BajaNomad

A Krill encounter

baitcast - 3-13-2012 at 11:09 AM

Its been 4 years and there are alot of new members,join me on a fun day.



Two years ago I and a good friend were camped behind La Gringa,just across from one of my favorite places Smith Isla and looking for dorado which were supposed to be around somewhere,s.
Having no luck the first day,everything seemed dead in every direction,O well try one more day before leaving.
Day two,what a difference,rays jumping eveywhere,several whales in the area,looks good,having only a 12' cartopper you must be rather careful
I made a run for the main channel hopeing for the main event and found nothing,not the first time and probaly wont be the last,went back to the isla and hoped for a yellow or two,my favorite rock,it wont let me down.
Nearing the tip of the isla we heard what seemed to sound like a heavy rain,I shut the motor down to hear better,the sound was coming from around the corner and getting louder,so I fired it up and made for the sound of the chaos and there before us was the most unusual sight these old eyes have ever seen,couple of whales,sea lions and about a million skipjack and NO BIRDS not one,there were no baitfish jumping!!
A area of maybe a square mile was white and pink,long lines of skipjack shoulder to shoulder pushing water,no jumpers,didn,t take long for us to get a jig in the water and wham hooked up instantly,but wait my bud was hooked up to something much larger,after a a long bout up comes a YELLOW!,I hook a skipjack and something grabs him after a while I bring in a head,my Bud yells something I look up and a huge whale is coming straight at us and goes under the boat comes up on the other side and blows and I nearly faint!!!!!!!!1

We get broke off bit off the sea lion gets us the sharks get half our fish,never seen anything like this,the noise is awesome...........things are completly out of control and we are the only boat there

What is the attraction? what are these things eating?..........Well we finally figure it out,when we would get a fish to the boat they would spit up gobs of little shrimp,1/4 to a 1/2'' long,light green to pink in color,there were billions of these things in the water,you could not see through them they were so thick,as we would look down we could see flashes of big fish..........for two or three hrs this lasted then nothing.

The same happened the next day about 10am to 12 or 1pm,I did not discover what these were until we got home,its sames there are 80 different kinds of krill both cold water and warm,the SOC has two.

Has anyone out there had a similar experence,it was a first for me after many years of fishing the gulf
BAITCAST

woody with a view - 3-13-2012 at 11:41 AM

the visual on the rain squall sound is awesome! you're a lucky man!!!

mulegemichael - 3-13-2012 at 03:55 PM

had it happen many times up north in the pacific with coho salmon sipping krill for as far as one could see; acres and acres of salmon feeding on these tiny shrimp.

DavidT - 3-13-2012 at 07:23 PM

Couple weeks ago some of the kayak guys fishing La Jolla Cove weren't catching. So they scooped up some krill and made ceviche.