Offshore anglers know there are days when the fish are up and biting, and days when they’re down, unobtainable, incognito, vanished. A trip aboard the Excel with cameraman Leif Backe of Santa Fe gave us both types of fishing, twice, in the same week. We had a couple of tough days, and we experienced a couple of the best days of fishing I can recall in over four decades on salt water.

We passed the Coronados Islands June 20 after loading bait for our seven-day trip aboard the Excel, and we saw Royal Star heading for the harbor. Skipper Tim Ekstrom gave our captain Mike Ramirez a radio call as the two long range boats went by one another.

“I just came off The Rockpile,” said Tim, “the first time I ever dropped anchor in the Coronados. We got 120 yellows; it was just unbelievable!”

There was quite a fleet parked on The Rockpile, we noticed a few miles down. But we had bigger fish to fry, and skipper Ramirez kept the big Excel’s bow pointed south. The reports we got over the next two days were discouraging, both on the albacore grounds at 250 miles and at The Rocks, where we headed. Cameraman Leif Backe and I handed out goodie bags to all passengers, with Salas jigs, Mustad hooks, baitmakers and hats, FishingVideos.com calendars and DVDs and various other items donated by our generous sponsors.

We also had a drawing for a new Accurate BX 500 reel, won by Mike Reader of Torrance, who’d brought his daughter Sarah fishing. Ralph Bunquist of Tallahassee, another fortunate angler, won a new AFTCO Alijos fighting belt, and everyone also won a prize bag including more good fishing stuff like $50 fish cleaning certificates from Five Star and Sportmen’s Seafoods, some more Salas, Catchy and Tady jigs, Seaguar fluorocarbon samples, 10 percent off on fish cleaning, etc.

It didn’t help that the weather was up, but motoring downhill on the big boat, the northwest wind and swell didn’t bother us much. There were three ladies among our 23 anglers. We ate like kings and no one felt sick. Chef Jim Guyot prepared meals that kept us looking forward to the next call to the salon. We enjoyed meals of breaded pork chops and green beans with bleu cheese butter the first night and chicken breast with zuchinni and Chocolate Overload cake for desert on the second evening. Eggs Benedict was served the morning we got to The Rocks.

Only one boat was still fishing there when we arrived, and it left soon. We scratched hard for a few tuna and yellowtail. At least one very large yellow came up, along with a couple of 40-pound tuna. I got a small tuna, one of the dozen or so we managed for several hours of hard fishing. Later, Ramirez made what was proved to be a very smart decision; he left and headed east. Fishing was down everywhere, according to radio reports, so Mike reasoned it was worth trying The Ridge, where no one had fished for months.

The Indy was right behind us, and had been since we left San Diego. The two skippers conversed, and Jeff DeBuys went to Thetis Bank while Ramirez took us toward the 23 Spot. We drove all night, after a wonderful yellowtail dinner. Guyot cooked the fish grilled with a Wasabi mayo sauce, and put rice and sugar snap peas on the side.

We were just backing down on our first anchoring when the yellowtail showed behind the boat, chasing sardines. The ‘tails came up and slashed at the surface, nice big ones. It wasn’t but a few seconds later that the first one was hooked, and then another, and another. Within moments the afterdeck became a very busy place, with everyone hooked up and the deckhands straining to gaff fish, untangle clients, keep bait in the wells and try to keep hooks in the water.

The yellowtail at the 23 Spot were fat and sleek, probably because of the carpet of small pelagic red crab floating past. The animals very only the size of a thumbnail but they were so thick they literally covered the surface. The 15-knot breeze didn’t deter them from floating. Flylined sardines that swam hard proved to be just the ticket for the yellows. Maybe they were tired of all those little crunchies.

I fished yellows with 25 and 30-pound Izorline XXX on 25 and 30-pound Seaguar fluorocarbon and 3/0 Mustad ringed 94140BLN hooks, with an Accurate two-speed 197 and a two-speed 870 N reel. The rods were Super Seekers, a 660 XF and a 6460. I caught two on each rig and then handed off a couple more. I also used a 6465 Super Seeker with 30-pound and an 870 two-speed reel.

Then I tried moving up to a 40-pound rig with XXX and Seaguar in that flavor, on 4/0 Mustad hooks, and the fish weren’t deterred in the least. I used a new Accurate BX-2 500 reel on a Super Seeker 6470 rod. The yellowtail bit on the heavier gear just fine, and I noticed some anglers like Carl Dorton fishing with 50-pound tackle and doing well.

It was one-stop shopping for yellowtail of 15 to over 40 pounds. After an hour or two of pulling on husky yellows, many anglers began to catch them on yoyo jigs and surface iron. I got one on a 7X “wounded soldier” on the first cast, and I’m not a particularly good fisherman with the surface iron. It was a kick to see the fish come up and smack the jig. Then I tried a blue and white 6X heavy jig and found the same sort of instant success. I released several yellows up to 25 pounds and handed off a couple.

That yellowtail bite was pure mayhem. It was one of the two or three best bites of its kind I’ve ever seen. Mark and Carl Dorton and Brad Merritt, Excel regulars who also charter the boat, purely agreed with me on that later. Mark hooked a marlin, the season’s first, as far as I know, and got a good series of jumps out of the beaker before it executed its freedom-finding whack with its bill. What fun!


We had a nice lunch with chicken tortilla soup. Skipper Ramirez said we should start to work our way north, so we moved up to the 13 Spot. Things were pretty quiet there, but we caught a couple of fish in a wind that was picking up. Soon we went in to dinner, and made our way up toward the Rosa Bank. The dinner was delicious, stuffed pork loin. The stuffing was spinach, basil, green onion, feta and Parmesan cheese, fresh garlic and salt and pepper. The sides were grilled carrots with butter and brown sugar, and boiled potatoes with butter, parsley and chives.

The next day was the roughest yet, with up to 20 knots of miserable northwest breeze. In the morning we found a kelp and plucked one yellowfin and 20 yellowtail from it. We looked hard for tuna all day with no success, though we were in sight of the Indy when she found of school of bluefin and picked up 20 or so. But that was it for a tough day.

We arrived at the albacore grounds, crossing the break into 65-degree clean water, next morning about 8:30. We’d heard reports from the Royal Polaris and the American Angler that the fishing had resumed there, and we were anxious to give it a try, 250 miles from port.

The reports were right on, and the weather backed down. At 8:49 we found a school that came to the boat and bit, minutes after we crossed that break into clean warm water. The school stuck with us for a long time, long enough to drift south three miles. The longfin were 15 to 35-pounders, they were sleek and silver, and they were willing. As Prowler skipper Buzz Brizendine used to say, “They were biting nails!”

