then I look down the beach and I see this float tuber walking our way. Instead of launching at the regular spot down the beach, this guy walks all the way down to where we were and prepares to launch. I'm thinking, this guy is crazy, the surf has picked up since we launched and this area is full of rocks, he's gonna get worked for sure. Sean yells over to me "how much you wanna bet, this guy flips", he knew it and it was his first trip. I knew it and I've been out a million times, the only one that didn't know it was the guy about to flip. He launches and it actually is lookin pretty good for him as he clears the first 2 small waves, (I've stopped fishing at this point to watch the show) I look outside and sure enough, here comes a good one. The guy doesn't even come close to clearing it and the next thing I see is the bottom of his tube in the white water. I stopped laughing long enough to make sure he made it out of the tube and was busy slogging back to the beach. I have to give the guy credit though as he regained his composure and got ready to launch again at the same spot. This time he gets hit again by a wave but it wasn't as big and he finally made it outside. The only thing he lost was his hat, which I later found floating and returnd. He fished dead bait and got a short and a barely legal and then paddled in.

By then the wind had picked up, the weeds moved in and the water browned out, so we headed back. Sean nails another flattie on the 3 inch clear red flake Big Hammer, but breaks it off at his legs. He said it looked legal. I hooked and farmed another one. All in all a good day.

Bryan

Attachment #1, (.jpg file)