Want to catch a lobster yourself? Want to wrestle the beast and bring home dinner? Lobster season opens at 6 p.m. Friday, Sept. 26.
Plenty of adventurous souls will be on the water or in the water, hoop netting or diving. All throughout our coastal communities, folks will be dining on our delectable local spiny lobsters. Yummy!
Hoop nets can be bought at our local fishing tackle shops. Hoop netting is done primarily from boats, although hoops can be tossed from piers and rocks. The prime activity is at night.
Hoop netters bait their hoops with mackerel or other fish, deploy them near structure spots on the seafloor and then pull them regularly to harvest lobster. Then re-bait and re-deploy the hoops.
A lobster diving trip is an opportunity to get underwater and experience our ocean environment up close and personal. Once immersed in the underwater world of the lobster, you will no doubt find many other critters to enjoy as well as seascapes and strange wonderful plant life.
First, you should become a certified scuba diver. Our local dive shops can get you into a class you can complete long before lobster season ends.
In the class you will have fun and learn a lot about yourself, as well as about dive equipment and about the sea.
After becoming certified, you can buy your own gear, or rent. I recommend renting until you develop a feel for which types and brands of equipment you prefer.
Then make plans to go out on a large open-party sport dive boat, a private charter boat, or tag along with a friend on a private boat. You can even wade out into the water from the beach, after hauling your gear to a beach spot in close proximity to underwater reefs or wrecks.
Always dive with a buddy, for safety reasons.
Lobsters are found in good numbers in surprisingly shallow water in the early season.
When working around shoreline reefs, successful hunters often find themselves in less than six feet of water. Watch the swells and waves because the surf zone can be treacherous.
Shallow rocky terrain around our islands are favored destinations on lobster diving trips, however plenty of “bugs” are caught along our mainland coast. Wherever you go lobster hunting, you will soon learn that catching those surprisingly fast critters is not easy.
Hunting must be done by hand, which shifts the advantage to the lobsters. If you’ve tasted lobster, you know the reward is definitely worth the effort. Besides, it is pure adventure!
Do you love lobster but prefer others do the catching? Our Saturday morning Santa Barbara Fisherman’s Market is the perfect place to buy fresh lobster, right from the commercial boats they were caught from.
The market opens at about 7 a.m. each Saturday, at the pier at Santa Barbara Harbor. Our local lobsters also find their way into our fish markets, and into some of our great restaurants.
A special opportunity is coming right up — the Santa Barbara Harbor Seafood Festival, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 18. Come hungry and prepared to delight your palate with varied tasty treats from the sea.