I started out fishing the 25-pound rig, thinking I’d get more bites. I got bites, all right, on at least every other bait. It was like the yellowtail bite all over again. I was badly in need of my two-speed Accurates. Without them I’d have spent hours pinned to the rail. But with a two-speed reel you can really put the crank on those cranky tuna that take you straight down. Nose-hooking and belly-hooking sardines worked very well.

There were occasional bluefin and yellowfin tuna of like size mixed in with the albacore. Soon the intensity of the bite had me going up to the 30-pound tackle again. Then I went to 40-pound gear, and I got an albacore on it, but the fish definitely seemed to prefer the lighter gear, and a 3/0 over a 4/0 hook. I had new BX-2 reels with me in the 500 and 600 series, loaded with 50 and 60-pound line, but I knew they’d have to wait for bigger tuna.

At last we drifted right out of the 65-degree pocket where the tuna were located, and we had to go looking again. The sun burned off the clouds that afternoon and the breeze dropped to 10 or 12 knots. We spent the rest of our day trolling, with stops every ten or 15 minutes. Most of the stops produced two to half a dozen fish, so we had to keep moving. Yes, we had some short bites, and there were times when we went 20 minutes without a bite, but it was an interesting day for those who were quick to get a bait into the water after a jig strike.

A few were too quick, dropping back on the slide, and after trollers got cut off a couple of times the skipper asked anglers to wait until he gave the word to cast baits. When a troller gets cut off, it doesn’t help the boat’s chances to bring the school close. Fishing tuna demands group cooperation.

One other advice item: when the boat stops, don’t dither and dwaddle at the bait well. Select a good bait, sure, but don’t chase it around the well, making other anglers wait. Get a good healthy bait and step away from the tank while you hook it. Keep your rod cradled under your arm so no one is endangered by the rod tip, and keep the bait-getting process moving. One selfish angler can delay several others from getting a fair chance at the fish, especially early in the season when tuna aren’t staying with the boat more than a moment or two. That’s common courtesy.

Back to the chase: Our albacore fishing day lasted until sunset. As the afternoon came to a close on one of the year’s longest days, we got more stops for a few fish. I checked the trollers to see what the fish were biting on those many stops. Mostly the hot jigs were Mexican Flag and Zuchinni Zucker’s, a Catchy Spinnerhead in Mean Joe green, and other jetheads and Tuna Clones in bright colors.

Right at sunset we had our second-best bite of the day, for at least a dozen albacore. I got one of the last when it bit way up swell. I was pleased to fight it midship and from the bow without fear of tangles. That last longfin made me so happy I didn’t care if the dang fish bled all over me while Leif took my picture. I was satisfied, and very tired.

Next day was our last to fish, and only for a short while, as we were scheduled to dock at 5:30 AM during a bicycle triathlon. We tried an area to the north where Randy Toussaint had caught some better-sized bluefin a few days ago, in 61-degree green water. We looked for over an hour before Ramirez and his crew found a foamer.

We pulled up on the boiling tuna, and we could see jumpers of at least two sizes up to 60 pounds or so, pursuing some sort of small bait. Deckhand Derek Waldman was on the ball enough to get a few shots with his Nikon, and one showed a bluefin out of the water. No bluefin bit the trolled jigs as we slid in on the school, which submerged immediately. We did hook two fish, though, and both were decked. I took photos of Mark Dorton and Mike Rangel with their bluefin.

We were done for the trip a short while later, and skipper Mike Ramirez pointed the bow of the Excel toward San Diego and home. He served us our last meal at sea that evening, the traditional dinner of prime rib, nicely cooked by Guyot and presented to us with all the fixin’s. An appreciative group gave the skipper a good hand right after dinner, in recognition of his efforts and fish-finding abilities.


One of the giveaway 4/0 ringed Mustad hooks produced first place for Jessica Diaz of San Bernadino. She tied it straight to her 60-pound rental outfit on a dropper loop with a sardine and caught a 46.4-pound yellowtail with it. The rest of the gear included a TLD 30 reel, Big Game line and a Seeker 6470 H rod. She said the big jack gave her a half-hour tussle.

Bill Rinkes of 29 Palms won second place for a 44.2-pound yellowfin, and reel-winner Mike Reader of Torrance won third place for a 42-pound Alijos yellowfin tuna.

Thanks to Ingrid Poole and her assistants Betty and Kathy for our invitation to take this exceptional trip, and to the crew of the Excel for making it work out the way it did: Mike Ramirez, Derek Waldman, Brandon Wilke, Jeff Bunde, Scott Shurko and Jake Phillips. For the great eats, thanks to Jim Guyot and Rene Sanchez.

By Bill Roecker

Bright October sunshine lit the decks during bait loading at the Everingham Brothers trains of crates. As we cut the waves heading out of San Diego Bay aboard Intrepid, the sky quickly clouded over with a heavy gray layer. It looked like rain coming.

“There’s a tropical storm down below, and right now it’s over Alijos Rocks,” skipper Kevin Osborne told us when he assembled his 18 anglers aboard in the galley. “We’re going to keep an eye on it and see if it doesn’t move away toward shore. It’s not a hurricane, but it’s got wind, rain and thunder and lightning. We’ll head south slowly and see if we can find some kelps to fish.”

We had some time to spare on a seven-day trip. The ocean was marked only by a light chop on a three-foot swell, with the normal, 12-knot breeze from the northwest. We stayed in the galley for a couple of hours, raffling off items from FishingVideos.com sponsors and from sponsors of Tuna Chasers and Ken Bush Custom Rods. The prizes included a new Accurate 870 reel, a Seeker 870 rod, a print from Peter J’s Newport art gallery, and an AFTCO Alijos belt and fishing gloves. Appropriately enough, the new reel was won by the trip’s only rookie, broker Hank Sorenson of Tampa. Already the guys were calling him “Florida.”

Giveaways included three packets each of appropriately-sized Mustad and Hayabusa hooks for all anglers, blue Izorline reel fill-ups in 30, 40 and 50 pound mono, Salas, Zucker’s and Russelures jigs for everyone, hats from Mustad (the crew got hats from Salas), Seaguar fluorocarbon leaders and certificates for free processing from Mario Ghio at Sportsmen’s Seafoods and Sarah Seraspe at Five Star Fish Processing. There were also new 2010 Sportfishing Calendars, Double AA’s Swim Baits and Mustad bait makers for all, and some ARC dehookers and Accurate shirts among the prizes and gifts from FishingVideos.com.


