Heh. I fish Carmel bay frequently and often go to Big Sur to fish as well. In fact, I was on a boat fishing south of pebble beach this last week. This place is in a word majestic. I often also go kayak fishing right off Carmel bay. That place is also full of deep valleys and canyons. It's incredible since right after when I take off from Carmel river state beach, the water becomes 50 ft then 100ft just 50 ft out. I mark fish on my fishfinder and paddling out, I can see the water depth drop dramatically. There are many areas in Carmel bay where my fishfinder won't work since the depth is over 1000ft which is its max range.
True story. A few years ago, salmon season had just started and I and a few friends decided to go to Moss Landing to launch our kayaks to the edge of the submarine canyon (same canyon that goes thousands of feet deep and is explored by the Monterey bay institute) to fish since salmon like to hang out on the shelf of the drop off ledge. It's pretty insane that the canyon starts just 100ft out of the harbor mouth. We didn't realize it but soon a whale started approaching nearby and was hanging out (I later learned that they get close in shallower waters to escape killer whales). Nary a bite from the salmon, I kept an eye on the whale which was still about 500 yards out. It just so happened that all of a sudden this entire pod of 8 or 9 whales showed up and stayed closer to us about a few hundred yards away. After a while with no bites, paddling around one of my friends got too close to one of the whales. He was getting a slight bite on his line and was concentrating on it and didn't notice that it started swimming towards him. We yelled to him and he finally saw the big fish like mammal. He started to panic a bit since he didn't want to give up the bite in case he lost the fish bolstered by the fact that we had already had been there for a long time without any bites. So he held on. The whale approached and right before his kayak about 10 ft away, it dove down and came up the other side. I remember seeing his kayak turn around due to the displacement of the water. We were glad that nothing had happened til we realized that when the whale went under, it took his fishing line and had taken it to the other side. So here was my friend holding on to his fishing rod with the line going out and around to the other side of the whale. He started tugging on the line and I remember the whale looking at him with the eye on its right side trying to see what the fuck my friend was doing. Well thankfully, after a little bit he got his line back with a strong tug and the whale soon went away.
They're amazing creatures. Those whales. They knew we were out and about and there were times that they had us surrounded. But they knew not surface underneath us and never did bother us except that one time with the incident with my friend.
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