By Bill Roecker

Royal Star doesn’t make many trips of only a day and a half, so when the opportunity came for Paul Sweeney and I to step aboard for a shot at early season albacore and bluefin tuna, we got to the dock a couple of hours early. Nearly everyone was already aboard, including our skipper Brian Sims and his crew.

It seemed odd to pull away from the dock at seven in the evening, with the sun shining. The boys had the boat already baited up with full tanks of mixed sardines and anchovies, so we felt well stocked with finbait ammo. Skipper Sims gave us the orientation lecture after we’d eaten our supper sandwiches and were clear of Point Loma. He said boats fishing that afternoon had some success at about 90 miles. That’s where he wanted to start our day’s fishing.

Royal Star loafed downhill all night. The boat seems quieter than I remembered, which may have something to do with the many recent improvements made over the spring downtime for boat work. Owner-operator Tim Ekstrom told me on the dock before we left that he and Randy Toussaint had replaced, rebuilt or restored virtually everything on the boat in the time since they’d bought it. That included the engines, generators, water-making and electrical systems, refrigeration, fish holds, etc.


“We’ve replaced virtually all the boat’s machinery,” he said. “After a boat’s built and been running for a while you learn what needs to be done.”

When first light came we began to troll the albacore jigs. The sea was ruffled, with a three to four-foot swell from the northwest. The morning water temperature was 64.5 degrees, making for excellent conditions.

Our first two stops came on meter marks that produced bluefin tuna. The first stop brought a first-ever bluefin for two young ladies on their first ride aboard a long ranger. The girls were out with dad, Steve Rodriquez of Alta Loma. Madison Rodriquez, 11, and her big sister Abby, 13, reeled in a brace of bluefin of 23 and 25 pounds, weighed on the ship’s big scales.

“Mine was really heavy,” said Madison. “He went down and stayed there for a really long time. He was a very pretty color, just beautiful.”

Madison goes to Banyan Elementary School in Alta Loma.

Abby said her 25-pound shortfin “…was tiring to reel in. I had a loose drag, so we tightened it up. He went straight out.”

Abby will be a freshman at Los Osos High School this fall, where she wants to play second base in softball.

The two girls got their bluefin with seven-foot Shimano spinning outfits, rigs Steve had bought to help them learn to fish, not a bad idea for starts, as they say. Later in the afternoon dad got his recognition for the trip’s best albie, a 24-pounder. Rodriguez owns Steve’s Professional Glass Tinting in Upland.


We spent the morning in run and gun fashion, trolling from one stop to another, for one or two fish at a stop. As the day went on, we saw more albacore and bluefin schools at the surface, jumping and puddling on the tiny bait that always makes fishing tough in the early season. Whether you call them noseeums or two eyes and a wiggle, those one to two-inch baitfish get all the attention of the arriving gamefish.

Tuna eating little mackerel or sardines, saury or anchovies of that size aren’t really tuned in to the sardines and medium to large anchovies of the sort most commonly available to sportboats. Some of us tried small silver lures or plastic baits, but I didn’t see much caught with artificials.

Albacore will bite trolled jigs even when they’re eating fish not much bigger than krill, however, and we kept busy most of the morning, picking away with our Zuker’s and cedar plugs. I saw albacore caught on the skirted jigs in green and black, zuchinni and black and purple colors; the standard stuff for trolling.

Thanks to Bill Miagawa at Zuker’s, we gave the boat a couple of new jigs, and I saw those produce later. Thanks also go to Mustad, for the small packages of hooks and baitmakers we gave all passengers, along with a calendar.

We saw very few kelp paddies in the area. At mid-morning we found one that wasn’t large, smaller than a piano, but it was holding yellowtail. Anglers picked off eight or ten of those. They were paddy yellows, all right, about six or eight pounds, but one was the real deal, a solid 21-pounder caught by Brian Verzella of Encinitas.

The day came on cloudy and cool, with a light breeze. Late in the morning we had a stop that produced six bluefin. None of them were mine. I was having One Of Those Days. Snakebit, the best feat I could manage all day was to feel a bite, and reel in a sardine with a crushed head. I tried all my stealth tricks, being first into the water, using light gear, fluorocarbon, ringed hooks, trying different sized baits, etc.

We ate a nice lunch featuring a chicken wrap, caught a few more albacore and bluefin on brief stops, and went into the afternoon doldrums, looking but not finding. The area we fished was holding fish, we knew, because we could see five seiners and half a dozen San Diego sportboats. Some of the seiners were working, with half-hauled nets hanging as though they were waiting for the pen boat. A couple of aircraft were flying around nearby, indicating the presence of bluefin. At the end of the day we could see two high-winged airplanes and two orange helicopters circling near the little seiner fleet.

Around four in the afternoon fishing began to pick up again. We had a stop for six bluefin, and several more albacore stops. We drew a few blanks, of course, stopping on marks or schools of jumpers that flat wouldn’t play with us at all.

I saw two schools notable for their size. The first one was a bunch of bluefin about a hundred yards square, swirling and jumping right up to the point the boat was 30 feet off. They sank out, and as we flylined our baits out, reappeared 200 yards behind us, fooling about at the surface again.

Then we saw a school of albacore in the hour or two of sunlight we got near the day’s end. It was as large as any I’ve seen, about 200 yards long and 100 yards wide. I don’t know how deep it was, but everywhere I looked I could see flashing sides under the jumpers. Some of those sides looked too big to be albacore, but they had to be albies because of the bright silver finish shining through the pristine water, so blue it was almost purple. The water temperature had climbed to 65.5 degrees.