Chartermasters Miles Callison and Ken Bush gave away several custom GRUSA rods wrapped for the occasion by Bush, packets of Owner hooks and a ton of jigs, including light and heavy iron, plastic squid baits and skirted jigs. There were Chuck Byron prints, shirts and hats from Bloodydecks.com and many other goodies. Each angler ended up with a bagful of swag.

Bill Roecker gave three anglers the use of new Accurate BX2 600 reels, and three more got new Candy Mack lifelike segmented jigs to try. Anglers said it was a good start to the trip.

Intrepid motored along southward in the quiet mode she has become known and admired for. Her stabilizers work just as well when she’s under way, and we slept soundly in the near-silence, enjoying the ride.

Next morning it was sunny and pleasant out on the ocean.

“Where are the clouds?” I asked skipper Osborne. “Is the storm gone already?”

“No,” he said, “it’s still near the Rocks and Mag Bay, but it’s predicted to move inland by tomorrow. We’ll go down the outside slowly, so we don’t get into it.”

We fished on four large kelp paddies some 200 miles from San Diego. The large golden mats of weed weren’t holding much, just small yellowfin and dorado that we released, but there were a couple of big dorado near 30 pounds.

As we kept heading downhill, we heard the next day that storm Olaf was moving away from Alijos Rocks and had been downgraded to a tropical depression. We couldn’t see any clouds from it, but Osborne continued to take his time, approaching from the outside. That evening the skipper updated us again, and gave us some fishing tips. One of those had to do with bait tank procedures.

“We put the bait in the hand wells for you,” he said. “Pick out a nice one that doesn’t have a bloody nose or a lot of missing scales, one that swims quickly. Take your bait firmly but gently so you don’t injure it, and move away from the tanks to pin it on, especially when there’s a line at the tank.”

Late that morning, we found the right paddy.

“Get ready,” the skipper told us as we approached it to drift past. “This one’s got fish on it!”

The kelp was the size of a boxcar. Hoots and shouts went up from the anglers as they began hooking dorado of ten to 25 pounds, and the blue and yellow fish erupted around the stern and sides of the boat. Eager to bite anything they saw, the dorado jumped and tangled lines. Two drifts filled our limits, and the galley had fresh fish for dinner.

Delicious dorado dinners were prepared that night by master chef Javier Quintanar of Seville, Spain, who attended the University of Cordon Bleu in Paris, and has been a star in the San Diego fleet for many years. Javier made an incredible meal of mahi cooked with fresh pineapple-ginger sauce.

“What does Alijos mean?” I asked Javier.

“It means far away,” he answered.

Through The Back Door

Earlier, just before four p.m., we pulled up to The Rocks. No other boats were there, so we trolled for wahoo. We got a couple of nice ones about 30 to 40 pounds, but there didn’t seem to be a lot of them. When we started catching small tuna on the drift, skipper Osborne anchored up so the wind and current took our sardines toward the black volcanic pinnacles rising from the sea to weather like something on another planet. It was the day after the full moon.

After a few minutes of quiet the tuna found us. They were big ones, from 40 to 100 pounds. They bit almost as well as paddy dorado, but you had to get a bait out and away from the boat to draw a strike. I hooked three on my first four casts. Fifty-pound line and fluorocarbon leaders, with 2/0 to 4/0 size hooks were the ticket to a husky yellowfin bite.

After we caught a half-dozen nice big tuna we were overwhelmed by hammerheads and brown sharks. They ate a couple of fish, and then began eating most of the hooked yellowfin, maybe 70 or 80 percent of the fish. It was discouraging to the point of making me crabby. You’d spend 20 minutes getting a tuna almost to color, and then you’d feel some muffled thumping and your line would go limp. Reeling in, you’d see a frayed end, with abrasion for several feet up your line, probably where the shark had rolled up in it.

I spent a half-hour on a tuna that I got to the boat. A deckhand was ready to gaff it, when the fish, a 100-pounder, broke off. My four other big tuna, in the 60 to 80-pound class, were eaten by sharks. I was almost ready to quit fishing when sunset put an end to our misery. Our group had only managed about 20 fish gaffed aboard out of more than 100 hookups. I was zero for five.

Each day of our trip Javier made morning and afternoon snacks that were almost a good as his world-class dinners. It might have been that day when he offered up scallops wrapped in bacon. Another day we had Javier’s own version of hot wings. Breakfast often offered eggs done to order, with light baking powder biscuits and potatos or waffles and special sausage. Lunch might be Chile Rellenos, a specialty soup, or cheeseburgers Grande. Only the hard work of pulling on tuna could offset the effects of eating so much delicious food.

Next morning the sharks were gone; poof, disappeared. We saw only one that day, a small hammerhead swimming around like he was lonely, at the surface off the stern. If he ate anything it was discarded sardines.

We didn’t miss his friends, and enjoyed a very good day of catching husky yellowfin tuna. I fished with several outfits, including Super Seeker rod models 6460 H and 6470 H, and an Accurate B6650C. I used three of the new Accurate Boss Extreme reels: a BX2 500 and BX2 600 and BX2 600 narrow versions. The 500, a known quantity to me, was smooth and 870-sized, with an oval rubber grip. The two 600 BX2s came with a new blue power handle that aids much in grinding on heavy fish like these, the best quality I’d seen at The Rocks in ten years or so. These are powerful, smooth casting and easy grinding reels.


Most of us were fishing with factory-provided blue Izorline of 40 or 50 pounds. I tried the XXX Izorline of 50-pound test, and found it to be a bit limper, easier to cast, at least for me. Most of us used topshots of mono on at least 300 yards of Spectra. I saw no spoolings, though there were a couple of close calls.

Some anglers used 4/0 J or circle hooks from Mustad, Hayabusa and Owner, donated by those sponsors. I had a hard time getting bit with 4/0 or 5/0 hooks, the type I’d normally use, and went with 3/0 Mustad ringed Hoodlum or standard types. As fishing got tougher, I went down to 2/0 size and thought I got bit faster that way. Other anglers did well with circle hooks.

I didn’t pull a hook, and none even bent, on tuna up to 90 pounds. I fished my J hooks the same way I fish circle hooks, by letting the fish set the hook on itself after I threw the reel into gear and started to wind. All my gaffed tuna came up with the hook in the corner of the mouth, same as a circle hook.

