By Bill Roecker

Right on schedule, the San Diego long range fleet has located some very large tuna in southern waters. Skippers had been predicting for several weeks that the cows were about ready to graze, if only the sea temperature and the breeze would back down.

It looks like that may be happening, as today’s round of reports shows the Royal Polaris may have one or more 200-pound tuna aboard, and if so, Billy Santiago Jr. can claim the first cow of the season from the Baja peninsula. Other boats are headed toward the area, so we’ll soon know if the bite’s on, and it’s trophy tuna time.

First Baja Cow

“Well let's start about 04:00 hours in the morning,” said the report from Royal Polaris November 7, “we had a big surprise for Chuck Nowicki. Chuck is known for his famous sound once he gets hooked up. So we all call him Freshy. This morning Chuck would hook and land his first 200-pound plus Yellowfin tuna, in the dark. We were fishing offshore, just drifting and bingo, Chuck was on. We would hook a few more fish in the 70 to 80 pound range.

“Once the sun came up, we would start looking, the morning was a bit slow, but around 14:00 hours everything would change. The ocean came to life, and we began hooking 100-pound plus Yellowfin tuna. We would have four to five going for the rest of the afternoon.

“Once the smoke had cleared, we would end up with 44 Yellowfin tuna. Most were in the 130 to 150 category, with a few getting close to the 200-pound mark, but we will find out once we get home. Many of our passengers caught the largest fish of their lives, and they all had that Yellowfin glow. We also had some 25 to 35-pound Dorado in our count for today.

“Hot rods for today were Joe Amagrande, Chris Petersen, Matthew Miller, Scott Schuttler, Chuck Nowicki (Freshy), Paul Domingos, and Henry Maze, just to name a few.

“Billy had a decision to make, and that decision was to stay and finish the trip tomorrow, or start moving north and give our passengers more fishing time.”



Moving On Out

“We spent our first two days along the beach,” wrote Excel skipper Justin Fleck November 7, “where we had good fishing on yellowtail and school sized tuna. The yellows were mostly caught in the morning and the tuna in the afternoon. Now that everyone has plenty of fish on board, we are going to spend the remainder of our trip looking for wahoo and trophy tuna. The weather was choppy for a couple of days but is very nice now.”



Indy On Skinnies

“Good evening, today we targeted and picked at wahoo,” said the report from Independence November 7, “and ended the day with 25 fish in the 30 to 55-pound range. We also caught some school-size yellow fin and yellowtail as well, and released many small tuna and yellows in the pursuit of bigger game. Our weather has become better with less wind and sea than this morning. Tomorrow we plan to fish the lower banks in hopes of getting on some bigger tuna.”



Intrepid On Move

“We started the day with a wide open bite on smaller grade Yellowfin,” said Intrepid’s report for November 7, “mixed with a few Yellowtail. The bite started around 4:00 am and lasted until about 11:00 am. After a couple days of traveling the yanking and cranking was a welcome change of pace. During this action a few anglers had the idea of dropping a live Bonito down to the bottom on a dropper loop rig. This was greeted on a few occasions with a sudden violent tug. On the other end of the line was grouper ranging from 25-70 lbs. Needless to say, not every one of these creatures hooked was landed.

“After we had our fill of catching and releasing the small Tuna fish, which I am happy to say, a lot of our passengers did, we pulled anchor and went looking for another catch. After a few hours of trolling around we finished up with a nice batch of Wahoo. Since we did not see the quality grade of Tuna that we were hoping to see today we are making a move in hopes of more action on a little bigger fish for tomorrow. We will let you know if our move pays off.”



Fishing In Southern Waters

“The wahoo's didn't bite as well as hoped for,” reported skipper Bruce Smith for the Shogun November 7, “but we sure made up for it with numbers of yellowfin, yellowtail and at the end of the day, flat-out full-speed dorado action.

“Our wind comes and goes, overall it’s good weather. Now it’s on to find some bigger fish.”