We got four or five fish off that school. Then, just before seven p.m., skipper Sims found a school of longfin that bit for several minutes. It was like the evening rush hour for the fish. Most of our 22 passengers were hooked up at once. Even the cursed sportswriter found an acorn, a 16-pound albacore that snapped on a big anchovy and then tussled on 25-pound line for five minutes. My reel seat was loose, I noticed as the reel clunked back and forth. I couldn’t do much about it while I was in the middle of the fight, but I tried to tighten it between cranks and lifts.

Second skipper Greg Tanji came to my rescue, and cranked down on the tightening bands. I was able to finish the fight shortly after, and Tanji gaffed my fish. The albacore were still biting in the most prolonged event of the day, and before it was over we got a dozen on the deck. I put out a sardine, and immediately got another strike, right under the center of the stern.

But that was the end of that bite, so we moved on. Fifteen minutes later were found another bunch that bit and stayed a few moments, and I caught my second albie of the day. I was so relieved I only fished one more stop. It was nearing sunset. I broke my gear down while I still had good light.

Sims fished on until complete darkness, and we got several more albacore, but the day was basically finished for making a catch. We had over 80 fish for the day, one of the best so far this year. Some of the other boats we fished with may have done as well or better.
The two girls, Abby and Madison, won the prizes we put up for the first albacore and the first bluefin. Nice guy and vetranarian Bob Thayer of Nuevo won the jackpot for a the day’s best bluefin, a 27-pounder.

Partner Paul Sweeney and I would like to thank Royal Star and her crew, who served long, hard and well during on of the year’s longest days, when we fished from sunup to sundown. Skipper Brian Sims, deckhands Greg Tanji, Blake Wasano, Steve Gregonis, Issac Sullen and chefs Drew Rivera and Jeff Grant did us right. We got some great HD video and some very nice still photos, a few of which will go out with this story.

To sum things up, I was much encouraged by what I saw on the water. There are a lot of fish out there, both bluefin and albacore. They’ll be drawing close enough for the dayfleet sooner rather than later, I think. According to the skippers I’ve talked with in the past few days, the fish are moving northward.

The way the fish bit at day’s end made me think we’ll be able to catch them, as they move off the tiny bait of spring and feed on larger sardines and anchovies as summer progresses. Keep your hooks and your reflexes sharp, and you’ll get your share of the summer tuna fishing.

By Bill Roecker

Three and a half days of fishing at John Ireland’s Rancho Leonero split partner Paul Sweeney and I on two marlin boats, so we could shoot “boat-to-boat,” as they say in the industry. Paul went with Jack Nilsen of Accurate on Mark Raynor’s Jen Wren, while I went with Ireland aboard his Maton.

We saw a few jumpers, and got a marlin the first day, a nice 130-pounder by my estimation. Gary Tubbs of Escondido played it to release. Nilsen got a sailfish. The marlin took a trolled jig, and the sailfish came on a drop back bait for Jack, who was field-testing his new line of super-strong small reels, which he calls the B2X or Extreme series, with 400, 500 and 600 models.

“The 600 series would be similar to the old 6/0 size,” said Jack. “It’s like the 665.”

The other reel numbers are scaled down accordingly, and closely match the 870 and the 270 Accurates. Jack was also using his new line of rods and his AccuBraid backing.



“We enjoyed casting to billfish on the 7040 Accurate Xtreme matched to the new B2 Xtreme 500, loaded with 60-pound AcccuBraid,” said Nilsen. “We had excellent opportunities on billfish—we hooked maybe one of eight we cast to, but that’s the way fishing is. It’s a challenge to cast live bait to these fish with the outriggers and all the other gear out.

“It was a joy to handle these light rigs. We had to cast over the outriggers, and it was very effective with the lighter gear.

“We spotted a lot of finning fish with gyroscopic binoculars. I think getting four to the boat was just fine. Our main action was on the live bait after they approached the spread.”

East Cape’s weather was fine on all days, with a pattern of south in the late morn, coming around to east or north for a short period in the afternoon, before settling to a soft breeze from the south again. Each day clouds built over the local mountains, trying to become thunderheads before they spread out to disperse. Air temperature got into the 90’s in the daytime. Sea temps varied in the mid-70’s.

That first night it rained lightly before dawn, not usual. It sure made the countryside smell great, though.

On our second day we lost radio contact with Jen Wren before we got our sardine baits from the local panga men selling it. Tubbs and I elected to fish inside, as we were without Ireland for the day and Gary wanted to try for a roosterfish. He already had his first marlin.

We fished hard, flylining sardinas for a variety of yellowtail snapper (Pargo Amarillo), cabrilla, sierra, roosterfish, barred pargo and a few pesky trumpet fish. We fished on both sides of Rancho Leonero that day, and found the best concentration of roosterfish just off the boat garage at Buena Vista. We released six or eight pez gallo.



“We got four marlin!” said Paul when he came in late that afternoon, happy about the footage and the stills he’d shot with Nilsen’s party. That many should have been plenty for testing new rigs by Jack Nilsen.

Paul told us about making bonito for bait and using tubes to keep them alive. We sat on stools with Tubbs at the Rancho Leonero bar, improved some but basically unchanged, like the rest of the resort. We looked out at the coconut palm trees, the white beach and the boats bobbing, moored out in blue water. The boys enjoyed cold Pacificos, tortilla chips and fresh ceviche made for us by the cooks and bartender, from a fish I caught earlier that day.

I was pleased we’d taken the trouble to head, gut and ice that sierra mackerel. If you’ve never tried fresh sierra as ceviche, it may be useless trying to explain how good it is. Let’s just say it’s special stuff, and the resort did a fine job with it.

The boys hadn’t eaten ceviche before. They ate the whole bowlful, then went out to the veranda for sunset dinner overlooking the calming Sea of Cortez. During the red into blue dusk we had a choice of fish, beef or chicken tacos, with all the fixings and side dishes, flan for desert. All meals on this veranda are memorable, but the sunset dinners there can’t be matched.