When hook size matters, fluorocarbon is right. Seaguar 50-pound and 55-pound Premier fluorocarbon did the job for me. Some anglers fished with just two or three feet of fluorocarbon tied directly to Spectra, but I like a little bit of give, and used topshots of 50 to 100 yards of mono, something easier on the fast-aging shoulders.

It was a good day for me. I lost no tuna, and ended it with four fish from 60 to 90 pounds. The tuna bit well when the current ran toward The Rocks in the morning and evening, but during midday it wobbled off to the side and into the wind, and few fish were hooked then.

One angler got a big tuna on 40-pound line, a single-speed reel and a long rod.


“I’ll never do that again,” Brian Lewis of Surprise, AZ vowed at dinner that night, as we dined on Javier’s fresh ahi (yellowfin tuna) with Teriyaki sauce. “I’m getting a two-speed next time.”

Our third day at The Rocks started well, with the current running downwind toward the rocks again, as it did the first day. The tuna began biting at dawn with a little flurry of hookups, and then the action slowed into a pick. Once or twice an hour a school crossed the stern, and rods bent behind the path of the tuna as they took our sardine baits from left to right with near-military precision, causing a ripple of shouts and hoots to move with the action. The water was so free of sharks it was almost as if they had never been there.

There were a few jig fishermen aboard, and when the schools were moving like that, casting a jig could bring a tuna or a rare wahoo. There didn’t seem to be many skins around, but their presence was known whenever a missed bite proved to be a snipped-off line. A couple of the razorjaws were caught on wire leaders, and at least one wahoo came on monofilament.

I got two more yellowfin that morning. When I weighed my tuna later, the smallest was 60 pounds and the biggest was 89.6 pounds. Late that morning the current slowed and turned into the wind. As the boat swung back and forth in the stiffening breeze, the flylined baits came back toward the sides, so anglers were fishing around the corner of the stern. The closer the baits were to Intrepid, the fewer bites were had, and skipper Osborne had no problem making a decision to leave a few hours early.


“We got what we came for,” he told us. “There’s over a hundred big tuna in the fresh fish holds. Let’s go catch some yellowtail.”

Two other long range boats had arrived, and a look at their afterdecks showed the same lack of action. We headed northeast, quartering the whitecaps, bumping uphill and happy for the boat’s stabilizers minimizing the roll.

That night we ate like kings, or at least like hungry men in a five-star restaurant, on Javier’s pork loin with blackberry brandy sauce. Our meals were an adventure in themselves, and they came to our tables fully decked out, almost too pretty to eat, not! We had a different salad and desert every night, and some anglers had brought wines aboard to share with all who wanted them.

Cedros Yellowfin On Ponies

Next morning after breakfast Intrepid motored up the strait between Isla Natividad and Punta Eugenia, where we escaped the swell but not the 20-knot wind. When we were within a mile or two of the big island of Cedros, the 3900-foot central mountain and its descending ridges blocked the wind. We fished for a bit in the calm near the Islander. She was on a kayak trip with several ‘yaks disbursed nearby in the calm, protected lee.


Young hungry pelicans made flylining tough. They stole sardines, and some had to be unhooked. I caught a chunky calico bass, a four-pounder, but we saw no sign of yellowtail. The boat headed back out into the windy, usually protected waters south of the big island. After a half-hour of looking around we found a small bird school working between the salt plant and the point at Augustine, southwest of the Four-fathom Spot. The fish, 10 to 18-pounders, didn’t want bait, but they were in a mood to chew iron. Heavy yoyo jigs got the majority of these, but they also bit on light surface iron after the bite got going.

These yellowtail bit on all the standard jigs and colors. Blue and white Salas 6X Jr. jigs and Tadys in scrambled egg brown and yellow produced quickly. I caught two and saw a half-dozen others caught on a new Salas color of dark green with a pink tip. It was close to a jig frenzy. Anglers got hooked up on darts and metallic knife jigs with Spectra-tied hooks dangling from the front end. About 20 minutes later the school left the boat.

In a half-hour we located another school of biters. A couple of bigger ‘tails came up; one might have gone over 25 pounds. This kind of jig fishing causes a lot of hollering among hooked up anglers but when I heard it get very loud indeed I looked over to see a yellowfin tuna on the deck. Tuna in this green, off-colored shallow water, close to Cedros Island? It was almost unheard of. We took pictures of the fish.

“Some porpoise went by,” an angler said. “He must have been with them.”

A few minutes later the pod passed by the other way. More tuna were hooked on jigs, and several were landed maybe a half-dozen nice, fat 30-pound class tuna.

Chartermaster/rod builder Ken Bush of El Cajon bagged an ahi on the jig, with 40-pound blue Izorline, an Avet JX reel and a self-wrapped GRUSA 70 HP rod.

“He saw the porpoise” related Ken, “and Deckhand Dave threw my blue and white 6X Jr. on my long stick and passed it to me. The fish inhaled the jig deep in his throat and
came in easy.”

Standing in the starboard corner of the stern, Steve Tucker of Alpine chucked a blue and white Tady 45 surface jig toward the tuna school swimming past, and got a nice 35-pounder on his donated 40-pound Izorline. He used his old favorite Truline rod, a BOR 36 model.

The most remarkable yellowfin jig bite came to Kurt Suzuki of Coburg, OR, when he threw a brand new blue Candy Mack, a segmented jig from Aqueous Outdoors (the company says you can see it swim at AqueousOutdoors.com) on 25-pound Big Game line and his new eight-foot Super Seeker rod. He hooked a bigger one.

“I saw the porpoise come past the stern,” said Kurt, “and I threw to the boils the fish were making and let it sink five seconds. I got about three cranks on it and he bit and took off. When I set on the fish, he took half my 300 yards of Spectra behind 100 yards of mono line.

“I pushed the lever to the detent of my Avet MXJ two-speed reel, and after 30 to 45 seconds he broke the topshot near the jig. It looked like the school had 30 to 50-pounders in it.”

Our last dinner was even more special that the rest. By tradition, long range anglers are served on the final night at sea by the skipper. Javier had set out his famous “seafood mountain” that afternoon, featuring shrimp, crab, oysters, smoked fish and more goodies. That was a hard act to beat, but Javier might have done it for our last dinner of filet mignon topped with Maine lobster claws. Desert was a three-layer mocha extravaganza supreme with caramel sauce. We staggered below to sleep it off.

