Lings moments license#
Those motoring in from Brookings are in for a 40-minute ride and must pay $18.40 - California’s one-day angling license fee - for the privilege. But those motoring out of Crescent City rarely venture past the reef’s rocks well south of the lighthouse. The lighthouse’s location - smack-dab between Brookings and Crescent City - should generate heavy interest from both ports. The Kraken rarely has to share the reef with many other boats, given the geography. “You would not believe how much life is out here.”īut strangely enough, not much of that life is of the two-legged ilk. “This place is so fertile,” McGahan says. But it’s not uncommon for Kraken customers to release two, three or more smaller lings just to stay in the game for a much larger hitchhiker. The goal is to drop an 8-ounce jig through those rockfish clouds - sometimes anglers can feel the jig knocking into black rockfish on the descent - to the bottom after the larger and more desired lingcod.Īnglers can keep two lings over 24 inches per day, and most will tell you their bonus-fish status is such that legal-sized lings are rarely released. The reason is that these deep-water caverns intermixed with pockets of sandy shoals are awash in krill, sardines and other baitfish that make it an attractive spot for everything from gray whales and sharks to massive schools of black rockfish that can cover 75 feet or more of the water column in some areas. “Every now and then, I have to pull out the species chart to see what we’ve caught,” he says. “Even I get surprised by some of the species we catch out here.
“We have the potential to catch so many species here,” says McGahan, who skippers the Kraken out of Brookings for Brookings Fishing Charters. They all congregate over the fertile rocks and bait-generating currents that converge right around the storied lighthouse. And, of course, the occasional deep-water denizen, Pacific halibut. Named for the famed lighthouse erected 150 years ago after a storied and deadly ocean liner wreck, the reef is well-known for its lingcod bounty that come to the gaff either conventionally by biting a plastic squid jig or more ceremoniously via the hitchhiking route.īut it’s also home to a cornucopia of bottomfish species that highlight the size and rainbow color spectrum of the briny deep.
Lings moments series#
George Lighthouse Reef halfway between Brookings and Crescent City, California, features a series of deepwater rocks and roiling currents that are home to a dense and diverse collection of bottomfish. Luck and beauty combine regularly for those on board the Kraken during special trips just over the Oregon border to what bottomfishers know as perhaps the Pacific’s most fertile near-shore fishing reef among the lower 48 states. Michael McGahan gaffs the big ling to complete the great bait-and-switch.
Much to its lingcod’s chagrin, it bites into the small rockfish and embeds itself on the hook.Īfter a bit of a street-fight, Kraken Capt.
Within minutes, a huge lingcod attacks the black rockfish. “I’ll leave it down there a bit to look for a hitchhiker,” Foster says. George Lighthouse is located between Bookings and Crescent City, California.īROOKINGS - Brent Foster feels the simple tapping of what feels like a small black rockfish on his line 100 feet below the charterboat Kraken, and Foster would rather parlay that rockfish into a monster worthy of the boat’s name.
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