We slept on brand new Serta mattresses on the second floor of the newest addition, at the front of the hotel. The bathrooms here are even larger than the super-size unit in the rest of the resort, and they’re walled off to the thatch roof for privacy. The air conditioning worked flawlessly, near silent. There was plenty of clean, fresh water from the aquifer coming out of the nearby rugged peaks.

Our third day of fishing found Paul aboard the Maton with Gary Tubbs and myself. Captain Ireland was at the wheel, and the breeze was down. The sea was almost flat, with the trace of a wrap-around Pacific swell and a slight ruffle over half the surface.

The breeze was down, and so were the marlin. Where many jumpers had been seen the day before, now there were none. No finners, either. It was an hour or more before we saw a fish up. It sank out as we approached. We threw live bait on a feeder that was slashing the surface, and it refused the offering of a lively green jack.

Around midday we saw a couple of jumpers in the distance. We trolled and watched and waited and watched. We saw only one other fish being fought on a dozen other boats.

“There’s a big dorado!” shouted Ireland from his perch over the cockpit of the Maton.

We could see the tip of the tail and parts of the dorsal fin sticking out of the water as the Maton approached from an angle to pull the jigs in front of the fish. Deckhand-skipper Gambino lobbed out another fresh jack.

No deal. The dorado sank out. We covered the near area a couple of times with the jigs, and saw no more of the dorado.

Sitting up on the Shamrock’s flying bridge with the skipper, I asked John Ireland about roosterfishing on the Ranch.

“I’ve been here since 1982,” he recalled. “In 1983 I was shoveling sand, when I saw my first roosterfish. A kid walked by with one that was still flopping. There were more kids on the beach, grabbing stranded roosterfish, big 50 and 60-pounders!

“Those roosters were chasing bait right up onto the beach, and some of them were stranding themselves. They have absolutely no fear. And that’s how I learned about roosterfish. I didn’t even know they were here until then.”

Many minutes later, returning from a foray toward the south, we saw the dorado again, going along in the same direction with its tail and fin out, when we returned to our original position. This time it took a bait.

Gary Tubbs, 29 and fresh from his first marlin and first roosterfish, was now on the biggest dorado of his life. It made numerous jumps, flipping and cartwheeling and porpoising over the surface, and finally placing itself in that stubborn, planerboard position that bull dolphin seem to instinctively know, forcing Tubbs to pull against the whole flat side of the fish.

The strength of the angler and the heft of the gear prevailed in the end, and the bull dorado arrived shining and golden at the Maton’s portside aft. Many pictures were taken of the fish in the water and displayed on deck. It was too big to go into the fish box below deck.

Ireland and Gambino were joyous. Tubbs was stoked. We headed toward shore and looked for roosterfish on the way home. When we got to the movable pier, boat manager Paco came out and took photos of Tubbs with his fish for the resort wall of fame, temporary and monthly.

Two special dinners were enjoyed at the nearby homes of ranch foreman Gary Barnes-Webb and owner John Ireland. Gary’s place is the famous round house to the north of the ranch, a stout concrete place he told me he’d built himself, out of pocket, a piece at a time. His wife Jeanine put on a buffet and the guests enjoyed his porch and the roundhouse view overlooking the beach.



We also dinner-partied right under the Lion’s Head (flat-topped promontory, the local landmark) with Ireland and his wife Jennifer. We dined at the impressive digs John built over many years, out on the end of the ridge that terminates a quarter-mile north at the hotel. In between are the Riviera-style summer homes that spring up yearly along the bluff and beach. Both of these incredible homes (Ireland’s and Barnes-Webb’s) feature spas and pools that overlook the view and seem to drop off at that edge.

The water in Ireland’s pool is a magnet for the local bird life. Cardinals, orioles, threshers, whitewing doves, Inca doves and even honeybees come to the shallow edge of the drop off to drink. Ospreys and caracaras soar past during the day and in the evening nighthawks and bats pick off insects in the lights above the life-giving water.

I asked John what he’d been doing lately at the Ranch.

“You know about the new beds,” he said in his soft-spoken way.

“Oh, yeah!” I replied. “We’ve been sleeping very well on those nice new big Serta beds.”

“Well, we’ve got a new laundry room, and we’ve rebuilt the kitchen. There’s new tile in the bar, and we’ve re-powered the pangas and cruisers. And we’re refinishing the cruisers.”

“I saw two cruisers down by your old place with a fresh finish on them,” I said. “They looked really good, like new.”

We were scheduled to leave on Friday. After he got his boats out that morning, Gary Barnes-Webb took Paul and I out on a quick beach fishing trip. I’ve done this last-day trip with him a couple of times, and nearly had to miss my plane when Gary hooked up on a blue marlin once, and on an 80-pound roosterfish on another occasion.

On this fine warm East Cape morning Gary took us out on quads, down the beach south to the estuary outlet, where he used a cast net to make two live mullet for bait. One mullet went out with a sinker right away. I manned that rod while Gary stalked the schools to make a second throw. A big needle ate the bait, and after I set the hook and began to pull on it, the needlefish leaped and bit through the line.

Gary got a half-dozen mullet with his next cast. He put the baits in a bucket with a lid, and we headed back up the beach, looking for fish. We were short on time. I hooked another needlefish, a four-footer, briefly on the sinker rig, before it threw the hook, leaping like a marlin and shaking its head.

Gary threw a bait on a jack cruising past, but it just headed out to sea.

“I got too close,” he said.

We didn’t care. This is a fun way to fish! I’ve always loved sight-fishing, and this is something I’d like to do again.

An osprey was fishing for mullet alongside us. When it got a mullet, the fish eagle sat on a nearby snag to eat it, and Paul was able to approach the bird for some close pictures. Schools of mullet, halfbeaks or sardinas showered out and back into the surface not far away, but we didn’t see the roosterfish chasing them. The predators might also have been jack crevalle, which can be even thicker than the roosters at times.