We arrived back at Pt. Loma Sportfishing before dawn, and unloaded our gear before carting the fish up to the scales on the cement pad in front of the landing. Three processors were there to meet us: Mario Ghio of Sportsmen’s Seafoods, Sarah Seraspe of Five Star Fish Processing, and Sean Sebring of Fishermen’s Canning. Some anglers elected to take their fish home and clean them, but most of us used the services to cut and wrap, or smoke our fish, or trade them for canned albacore.

There was one fish that was the obvious winner, but plenty of contention for the next two spots. Co-chartermaster Miles Callison of San Diego won first place for a 109.2-pound yellowfin.

“He ran out at first,” said Miles, “and then stayed up by the bow for about 45 minutes. He wouldn’t come out from under the bow; he was so teed off. We finally gaffed him back by the stern.”

“Lucky” Harvey Rosen of Benicia won second place for an 89.6-pound tuna, and Kurt Suzuki of Coburg, OR won third place for an 88.8-pounder.

I’ve been on trips when more fish were caught and when the weather was nicer, or when more wahoo were taken, but this one, aboard a nice new 116-foot luxury sportfisher showed me the best quality tuna I’ve seen at The Rocks in a decade, and the variety of yellowtail and dorado fishing made the trip a dandy. And how about those yellowfin at Cedros Island? I’ve never seen that before. I don’t expect to see it again.

FishingVideos.com offers grateful thanks to owner Ken Price for our invitation to fish aboard Intrepid, and to canny, up-and-coming skipper Kevin Osborne, second skipper Rick Kelly, crewmen Dave Taylor, Cameron Casper and David “Wahoodad” Choate, Master Chef Javier Quintanar and his assistant JJ Moon.

By Bill Roecker

The gold-lipped, hand-picked sardine had hardly smacked the water when a rolling boil the size of an oil drum went off where the sardine plunked in. Tuna! I thought, threw my reel’s drag lever forward and cranked down to set the hook. I was expecting a good scrap with a husky yellowfin, the kind of tuna Alijos Rocks produces in late summer and fall. The fish left with startling speed and power, and I felt a tiny doubt creep into my moment of exhilaration. What if it just kept going? Blue 50-pound Izorline and then white 65-pound Line One Spectra line rolled off my reel spool like there was no tomorrow. What if I couldn’t make it stop and fight?

After Independence was several miles south of Point Loma, owner-skipper Mark Pisano called his anglers into the galley for orientation: safety procedures, the boat’s features, and an explanation of how and when the meals would be served. Afterward, he told us we would likely be headed to Alijos Rocks on our six-day trip.

Local fishing was slow, he said, and the fish were smaller than we’d find at The Rocks. Guadalupe Island was producing some quality yellowfin tuna, but not in the numbers he expected to find another 250 miles south, and it was relatively crowded. He expected to share The Rocks with the Royal Polaris, but no other boats.


We had a full boat, with 31 anglers including cameraman Paul Sweeney and myself. Many had never been to The Rocks, and they wondered if we weren’t taking a big chance, going so far and cutting our fishing time down to about two and a half days. Skipper Pisano acknowledged the risk, but said he thought it worthy. Our chance to make a good catch was best there.

In exchange for their signature on a model release, Sweeney and I gave all the anglers a package of goodies that included many items they could use on a summer trip like this. Appropriate hooks from Mustad and Hayabusa were included, and Seaguar donated fluorocarbon in 25 and 50-pound test. That stuff proved to be tremendously important, as did the hooks.

We also had two raffles, one for FishingVideos.com and one from chartermaster Alex Masumoto, Rusty Hook owner in San Pedro. Everyone won prizes: rods and reels, a Peter J print of the Indy, AFTCO clothing, free fish processing from Sportsmen’s Seafood and Five Star, sunglasses, fishing trips, jigs from Salas and Tady, Double A swim baits, reel servicing from Cal’s and Cofe, Arc dehookers and so many other prizes they’d make a list about as long as this story. Retail value of everything probably exceeded $5,000. Top prize was a new Accurate 870 two-speed reel, won by lucky Ted Crane, who owns Diploma Art Works in Costa Mesa.

Pushed south by a strong current, we made very good time, motoring in to The Rocks around nine in the morning. Royal Polaris was anchored on the windward side, and after we trolled a few minutes for wahoo, we anchored up next to her. The hoo’s weren’t biting much on the troll, but they did show up quickly after we anchored. They bit off plenty of bait fishermen both days we fished there.

A wahoo bite-off feels like a tuna bite, but very briefly. The line comes tight, and suddenly goes slack when you’ve been ‘hooed. Reeled in, the empty end of the line may be neatly clipped off as though a scissors had done the job, or it may look badly frayed and frazzled with little curlicues, from sliding over the teeth. There’s little to do but tie on a new hook, or a wire leader.

Luck was with me that morning, and I got two wahoo by fishing with wire when it was obvious wahoo were in our fishing zone. They were jumping clear of the water, and once I saw a small ‘hoo rocket at least six feet straight up. It managed to flip over and go back in headfirst.

The first tuna we saw were mostly small, 15 to 30 pounds. After lunch some larger models, as skipper Jeff DeBuys called them, started biting. I began fishing with Seaguar fluorocarbon leaders, and experienced a little hot streak, hooking and landing and hooking and handing off some dandy yellowfin of 40 to 65 pounds.

To draw a strike, it was necessary to get a hot, fast-swimming sardine back about 60 yards from the stern. Any bait that made it 80 or 100 yards under speed was just about a cinch to get bit. That meant selecting a strong, unblemished bait, handling it as little as possible and casting it the first 20 yards without snarling your reel in an overrun.

A long rod made casting easier, but didn’t help much in bringing the bigger models to the boat. I went mostly with six and a half and seven-foot Super Seekers, and also tried out a new outfit, a seven-footer from Accurate given me by Jack Nilsen, one he’d tested. It was complete with a new Accurate BX2 500 reel, evolved from the Boss 870 two-speed.

The new reel is powerful, smooth and sweet in every way, I thought after using it for two days. Ben Secrest and David and Doug Nilsen, the Accurate boys, will be getting plenty of kudos for its development. I loved the new handle grip, softer and oblong, and the way it fit my hand. The length of the handle seemed just right for getting power into the cranking of the 6-1, 3-1 two speed gearbox.

All three rods, the Super Seeker 6470 (with 30-pound monofilament) and 6465H (with 40), and the Accurate 7040C (with 50-pound mono), were up to the task at hand, getting a bait out the needed distance, and then slugging it out with 40 to 60-pound tuna.

