Hi All:

I joined NorCal Kayak Anglers a few months ago but never got around to posting because I didn’t think that I had much to say other than “Hello.” Well, I finally do have a good story to tell after my experience at Pillar Point last Saturday, August 20 and I will share it below.

It was only my second time fishing in the ocean after lots of experience in lakes up near Truckee. It took me a while to gear up for ocean fishing and I was fortunate enough to get some tips from long-time NCKA moderator, “Tote” who gave me three basic safety rules before heading out to the ocean.

1.   Practice, practice, practice getting back into your kayak if you fall out …. Make sure you can flip it over and re-board it from all sides, including “cowboy style” from the front.
2.   Don’t have TMS (Too Much Sh**t) on your kayak ….Keep it simple in order to make it easy to get back in the boat. Don’t tether your fishing rods and other items to the boat. Use floats instead.
3.   Carry a marine radio that is attached to your PFD while out on the water.

I took this advice very seriously and went out to Truckee’s Prosser Reservoir in July and spent a weekend in the water practicing kayak flips and remounts until I could both right and remount my kayak within 20-30 seconds every time after hitting the water. I set up my gear so that the only things on deck are a center-cockpit fish finder and a couple of rod holders. I bought a marine radio and researched and purchased all of the right tackle to catch rock fish and lingcod outside of Pillar Point harbor in Half Moon Bay.

However, no matter how much you plan ahead, there is always something to surprise you …. On my first time out in the ocean, I started to get a bit seasick from looking down into the boat at the fish finder all the time. It was the first time in my life I had ever felt seasick!  As a result, I headed back in after only an hour of fishing which was well before I got close to losing my lunch. I knew that I had a long paddle back to the harbor and didn’t want to wind up paddling while actively sick. I was totally surprised that I wound up feeling seasick and would like to hear if others have had similar experiences.

I had a much better day on my second time out last Saturday after taking some Meclizine for motion sickness and I caught lots and lots of fish in four hours on the water. The only thing that could have made for a better day was a huge lingcod and I’m looking forward to one of those on my next time out.

I was paddling back to the harbor when I heard a distant splash and noticed that a kayak had flipped over about a quarter mile away. It seemed a bit odd since there was no wind and the water was calm. I looked over and saw the guy trying to right his kayak by reaching over on top and pulling it back over …. ‘Definitely NOT following Tote’s preferred method of ducking underneath the kayak to push up with one hand while pulling down with the other. I started to paddle over and saw another red flag when the guy tried to pull himself up and back into his newly righted kayak and he couldn’t do it. He was heavy and he almost tipped the kayak over again when he tried to remount. I finally got there and held the kayak steady while he tried to remount several times with no success. He was simply wasn’t strong enough to remount from the water. I asked him how he fell over and he told me that he was seasick and leaned over too far while trying to vomit off to the side of his kayak. So now I’ve got a big heavy guy who is too weak and seasick to climb back into his kayak. The only thing that kept me from calling the Coast Guard right then and there was that the guy was wearing a full wet suit and not in much danger of freezing to death right away.

I looked at this guy’s kayak and he had definitely violated all of Tote’s rules …. 1) He wasn’t able to remount his kayak, 2) He wasn’t carrying a marine radio, and 3) He had a bad case of TMS … His fish finder, battery and cables were all mounted in the front of the boat on the deck. He even had a solar collector mounted on the rear of his kayak in order to charge his battery. His transport wheels were also mounted on the back of his kayak. His poles, iPhone, and two bags with fish in them were all tethered to the boat. He even had a kayak anchor on the deck with lots of line that got all tangled up when the kayak flipped. I thought about pushing his bow down and having him crawl back on from the front, but there was “TMS” in the front of his kayak that prevented a remount from the front.

To make a long story short, I eventually spotted a couple of guys in ocean racing kayaks a ways off and paddled over to flag them down for help. The three of us then tried to pull the guy in the water back on board his kayak by tugging on his PFD with no success. Eventually, we wound up tipping his kayak on its side and had the guy grab the top rail of the sideways kayak. He kicked, and pulled himself up while we simultaneously pushed his kayak back over to horizontal, which dragged the guy up far enough onto his stomach so that we could pull him the rest of the way onto his kayak by tugging on his PFD. The racing kayakers then took off and I wound up with a very long paddle at <1 mph back into the harbor beside a kayaker who was both seasick and exhausted.

My lesson from this experience is that we all need to listen to Tote’s rules …. In particular, if you can't remount your kayak from the water in 30 seconds while blindfolded, then you shouldn't be out in the ocean. One more rule that I learned is to quit well before you lose your lunch. Life gets much more dangerous once you are debilitated with seasickness.

Interestingly enough, one of my colleagues at work saw a news report on KRON TV saying that another guy was rescued off Pillar Point in his kayak on
Sunday. I’d be interested if anyone has any information on that one too.

Anyway, that’s my first post to this forum. As I stated above, I’m new to ocean kayak fishing and would appreciate some feedback from the group on my experience above. Thanks for reading!

- RogerC

crazy!! Glad you were there to help him out. The ocean is very unforgiving. I still have to follow the TMS rule!! lol Although I have gotten a lot better haha.

Good job once again!

Welcome Roger!
Glad you finally came aboard.
It was great talking to you and Barry (Barry is a long time high school friend of mine).
I thought maybe I scared you away since I hadn't heard from you in a while.
You will find a TON of great advice from a lot of seasoned veterans on here.
And don't forget to familiarize yourself with the yakronyms. It will make things a lot more understandable here.
WTTM!!!!!!!!!!!

Welcome and thank you very much for sharing!  'good to get reminder from time to time and glad he was able to make it back.  Nice job!

Tote educated you well.  You listened, and then got an unfortunate face to face test of reality in real life. 
You will forever be able to preach what you practice going forward.

My 15 year old son started fishing with me in the ocean this year.  He's been stoked to catch his first ocean fish ever since I started bringing rocks and lings home 8 years ago when I started. 

He listened intently on all the ocean fishing advice and training I put him through while safely in a lake.   
On his first outing in the ocean, he got to see first hand how a failed self rescue goes and how close an unprepared person can be to dying out there.  Similar to your experience, we had an out of shape, under experienced guy (great guy BTW), fall out due to a case of sea greens chumming. 

I just happened to notice a red kayak riding a bit too high in the water off in the distance between swells.  We shot over there to see what was going on.  He was hanging off the port side of the kayak and looked whooped.  His VHF was apparently not waterproof or somehow drowned on him.  We did hear him blowing his whistle as we got closer to him, so he was trying that as effort.

My son helped stabilized his kayak from the rear port, as I pulled the guy up over the side of his kayak from the other side.  Then my son went and rounded up all he could that was floating around us. 

The guy was green as hell, still trying to heave, but was only dry at this point.  We loaded him up with some water, some Scopace and had him stare at the horizon until he was stable again.   He was in no shape to work his way back to dock the 1.5 miles we where up the coast.  So, I had my son stay close to my trusted fishing buddy as I towed this poor guy all the way to dock with my Adventure.  I just held on to his bow toggle, and peddled for about and hour to dock.  BTW he was on an Outback with TMS that we had to remove to get room to get him back on board. 

Bottom line, my son has seen first hand the dangers of being on the ocean and saw how to execute an assisted remount.  He talked about it intently on the way home that day, so I know it will stick in his mind as a solid reminder. While I was on my way back to him after dropping off the poor due to his wife, my son got to experience a surfacing gray whale 20 feet away.  He's hooked! 

What is TMS?

What is TMS?

TMS = too much shit

Thanks for sharing the story.  You earned some good Karma points