But it was time to leave the white shell-sand beaches of Rancho Leonero, and the beautiful sea that turns from light green to deep blue as you look out from shore. We went back to pack, get a last swim in the pool and enjoy lunch on the veranda in the sea breeze, watching pelicans and frigate birds glide by. We soaked up those last moments watching the palms sway, hearing the waves lapping below, and looking out at the little white wavelets blinking on the blue water.

Afterthought

Many people haven’t been going to Mexico since the first flu warnings went out. Business is down there, and the people of Baja are suffering because of it. It should be known that there have been no cases of swine flu in Baja. None.

There have been about 5,000 in southern California, however. John Ireland thinks the constant harping by the American press on the drug problems in the border cities also keeps people away from East Cape and Rancho Leonero. That would seem like silliness to me. You’re safer here than you are in LA, I’m sure. And the fishing, the view and relaxation are much better. Here’s how to get in on some of it:

Rancho Leonero Connections: (760) 438-2905 or (800) 646-2252

Aboard The Excel

By Bill Roecker

We boarded Bill Poole’s 124-foot sport fisher on a Friday morning, assisted by the crew and Sean Sebring’s red-shirted dockworkers. Sean inspected the cart loads of gear, as required by homeland security. There were 31 of us on the six-day Dan Colonello open charter. Partner Paul Sweeney and I stowed our clothing and several boxes of sponsor prizes in our stateroom, which left just enough room to open the door.

Skipper Justin Fleck ordered lines cast off and we motored out to the bait receivers to load several hundred scoops of sardines, then headed south to fish. That afternoon our skipper called the group into the galley to explain the ship’s procedures and safety practices. He said we might go to Guadalupe Island or to the more distant Alijos Rocks. We would have four days to fish at the ‘lupe, he said, or two at the rocks.

“I’ll make my decision after I talk to the other boats,” he said. “We’ll go to the spot where we can get the best action.”

There were a couple of father-son teams aboard, and one couple: John and Shannon Nutt. Everyone signed a release for photos and video, and in exchange got a bag of fishing tackle from the sponsors of FishingVideos.com that included Tady, Catchy and Salas jigs, 40 and 60-pound fluorocarbon from Seaguar, Mustad hooks and a calendar and an Excel DVD from Bill Roecker, along with a promise of a free video from the trip. Dan Colnello, our chartermaster and a Los Angeles MTA exec, also raffled off various prizes each evening of the trip.

That evening the skipper made his decision: we’d straight-line it for two days to Alijos. It had some risk. What if the fishing went sour at The Rocks? Still, it seemed to Justin the best bet for a good catch of quality tuna and yellowtail.

“We’re going after the best fishing,” he said. “We should roll in there about eight in the morning, day after tomorrow.”

The next day was a travel day, plenty of time for anglers to set up their gear. Most had half a dozen outfits to ready; tackle ranging from 25 to 60-pound-rated rods, reels and line. Some brought tackle that was even heavier. Before the day was over, we had a new passenger, an exhausted dove lost at sea under the overcast.

To spice up our long day’s cruise, Paul and I held a raffle, with a prize for everyone. The grand prize was a new Accurate 870 C reel, won on the first draw by Gary Gram of Woodland Hills. Other prizes included a pair of big, flashy Spinnerhead jigs from Catchy Tackle, some Catchy wahoo bombs, more iron jigs and products like fishing belts, hats, gloves, shirts and shorts from AFTCO, and boxes of large Mustad circle and weighted “Dink” hooks. Free spool fill-ups of Mustad 40 and 60-pound Ultra line were offered to all.

Delayed a bit by a strong uphill current, we pulled into The Rocks about 8:30 the next morning and trolled around the shallows without a wahoo strike. Skipper Fleck anchored up and before we were completely settled back, yellowfin tuna were biting, much to his relief. The tuna bit in flurries most of the two days we stayed. Sometimes we had a dozen or more hookups going, which kept the deckhands busy. Fishing near the bottom in 180 feet produced yellowtail.

Our meals were prepared by Justin’s twin brother Jason, who did his best to keep us fat and happy, with dinners of pork chops, baseball (thick, fillet-like) steaks, chicken fillets, pork loin and everyone’s favorite, Jason’s wahoo enchiladas for a lunch. Breakfast offered eggs to order, French toast, bacon, eggs Benedict, cereal and the other usual traditional fare. Fresh oatmeal with raisins and brown sugar was served by cook’s assistant Stanley Paurazas to those like myself who wanted it.

Our group, noted the skipper, had numerous first-timers who may have expected to fish closer to port for smaller yellowtail. They may have been somewhat intimidated by our destination and the size of the tuna hanging around, boiling and occasionally crashing on our sardines. Some yellowfin were up to 100 pounds. With the steady bite and the help of second skipper Mike Ramirez and his deckhands, the new fishermen had plenty of time to make their mistakes and the needed corrections, so by the end of the second day nearly everyone could hook and land yellowfin of 30 to 50 pounds, no problem.

The big dogs lurking in the strike zone were another matter. Most of us had one or two opportunities on 70 to 100-pounders during the two days. I hung a whopper on 40-pound gear. After 35 minutes I had the fish up nearly close enough to see when the line popped. Others lost big ones to tangles, reel failure or just plain pooped out. Quite a few big fish found their way aboard however, again due to the help of the crew. Older brother Joel Fleck, Derrick Waldman, Rene Sanchez and Corey O’Brien earned passenger praise for their efforts and expertise, saving many tuna.