At first I was leery of the long slender Accurate rod with its elliptical bend, but it made the needed long casts and took the abuse with ease. I had some more good luck that afternoon, and lip-hooked a wahoo and brought it to gaff on a fluorocarbon leader; only the third time in my career I got a wahoo on mono.

I can’t stress how important fluorocarbon is for this type of twitchy fishing. The next morning I walked out on deck shortly after dawn, and watched the beginning of a good bite for smaller tuna. I hooked three 18-pounders and released two on three casts. Then I cut off the leader and fished with 50, 40, and 30 pound mono straight to the hook. You guessed it, no bites. Seaguar furnished all aboard with packets of 25 and 50-pound fluorocarbon.

Hook size was equally important. We all had ringed Mustad hooks and Hayabusa circle hooks, donated by the manufacturers, in 3/0 to 5/0 sizes. The circles worked well, as they always do for tuna. In the standard hooks, 3/0 was perfect. I couldn’t get bit on 4/0, but changing to 3/0 size brought immediate strikes. How it can be so is hard to see, but I got confirmation from deck technician Tom Lambert.

“Three-ought is the right size here now,” he told me, and he was right. Tom doesn’t say much, but he knows his business. He holds the 80-pound line class IGFA record for yellowtail, with a 91-pound, 9-ounce lunker he bagged at Guadalupe back in ’03.

Any smooth-casting reel worked to bag the bigger models, but small two-speeds had the advantage, when it came to slugging it out. A 60-pound Alijos yellowfin puts up a fight beyond its size. At one point I was tempted to drop down to 25-pound line to draw a strike, but the single-speed 197 I had that line on caused me to think twice. It had a power handle on it, which would have been helpful, but not as helpful as a low gear, I realized as I racked it again. These fish were beating me up. After decking three larger models, I started passing them off.

Those who wanted to fish the Alijos bottom found biting whitefish, sheephead and some yellowtail. The best yellowtail was a 49-pounder caught by Dan Amato of Oceanside. It caused a flurry of admiring calls from the anglers on deck when it came over the side, so big that at first I thought it might weigh 60 pounds. It was the best one I’d seen caught for many years.

As well as regular skipper Jeff DeBuys, we had owner-skippers Mark Pisano and Paul Strasser aboard. They told me this was a rare event, so I was pleased they were all there to take part in the making of our video about this trip. Jeff and Mark seemed to take turns every other day, perhaps in a friendly competition like the one between Randy Toussaint and Tim Ekstrom, Royal Star owners.

A whale shark that skipper Pisano measured at 25 feet next to the boat approached us that afternoon and turned several laps around us as we fished. You could have touched it with a ten-foot rod during one pass by the starboard corner. When he crossed the stern I did touch the huge fish with my line, across the back and dorsal. The upper half of its tail was also out of the water, and he responded by submerging briefly, to come up again around the other corner.

Skipper Strasser assisted on deck with the other skippers, and served us up some fine cookery from chefs Tom Kyelberg and Rolf Rittman. They produced attractive meals (served after sunset while we were fishing, of course), of flatiron steak, fresh ahi, pork chops, wahoo and prime rib, with decorative sauces and tasty side dishes like asparagus and potatoes au gratin. For one lunch they served us a club sandwich with macaroni salad with sliced watermelon. Another was that all-American favorite, a fat cheeseburger with onions and all the fixin’s.

Our second day started out hot, with little breeze under a tropic sun. After the initial rush of small tuna and a few wahoo biting jigs then, things settled into a steady pick, much like the first day. At midmorning we had visiting larger models again. About two that afternoon, a real bite went off. It caused the kind of chaos you’d expect from 30 anglers all hooked up on LMs, with much shouting, running along the rail, pileups in the corners and unhappy anglers with suddenly unbent rods.

Deckhands Justin Burns, Billy Grisham and Tom Lambert had their hands full untangling, gaffing and re-splicing fluorocarbon leaders for me and 29 other excited anglers. The fish left as suddenly as they appeared, and we were back to a pick bite, with a couple of tuna going constantly. We saw no more small ones; they were running 40 to 60 pounds or more.

Not much later, I was fishing with my heaviest rig, a 6470H Super Seeker with a 665 Accurate two-speed loaded with 50-pound Izorline and 65-pound Line One Spectra. I had learned my lesson about hook size and had a ringed Mustad 3/0 Ultrapoint hook, an R94140BLN pinning my sardine, when a whopper boiled on my bait maybe five seconds after it hit the water off the port corner.

The boil was big enough to take my breath away, and it caused skipper Pisano to shout from the bait tank.

“Bill’s bait barely hit the water, when he got bit,” exulted Mark. “Change your baits! Only use fresh baits!”

I shoved my lever drag up to strike and held on when the line came tight and the fish rushed off to the south as fast as I’ve ever seen a tuna swim. The drag was set around 15 pounds, pretty strong, but it made no difference to the fish. He got the whole topshot in a jiffy and took half the Spectra in about the time it takes to read this. The backing continued to peel off, to my dismay. Deckhand Billy Grisham came right to me.

“Look at this,” I said. “He’s going to get it all!”

“No, he won’t. Let me see the rod.” Billy pointed it up and slowed the fish to a stop. Then he held it with his fingers while he cranked the drag down.

“There,” he said, and then, “Ow!”

The fish took off again, leaving him with a burning remembrance of the brief stop. It was going like there was no tomorrow.

I was down to a couple of dozen turns on the spool when the nasty critter stopped. I pushed the button to drop down to the 2-1 low gear and put a few turns on the reel. The fish took them back. I put the turns on again but he removed them with ease. I couldn’t feel the tail beat that was so prominent during his 500-yard run.

“Something’s wrong here,” I said to Billy. “I can’t feel any tail beat, and drag pressure means nothing to this fish. You think maybe a shark ate my tuna?”

He thought maybe it did. I’ve fought big sharks in the Revillagigedos islands before, and I wasn’t about to do it again. All the line was still missing, and I was making no headway, had no room for error.

“Anybody want to take this sucker on?” I asked.

No one answered.

“C’mon,” I said. “Somebody take this fish. He’s too much for me. I don’t need to hurt myself to find out what it is.”

“I’ll take it,” said Dan the yellowtail man.

He strolled over and I gave him the rod, the heavy stick. In moments he’d put two dozen turns on the reel and broke into a heavy sweat. He was as puzzled as I was as to how it felt.

“I’d just like to see what it is,” he said.

“So would I,” I told him. “Pull him in and you can have him”

I went into the galley to get a diet Pepsi. Ten minutes later Dan had maybe ten percent of the Spectra back on the reel. I began fishing again with a lighter rig.