Fishing with several of Accurate's new two-speed small reels, I found I had no problem bringing in medium-sized tuna on their smallest models like the 197 and 270. When the fish was straight up and down, and I couldn't get a wind in high gear, I just switched to low gear and commenced to crank 'em up like a bass. This has got to be a boon to all anglers like myself who are getting long in the tooth and whose muscles get sore faster than they used to. I found the same thing to be true with yellowtail, a fish notorious for going down and staying there. I made a mental note: no more single speed reels for me on fish of over 15 or 20 pounds. Thanks to the boys at Accurate for putting these jewels on the market.

Yellowfin boiled around the boat, but nearly all our biters came from the strike zone, 100 to 300 feet behind the stern. Most were hooked on 3/0 to 5/0 circle hooks on 30 to 50-pound line, making for a fair fight. The trick was to get a swimming sardine to pull your line into the strike zone at speed. Baits that qualified had better than a 50-50 chance of getting bit, until about four in the afternoon.

The very best method of drawing a strike on this trip proved to be balloon fishing with live sardines on 50-pound line with a 5/0 circle hook. I got out to the zone twice on the balloon (we fished in rotation through the roster), and had solid takes within a minute of arrival. That was close to the general experience, and there was good excitement in seeing the fish boil on the baits before eating them. Like the rest of the anglers aboard Excel, I can now say I am sold on helium balloon fishing.

We caught two wahoo on our first day at The Rocks. The first came to a fortunate angler on monofilament line. He was lucky. The second was caught by assistant chef Stan, on a blue and chrome Tady 4/0 jig Stan dropped to the bottom for yellowtail. He didn’t have wire leader either. That wahoo made memorable enchiladas. Those who went with wire didn’t get bit. I thought there wasn’t much “skin” around, and what was there was cagey, having been hard-fished recently.

The Royal Polaris and the Horizon (a dive boat) shared the Rocks with us the first day, and Intrepid joined the group on the second. The full moon failed to slow the bite, and 12 to 15 knots of breeze had no effect, except to make a light chop on the small, four-foot swell. We had a very good yellowtail bite on the second morning, followed by another extended tuna snap. When we dragged anchor the fish followed us out, so skipper Fleck didn’t bother to reset until the action slowed. When he started the Excel forward, the evicted sardines hiding under the boat stirred the non-biting tuna to a great show that lasted about two minutes. By now we all realized the value of sun lotion, as we reddened under the overcast.

If we had a problem, it was caused by hordes of rudderfish and triggerfish picking up scraps around the stern. A lethargic bait was easy meat for those bully boys, and you might not even feel them eating your sardine off the hook. Twice that morning I got hoo’ed. I saw the telltale slashing splashes on my baits, felt the quick take and the quicker release of pressure on the rod. I reeled in to see I had not only lost my fluorocarbon leader but a couple of feet of mainline as well. I tried again with a wire leader. No dice.

Mustad sent me some new 39942BLN circle hooks, heavy wire hooks with a black finish and a very sharp, slighted beaked point and a little more barb than similar types by other makers. They seemed a bit large for the sardines and the local quarry, but I didn’t have a single bait come off during a cast, and I caught two tuna and a yellowtail on one. I judged them successful, at least until I can hang a bigger tuna on one.

About four p.m. we had to leave, nearly limited out on tuna. The yellowfin put on another show when we pulled the hook, but this time we were ready and finished up our limits on the frisky, frothing tuna. It was a great ending to a great visit to The Rocks.

Skipper Fleck had one more trick up his sleeve on or six-day tuna flyer. The next day he stopped at a high spot some distance offshore from San Pablo. The spot was corroded, as the skippers say, with yellowtail of eight to 28 pounds. The first fish was hooked before we started to drift, and when it came to the boat there were half a dozen schoolmates on its flanks, all wanting some of whatever the first one had. We obliged, and the melee was on.

These yellows were thicker than rust on sunken iron, and they literally bit everything we showed them: bait, metal jigs, plastic swim baits, etc. We finished out our limits in about 45 minutes on the insane frenzied yellowtail, and skipper Fleck surprised us once more.

“We’re going to end it up with a crew fishing contest,” he said over the ship’s speaker system. “We’ll have a 15-minute time limit and the biggest yellowtail caught by a crewman will win a set of cord-wrapped dykes and long-nose pliers and a case to wear them both.”

Lanky crewman Derek Waldman proved to have the hot hand, as he fished his way to the top of the pack by yo-yoing a Salas 6X Jr. jig tied to 50-pound Big Game line on a boat rig. His winning yellowtail weighed 27 pounds on the chartermaster’s hand scale.

“We’re gonna call it a trip, now,” said skipper Fleck to his smiling, just about exhausted group. Break down your gear before tomorrow morning when we wash down the boat. Put your tackle away and bundle your rods. It’s been a good one, and now we’re going home.”

Excel docked at Fisherman’s Landing at six a.m. September 18. Her six-day flyer was a fine success, with limits of yellowfin and yellowtail. Skipper Fleck weighed the best tuna and John Nutt of Palmdale won first place, while his wife Shannon tied for third place.

John Nutt’s yellowfin weighed 67.7 pounds. He got it with a sardine on a 6/0 ringed super Mutu hook on 50-pound Blackwater fluorocarbon leader and 50-pound Big Game line. He fished with a Shimano Trinidad 40 reel and a six and a half-foot Calstar rod.

“It just about killed me,” remarked John.

Keith Wolf of Lancaster was second for a 67.5-pounder. Shannon Nutt and Tim Weaver of Rio Vista tied for third place with identical 61.8-pound tuna. They were joined in the lineup shot by Earl Aubuchon of Las Vegas, who found the trip’s best yellowtail at Alijos Rocks, a 42.6-pound mossback.

By Bill Roecker

Fishing aboard Steve Drogin’s 60-foot Mikkelson yacht Destiny with Dan Walsh and two other anglers, Paul Sweeney and I spent a pleasant day on the water July 30. We left the Kona Kai the night before and motored down to an area of kelps off Punta Banda, and then slowly worked our way back toward the Coronados. I say slowly because we trolled our way back. Without live bait (due to an apparent impeller failure), trolling was our remaining option.

Trolling worked very well, though, and it seemed we had a strike of some sort every few minutes. We hung a lot of different jigs back in the wake through the day, but the king jig, as it has been since I brought one aboard the Excel many years ago on a trip with Russ Izor, Carl Newell and other manufacturers, was the cedar plug, in natural wood finish. The cedar plug took the most fish and the best fish, as noted by trip organizer Dan Walsh, who cooked the pizzas listed here:

The Day’s Catch

11 pizzas
6 passengers
2 crew (Skipper Julie Jordan and deckhand Doug Wagner)
2 Yellowfin tuna
1 Bluefin tuna
14 Dorado, 6 released
5 Yellowtail, all released
1 Albacore (honkin' size)

.

“A cedar plug,” wrote Dan, “attached to my Accurate 30 reel and Seeker Black Steel rod, accounted for all tuna, the biggest dorado, and several of the other also-rans! All anglers that wanted a chance to reel in a fish on this rig had that opportunity, as it almost became a habit for this rig to get the fish today!”

Let it be known that Dan is now a cedar plug advocate. When he tried one the first thing in the morning he was skeptical, but no more.

The Zucker’s broomtail in zucchini color was another trolling jig produced some good fish. I tried to get a fish by dropping an anchovy-colored plastic bait back on the slide, but got no bites. I ate very well, however, and took a lot of still pictures. Sweeney got a few shots, too, and manned the Sony EX1 full high definition television camera.

We saw a few marlin jumping in the distance on our way north, but not much in the way of feeding birds or fish. The fish seemed spread evenly at both ends of our fishing journey. The yellowfin and the single bluefin were associated with kelps near the southern end, and the albacore bit less than 15 miles from the Coronados, south-southwest from the islands. Without bait or chum we couldn’t bring the schools to the boat or keep them around, so after each fish we just moved on.

Judging by what I saw out there, this is the peak of the summer season, with tropicals like dorado and yellowfin coming up the line, and some albacore still around, though they may be beginning to move toward the north and west, their usual exit route. I’d be reluctant to predict the albacore leaving right now, though, since the water on both ends of our trip was close to 70 degrees. We saw 68 degrees on the southern end and 71 near the islands, where the albacore blessed us; so it might be wrong to draw inference from that.

It was a very nice day to be on the water, thanks to owner Steve Drogin. Thanks to Dan Walsh, too, for getting the whole thing together and for cooking his signature pizzas. If you haven’t been out on the water yet, you might want to do it pretty soon, while the kelps are holding fish and the migration is on. There are a lot of small yellowtail and dorado on the kelps. Please release those. It just doesn’t make sense to kill next year’s fish.

By Bill Roecker

Skipper Andy Cates eased the Red Rooster III out of her berth at H&M June 19 with 23 eager anglers aboard, and headed toward the bait receivers near the mouth of San Diego Bay. The Everingham Brothers supplied the 105-foot long ranger with all the sardines her tanks and slammers would hold, and Cates headed south, on the eight-day Thom Hultgen Memorial charter. Cameraman Paul Sweeney and I were there at the invitation of George Daniels, chartermaster and Hultgen’s son.

The next day we reached the area where bluefin and albacore have been reported for several weeks. The place was easy to find, marked as it was by numerous seiners, many of them “pen boats” taking live fish to fatten. All appeared to be idle, waiting for something to happen. The first biters were small albacore. They rushed the boat and left shortly after tangling several bait fishermen in the upwind corner. Three or four found their way onto the Rooster.

“Microcore,” observed one wag.

The next biters were bluefin. Dan Romo of Bakersfield, a trucker and dedicated angler, got one of the first two with a cedar plug.

“This thing’s about 20 years old,” he remarked.

“It looks like it,” I said. “I like the natural finish myself.”

Bob Novielli of Costa Mesa got the first bluefin on bait, using a sardine on a 3/0 ringed Mustad Hoodlum tied to 30-pound line on what he called “…an old E-Glass Calstar. On his second run he went deep.”

Alec Robbie, 15, of Santa Margarita plays deep safety and wrestles at Tesoro High. He got about all the wrestling he needed when he hooked a bluefin that later weighed over 32 pounds on 20-pound Mustad line and a ringed 94150 hook, the long-time standard. He used an outfit I lent him, with a 197 Accurate reel and a Seeker Black Steel 660 XF rod, coaxing the fish to gaff in some 25 minutes. No doubt his confidence was built, since he said he’d never caught a tuna on light tackle before.

Later that day Mike Reese of El Cajon got the first yellowfin of the trip, on a trolled Mexican Flag hexhead he said was either a Tady or Sumo jig. We spent that day trolling around the commercial fleet, picking up 10 bluefin, seven albacore and the one yellowfin. We looked in a couple of gullets to find many small mackerel, tiny squid and a few long-beaked, three-inch sauries or maybe snipefish.

Fishing like that wasn’t going to cut it with skipper Cates, who spent the last 15 years or so proving he’s one of the long range fleet’s best tuna fishermen. On the same flat calm seas we’d been enjoying since we left San Diego, he called us into the galley that evening and said we were going to Cedros Island to check things out the next day.

We had a drawing that night, after every angler had received a bagful of goodies courtesy of FishingVideos.com’s sponsors, and everyone got one more prize. Top winner was Danny Romo, who proved his luck hadn’t run out by copping the Accurate 197 reel donated by Jack Nilsen. The sponsors were most generous, and deserve mention here: An appreciative thanks goes to AA’s, Accurate, AFTCO, Cal’s Two-Speed Reels, Catchy Tackle, Cofe Products, Fish Trap Lures, Flexx-Rap, Hayabusa, Izorline, Line One Spectra, Maxima, Mustad, Rod Knobie, Salas, Seaguar, Seeker Rods, Tady Lures, Yo-Zuri and Zucker’s.