Dan went up and down the stern rail fighting the mystery fish. He went to his knees, he put rod on rail, he pulled on it standup style and tried all the tricks he knew to coax a stubborn fish. He was flushed and soaked in sweat, but he wouldn’t give up.

About an hour later he had the thing straight up and down in the starboard corner, much to my surprise. I didn’t see how even 50-pound gear could hold up under the pressure.

I looked over the side. Down there was a big brown back, with broad fins sticking out the sides, and a huge tail, beating slowly.

“It’s a shark!” somebody yelled. “I knew it was a shark!”

“No it isn’t,” I said. “It’s a tuna!”

The big tuna wrestled with Dan another five minutes or so in the corner, surfacing and diving, changing direction, doing all the things a yellowfin can do, but from here, the end was inevitable.

When the tuna was gaffed and brought over the side, we were all impressed. It looked to weigh 90 pounds or more. It felt like 200 pounds when it bit.

Then we saw the reason for its super strength, its incredible fighting abilities. It was hooked in the dorsal sickle fin, squarely in the middle of the fin near the lower end. That was where it had hooked itself rolling on my bait. Even more surprisingly, the hook was centered in the fin and went in solid past the bend of the hook. The point never came out the side of the fin; the hook stayed centered right up into the sickle.

“Holy cow,” I said. I’ve seen thousands of tuna hooked but only one other fish ever caught this way. It had aroused the same kind of wonderment this one got.

“What are the odds?” wondered skipper Jeff DeBuys, “One in a million maybe? One in a billion?”

Dan’s fish wasn’t jackpot eligible, being a handoff and a foul-hooked fish. At the dock Sunday morning, August 16, we put it on Mario Ghio’s scales, and it went 89.7 pounds. It had been bled, like all of our larger models, and kept in the Indy’s refrigerated saltwater fish holds, to remain as tasty as it was the hour it was caught.

We had several father-son combinations fishing on this trip, including Tom and Robby Gaworski. Robby belongs to the fishing club started by Alec Robbie at Tesoro High in San Clemente. There wan an uncle-nephew pair, John and Steve Pollock of Huntington beach and Lomita. Steve, 15, was having the time of his life catching husky Alijos tuna, and he caught one yellowfin that coughed up a living seahorse, which we admired and liberated.

Owner Mark Pisano’s son, also named Mark, is already an accomplished fisherman, a fifth-grader who caught his share of fish, including tuna, wahoo and yellowtail. He doesn’t look to weigh over 80 pounds yet, but he made up for his lack of heft with endurance and the attitude you’d expect from an older angler. He got plenty of coaching and admiration from everyone, and gave his dad a hard time in the wheelhouse during a morning spelling contest between the two.

We fished until dark on our last day, stretching the pick bite as best we could. My last tuna was another yellowfin in the high 60’s, a quick biter on a belly-hooked sardine. I don’t usually fish them that way unless the tuna are biting fast and close. That’s exactly what this one did, like the big one. I cast from the port corner and the fish bit within seconds, making me think I should have tried the method much earlier, especially when I saw my friend and long range rookie Cody Felts get several tuna via the belly-hook, I should have gone right to it. Old habits die hard.

Cody is a rodeo cowboy, a calf roper from Houston recently entered into the fishing business via the company purchased by his family, now the makers of the Russelure. Felts made up some heavier versions of his wobbler after noting that long rangers fish most lures at four ounces or more. He had success in hooking wahoo with it and got several to the side of the boat only to have them shake loose. He said his next adaption will be replacing the treble with a single hook, which should hold the ‘hoos better.

For yellowtail and barracuda the treble worked fine, and I caught an albacore with one on the drop back, on the slide, in July. I expect we’ll be hearing more about this long-established jig (from the 40’s), new to modern west coast anglers, in the near future.

By trip’s end, Cody was a good bait fisherman as well as a jigcaster. The end came to soon for him, and for most of us, but we had to get a move on and get started for San Diego. The weather was not quite flat calm during our whole trip, mostly about five to ten knots, and superb fishing conditions for offshore angling.

The next day we pulled in at Cedros Island, greeted by huge flocks of shearwaters, terns, gulls, pelicans, sea lions, Pacific Whiteside dolphin and other critters preying on small green mackerel. The mayhem covered hundreds of yards, and under it all were yellowtail of eight to 18 pounds. In two hours we had just about all we needed, and took a look near the point at Augustine where there were numerous large barracuda. Then it was time to head north again.


At the dock the morning of August 16 we left the Independence, hauled our gear and the fish up to the scales and our waiting vehicles. The jackpot was won by veteran cow-catcher Ken Buzzell of San Pedro, with a 95-pound Alijos yellowfin. Ken said he got it with a sardine on a 2/0 ringed Gorilla hook, 40-pound Yo-Zuri Fluoro, 40-pound Izorline XXX line and Berkley 65-pound Spectra on an Avet LX reel and a Calstar 700 H rod wrapped for him by our chartermaster Alex Masumoto.

Alex won second place with a 67.6-pound tuna, and Brendan McDermott of San Marino won third place for a 67.4-pound yellowfin. Brendan had to leave early, so his dad Sean, also of San Marino, took his place in the lineup for photos. Thanks to the Indy, Rusty Hook’s Alex Masumoto, all the sponsors and our anglers, we had a great trip, one all of us would like to repeat, at the remote, lovely and productive Alijos Rocks, the hottest tuna spot off Baja.

By Bill Roecker

Paul Sweeney and I boarded the Searcher at 4 p.m. July 14, and after an hour or so of waiting for stragglers skipper Kevin Ward ordered the boat cast off and we headed out into the late afternoon. A good northwest breeze was blowing, and I had some concern about how windy it might be way down the line, but Kevin said he’d done some checking and the weather prediction was for the breeze to come down.

We rode downhill through the breezy chop all night, and a couple of hours after dawn we were close enough to the fishing area 160 miles south to start our day. After breakfast served up by chefs Charles Howell and Steve Lamb, we found three kelp paddies over the next ten miles or so, and all were holding yellowtail. They were stock paddy yellows of eight to 12 pounds with a couple of notable exceptions.

Rick Guevara of Anaheim popped a long, lean yellow that had obviously spawned recently. It might have weighed well over 30 pounds, but now it was thin. It was still a tough fighter. We got 20-odd yellowtail from the paddies as we trolled along looking for tuna.