Two more drawings were held during the trip, and the fortunate anglers aboard wanted me to express their thanks, especially for the “dinner jigs”” served with each evening’s meal; iron from Tady, Salas and Catchy Tackle, and new “Double Diamond” plastic swim baits from AA’s and Tony Paino. Those plastics earned kudos later, at Augustine, the southwest point of Cedros Island. All the manufacturers offered items the anglers could use on this trip, things appropriate for fishing 20 to 50-pound gear. There may be no better way to acquaint anglers with useful products than on a long range trip. There’s time to use the product, think about it and discuss it.

Our first visit to Cedros didn’t pay off. We arrived in a cold fog, and found little biting in some ugly muddy green water. Ted Crane of Costa Mesa caught the first yellowtail, then a seal ate the second. Skipper Cates headed out for Clam Bay, which was sunny but just as ugly water-wise, and then took us down to San Pablo, where we saw numerous schools of small yellowtail. They seemed willing, but not large enough to warrant taking, in the eight to 15-pound class. Cates decided to try The Ridge.

The sea still flat calm, we rolled downhill all night, and around eight a.m. tried the 23 Spot. Nada. We tried the next couple of spots for no more. Cates was beginning to sweat bullets, wondering if we had made a two-day mistake. He talked with Randy Toussaint on the Royal Star, who was headed for Alijos Rocks. Well, that gave us one more southern option. We pushed on toward our last Ridge opportunity, Thetis Bank.

Numerous schools of bait marked the slick surface at Thetis, encouraging several Bloodydecks.com jig casters aboard to fire out the iron as we set up to anchor. Our chartermaster George Daniels connected with his brand new Catchy 22 jig in mint color, and soon decked a nice yellowtail of over 20 pounds. Then we got the hook down and settled in to what became two days of biting yellowtail, with the exception of an amberjack caught by Alec Robbie. The fish bit at all times except near sunset.

I cast out a sardine on 25-pound line, and it was grabbed before it could swim ten yards. Nursing a sprained wrist, I fumbled the fish in, a 22-pounder, and asked deckhand Tom Ferrari for a release. By now everyone was busy. Cook Steve Lamb was asking for anglers to come in for lunch, but drawing a blank at the tables. Steve did a great job of feeding us through the whole trip, but right now food couldn’t compete with the fish. That bite lasted about five hours.

A few of the fish were only 12 to 15 pounds. The majority were 20 to 30 pounds, and a good number went up into the mid or high 30’s. Fishing with 25-pound Mustad line and 94150 ringed hooks on a new Accurate 197 two-speed reel, I found I had a hard time lifting these fish once they went down. OK, let’s try low gear. Wow! I could grind ‘em up toward me like a bass! This was a fine test for my new Super Seeker 660 XF, too, and it performed flawlessly. I gave the injured wrist a break by going to the rail.

The fish were biting surface jigs, Salas 7X and Tady 45’s, very well. They also bit sinking jigs, but few were fishing with those because the yellows were on live baits like flies on manure. I released a couple more, kept a couple of yellows that were badly hooked or large enough to dispatch without regret, and realized I needed to back off a notch on the pulling if I didn’t want to re-injure myself. Since I’d spent the last three weeks getting better, I went to Jay.

Angler Jay Ho of Buena Park wasn’t getting bit. He looked lonely, standing there with a straight rod in the midst of bent sticks. I got out a slightly heavier rig, a Super Seeker 6460 F rod and a new two-speed Accurate 870 N reel with 30-pound Seaguar fluorocarbon leader, 30-pound Izorline and 65-pound Line One Spectra backing. It only took a few seconds to make a yellowtail connection. I maneuvered next to Jay, handed him my rod and took his. He protested, but I was firm. He took the fish.

“Have you done this before?” I asked as he strained against the pull.

“This is the first time I’ve been out for more than one day,” he said.

“Well, if you’ll let me do it, I’ll show you how to hook ‘em,” I told him.

By the time Jay got his first yellow to the boat he was grinning. It was a nice 25-pounder, and he put his number on it and took his old rod back. I hooked another fish within seconds, and we did the same, “you take it,” gig and he gave up his stick, a little less reluctantly. So Jay and I settled into a long afternoon’s lesson about nose-hooking baits, casting them and keeping the line tight while allowing the bait to swim, and reeling them back so it looked like they were swimming under their own power.

I hooked a fish for Jay on his rig, a seven-foot rod with an old 4/0 reel. He was surprised, but reeled it in.

“Why is this one so much easier?” he asked, the next time I passed him a fish on my rig.

“Because it’s a narrow reel, and it doesn’t torque over to the side so much when you grind on it,” I told him. “And because it has a low gear, see?”

“Oh yeah,” he said, grinding away at 2-1. “You want to sell this reel?”

“Not this one. I just got it.”

After the basics, I helped Jay with the subtleties of bait fishing, how to tell the difference between a hot running bait and a take, where to throw the bait to get to the fish and avoid the other anglers, how to wind down to set the hook, how to judge if the bait was doing what it needed to do to provoke a bite. It takes years to learn these things, but Jay got a big head start in one afternoon, because the fish were hot to bite bait. I left Jay momentarily, and when I came back he was sporting a thumb-sized blister on the appendage.

“I tried to stop him with my thumb,” he said.

“Another lesson learned,” I replied.

Most anglers fished with 40 and 50-pound line, especially those plunging with torpedo sinkers and the hook on a loop above, and those throwing jigs with long rods.
But for small and medium-sized game fish, my feeling is that it’s something less than sporting to use line tests that are heavier than the weight of the fish being caught.