There were young albatross swimming close or standing on the paddies, more of those large birds than usual. They made finding the paddies a lot easier. Little else was showing at the surface, laced with small white wavelets in the 12-mile an hour breeze.

The next paddy we spotted was holding dorado. They were good-sized, 12 to 15 pounds or so, and they caused the usual mayhem of crossed lines, hollering, wildly jumping fish and anglers milling for position. I don’t know how many were lost, because I was following my fish around to the downwind side of the boat, where it came up to be gaffed. We tried the paddy again, but only got one small dorado, so we pushed on.

Skipper Ward was correct in his assessment of the conditions. Both the breeze and the chop were subsiding. The overcast was always with us until late afternoon, but enough sunlight was coming through to make sun protection a good idea.

We had our first tuna stop around midmorning, on a blind strike. Craig Arnold of Fallbrook got the first longfin to the boat, after it bit on a root beer-colored skirted Zuker’s jig Craig called a “Charlie Brown.” He won a DVD from FishingVideos.com for the first albie of the trip.


There were three blind strike stops that morning, producing a dozen or so albacore. As on our previous day and a half trip this season on Royal Star, the fish were still rushing the boat only to break off the engagement within a minute or so. Those bait anglers who were quick to get a bait into the wake on the slide, on the correct side to account for the wind drift were the anglers who got albies.

The next albacore school came on a meter mark following a lunch of giant cheeseburgers.

We got a few more albies this time, and Craig Arnold bagged one on a plastic swimbait in anchovy flavor. Then he tried fishing green swimbaits, but the fish wouldn’t bite that color, he said.

The overcast broke up, the sun came out and we had another blind strike stop that produced several nicer albies, including one over 30 pounds caught by Brittany Fjeldstad on the troll. Fishing with her dad James, Brittany was thrilled, and later she got one on bait.
I hooked up with a sardine on my 20-pound outfit. When the fish pulled me around the stern corner and sounded, I knew I was on something bigger than the 15 to 20-pound albacore that made up the majority of what we’d been catching. It felt like a bluefin, as it dogged me at 200 feet below.

I was concerned it would chew through the light line, but I felt good about the rest of the gear: a 3/0 ringed Mustad 94150 hook on straight 20-pound Mustad line. I fought the beast on a 197 Accurate reel and a Super Seeker 660 XF rod, which was bent to the max. It put enough pressure on the fish so I could raise it, however slowly.

Second skipper Aaron Remy was at my side, starting from midship on the port side around the stern and up to the starboard bow. We went across the anchor several times, as the fish seemed unsure about which way it should go, and at last ended up ahead of the gate on the right side, in the breeze.

It was an albacore, the best one I’ve been attached to for many years. Aaron hit it with a headgaff, and we had it aboard for some pictures up by the bow, where it had given me so much grief earlier. We had bright sunlight, great conditions for a big, beautiful silver fish.

I think it weighed over 40 pounds, and Remy agreed with that, but we had no scales on the boat.

My day was made by that fish, but I wasn’t ready to stop trying. Over the next few hours I managed to fill out my limit of five albacore, and in the last bite, Paul got one, so we had six albies and a dorado to take home. Sweet!

Alex Zarfis of Westlake Village, just about to turn 81, was out there in the midst of our 29 anglers, hooking albacore. He’s not as mobile as he used to be but he got some fish despite being sawed off a couple of times.

“Alex fishes with us,” said skipper Ward. “He wins the jackpot quite often.”

We had several more stops that afternoon, and deckhands Kenny Merrell, Joe Santos and Cole Crafton did a fine job of assisting passengers with their fish and gaffing albacore. We had about 40-some longfin aboard, and everyone was feeling like the pressure was off, but hoping for something big to happen.

It did. Around six p.m. we got a jig stop that turned into a real bite, and we put 22 albacore and three bluefin on the boat. I dropped in a big silver wobbler-type jig called a Russelure on the slide. The Russelure is an unusual shape. I’d compare it roughly to a Flatfish, but the body is U-shaped instead of solid. It has a long history of success on the Gulf and East coasts, and it’s very light for the size.

My big Russelure was snapped on before it got 20 yards back, while we were still moving at two to four knots. The jig was straight-tied to 40-pound line, on an Accurate 870 N reel and a Super Seeker 6470 rod.

That rig was far more outfit than a 25-pound albie could beat, and within a very short time I led the fish to gaff. We took pictures with the fish and the shiny silver jig, which no one on the boat had ever seen before.

I was having a great day, having caught another albacore earlier on a Channel Islands ‘Chovy colored fish Trap swimbait. I brought outfits with 20, 25, 30 and 40-pound line, and got an albacore on each rig. Two longfin came on sardines disguised with Seaguar fluorocarbon leaders of 25 and 30 pounds, tied to 25-pound Izorline.

The three bluefin caught at the six o’clock rush hour were nice ones, and one of them did a number on the angler’s reel, causing the crew to jump in and do a quick splice job. That was the biggest fish of the day, but it was ineligible for the jackpot as the angler ran out of gas and needed help.

A bluefin caught by Greg Commentz of San Diego won the jackpot and a copy of my book Fresh One! Greg said he fished a sardine on a 2/0 VMC hook, with 40-pound Blackwater fluorocarbon leader and 40-pound P-Line on a Torium 30 reel and a Calstar 700 M rod. The fish fought hard for 15 minutes.

“I was expecting an albacore.” Said Greg. I wondered why he was so hard to get up.”


We had one more stop after that last prolonged bite. Around seven that evening the last stop produced two more albacore. We kept looking until it got dark, but found no more biters at 160 miles south of San Diego.

That distance meant we had to hightail it for home. We had to fight a downhill current most of the way, and we didn’t get back to Fisherman’s Landing until 11:30 the next morning. Our score of 70 albacore, three bluefin, 22 yellowtail and a lonesome, 12-pound purple skipjack high-lined the fleet for the day’s fishing, we heard.

We had three father-son teams aboard and the father-daughter, so you could say it was a family trip.

The whole boat, and especially the crew, had a family feeling, I thought. The crew has been together for years, and Kevin Ward has been Art Taylor’s skipper for over a decade. She’s not the latest hull down the ways, but Searcher has put an awful lot of anglers on good fish over the years, and she’s comfortable.

I caught my first 40-pound yellowtail at Cedros Island many years ago aboard Searcher with owner-skipper Taylor, and that’s a memory I’ll always have, along with this one, of a fine day of albacore fishing a lot farther from San Diego than you’d ordinarily go. Thanks, Art and Celia, and thanks to your excellent crew.

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