Some skippers disagree with that opinion, especially if they’re anxious to put fish on the boat or to prevent nimrods from sawing one another off. I’ll just note that the Red Rooster III is 105 feet long, with enough room to allow two dozen anglers to fish a mild current on the anchor without stepping on one other.

There was a brief ceremony for Thom Hultgen at sunset, with two minutes of silence after Cates read off a list of names of departed anglers, including the recently deceased Jorge Nicifore, the Rooster’s well-loved cook for decades. Corbett Paulen of Ocean Beach jigged up a big tan grouper after sunset. Everyone seemed to want to be in a picture with the beast. Peter J, who has a Newport Art Gallery, made a super Gyotaku print of the grouper, a “fish print” made by direct contact between fish and paper. Some odd-looking tropical bottom-dwellers, possibly rockfish, were also hoisted aboard.

Our second day of fishing on Thetis Bank was much like the first, except that we were ready to fish at dawn. Well, not all of us were ready. After the long day before, I slept in, showered and had breakfast before going on deck around seven.

“Boy, did you miss a wild bite,” someone said. “There were big ones biting in the gray!”

Bait was king on Thetis Bank. On the slick calm water we could see breezers of scad in many places. Every few moments a big yellowtail would slash and swirl 50 yards from the boat, sometimes even closer. We viewed free-swimming yellowtail just off the stern rail frequently. The tropic sun burned off the haze early, and it got hot when there was no breeze. Even when there was a breeze it didn’t ruffle the surface any more than the scad schools.

The morning bite lasted about six hours. It was possible most of that time to hook a yellowtail on surface iron. Seattle Boeing engineer Arvin Shajanian had a lot of fun with an ancient Lamiglas 12-footer, despite being teased about his “noodle.”

Jerry Morris, a certified addictions counselor from Ontario said, “I didn’t lose a jig the whole two days. The best one for me was the 7X in dorado color, but I also did well on the green sardine and blue and white.”

Like several others, Jerry got his yellowtail limit fishing iron with a long rod.

After lunch we departed for Alijos Rocks, with a dawn ETA. On the way west through miles of 70-degree green water that afternoon we caught numerous small yellowfin of 10 to 15 pounds on jig stops. One school bit for several minutes. Most of those fish were released, but some were tagged.

Skipper Cates and second skipper Joe D’Acquisto were up in the wheelhouse, where I learned Joe had done some commercial tuna fishing. We spotted the dorsal and tail top of a swordfish and turned on it. We were close enough for a mackerel throw when it sank out, but no one tried. The body could be seen clearly until then. I saw a second swordfish minutes later. It went down when we slowed, right next to the boat, maybe a 200-pounder. The first one looked to be 300 pounds.

We got to the Rocks under gray skies and a light breeze out of the northwest building a northwest swell. Royal Star was coming back from Alijos Bank, where she’s made a good catch of large yellowtail. Skipper Randy Toussaint told us he hadn’t seen any good tuna, but a few small ones were around. After several hours of bait fishing and trolling around the drop-offs, we had to agree. We still had a shot at Cedros, skipper Cates thought, and if we left now we’d get there the next morning. He asked his group, and got unanimous approval.

That night we hit the only normal offshore weather of the trip, a four-foot swell with a two-foot chop. It wasn’t rough enough to call it uncomfortable, but it was a real change from the lake we’d been sailing on.

Cedros Island still had a low ceiling, but the water had cleaned up nicely when we arrived at Augustine, on the Island’s southwest point. It was a cool 64 degrees, and plenty of terns, gulls, cormorants and pelicans were fishing outside the kelp. The weeds were loaded with willing calico bass of one to nine pounds. Second skipper Joe D’Acquisto and deckhands Nick Maurer and Moses Milton took two anglers at a time in the ship’s skiff to the very point at Augustine for hour-long bouts with the bass, until all who wished had a trip.

Those kelp bass were so accommodating it was almost sinful. They could be seen swimming in the watery foliage, said Moses, and they flashed out to lay teeth on the variety of plastic baits dropped into the holes in the weed. The new Double Diamonds were killer, the boys said. In truth, the bass were biting nails and anything else that they spotted encroaching their golden corridors.

The plastic baits had to be changed often as they became frazzled. Skipper Joe said his worst trip produced 12 bass, and the best one over 50. All were released.

“You’d hook one,” said Joe, “and there’d be four or five calico bass right behind it, trying to get the bait.”

While the bassing went on, the anglers on the stern amused themselves with more yellowtail. These fish were running close to 30 pounds on the average. I got one a little bigger than that up to the boat, and a sea lion grabbed it and took it out a hundred yards. He was too far to hear what I was saying, and by the way he treated the fish, probably didn’t care. Moses got the carcass back, but it was unusable for anything but fertilizer; belly gone and the back meat shredded down both sides like machaca.

“Gosh,” I said, or something like that.

We didn’t really need many more yellows to limit out, so no one griped when the bite slacked after lunch. That was a shrimp and yellowtail meal, done with rice in Creole style by cook Steve Lamb. Steve and his assistant John Wise did a good job for us three times a day, and for dinners we enjoyed barbequed ribs with clam chowder, rack of lamb (no pun intended), New York Steak and wahoo. Lunches of fish and chips (with fresh yellowtail and Steve’s family secret batter), pork tenderloin with cranberry sauce, and hefty cheeseburgers were also memorable. The food was good, classic American.

After everyone who wished went bassing in the skiff skipper Cates headed back out on calming seas for the albacore grounds. We got there at dawn the next day, and spent the rest of our fishing time driving around the drifting seiners, picking up some more albacore and a couple of yellowfin. One albie school bit for several minutes, but the rest of the trolling was hit and run.

The time came when we were out of time.

“Wind ‘em up, guys,” said skipper Andy over the p.a. system.

“Break down your gear and stow it away, because we’ve got to get going. I want to make it in tomorrow morning at seven.”

Cates pointed the Rooster’s beak toward home.