November 15, 2004 By Bill Roecker Previous Report <--- Scott Colpitts off the Vagabond

At Last: Cows
With Alijos Rocks suffering from green and/or brown water, tuna fishing for bigger fish has been slow for a week or two. Now, boats fishing outside The Ridge and on the southern banks are reporting some contacts with cow tuna. The first report is from the Royal Star, written in San Diego November 9 by Randy Toussaint after talking with his partner Tim Ekstrom on the fishing grounds.

"Once again we have had communication problems, making it difficult for Tim to get his daily reports sent in; hopefully we will have these remedied by our next voyage.

"As you can tell, the trip started out a bit slow, but they finished up with two days of great offshore tuna fishing, most of which were in the 18 - 40 lb class with an occasional school of 100 to 250-pounders. Tim said they hit one school yesterday that they managed to boat two out of, both were over 200. Needless to say, this is a very exciting development and it sounds like we might have a repeat performance of last year.

"The boat is now traveling up the line in nice weather and will arrive early Saturday morning."

Shawn Steward, Excel skipper, had a similar report the same day: "Today was another beautiful day on the ocean. We saw better sign of fish today than we did yesterday driving around. There was a couple of schools of 70 to 130-pound fish that we hit in the morning for a handful of that grade of fish. We hit one school of smaller grade fish as well and picked up 35 18 to 40-pounders and one 100-pounder.

"Later in the day we saw a tree stump floating and picked up forty big dorado and one Wahoo. In the evening we saw a school of the big ones, 130 to 200-plus-pounders. They boiled up, but we only hooked one, a 135-pound yellowfin. There were four big ones caught today, a 201 and a 204 were caught on one drift on the Royal Star and the American Angler picked up a 234 and a 229."

Royal Polaris Ultra-Limited
Frank LoPreste docked his Royal Polaris at Fisherman's Landing November 11 after a ten-day trip to The Ridge and points south.

"We scratched out a decent catch," said Frank. "We got wahoo, tuna, dorado, yellowtail and a few grouper."

"Weather today was sunny all day," he reported November 7 on the fishing grounds, "with eight to ten knots of breeze. In the afternoon our wind picked up increasing to 18 to 20 knots. Water temperature is 76 degrees and blue. Our fishing today was quite good. It was an excellent day of tuna fishing with the largest caught on a sardine on 60-pound test by Charlie Ballard, making his first long range trip. His fish should weigh approximately 110 pounds. We had several fish in the 90-pound class, some in the 80's and on down to 15 pounds. There were 30 plus fish over 50 pounds."

Charlie Ballard of Asotin, WA won first place for a 130.2-pound tuna. Bruce Wier of Sunnyvale and Dan Luke of Bush, LA tied with 102-pound yellowfin tuna.

"I got one on the kite, two off the bow and three off the stern," said Wier. "They weren't biting hard or fast, so I thought I'd try something different. I went to 60-pound fluorocarbon leader, ringed circle hooks; all the tricks I could think of, and it paid off."

Spirit Anglers Score
Mike Keating's Spirit of Adventure arrived November 11 after an 11-day trip. Bob Friedman of San Bernadino won first place for a 57-pound wahoo. Steve Smith of Sierra Vista, AZ was second for a 56-pound yellowfin he bagged at Alijos Rocks with a sardine on a 3/0 Mutu hook, 40-pound Big Game line, a Penn 505 reel and a Seeker 660 rod. He also caught a dandy 48-pound yellowtail. Bob Gott posed with Smith, while holding his 50.4-pound, third-place wahoo.

Giant Wahoo School
The Larry Brown Annual 10 Day Charter returned to Fisherman's Landing aboard Tommy Rothery's Polaris Supreme November 9.

Crewman Greg Hodgeman reported November 4: "After two hours of driving around with nothing to show for it, we finally came across a giant school of Wahoo. The fishing was reminiscent of the Albacore fishing we had during the summer; chaotic and full speed, only bigger and faster. It was an incredible day of fishing to say the least. We will be doing this again tomorrow. The weather has been outstanding and we are hoping for 4 more days of it."

Hodgeman reported again on November 7: "We spent Friday looking around for Wahoo in the same area as the day before, but had few results. The very next day we finally came across some decent grade YFT worth keeping. No monsters, but it was a relief to find something other than the eight-pounders that seem to be very abundant this year. More wahoo were also put on the boat that day. We finished up the trip fishing for Yellowtail and hooked up on some nice ones in the 16 to 22-pound range."

Angler Tom Gieser of Carmel had a near-limit of wahoo and had this to say: "The bombs did best at first; then, after it slowed down, we fished jigs with mono, and those worked good, too, but we lost a lot of jigs.

"The Sea Strike 33's were good," he continued, "and so were the Raiders, in purple and red. I fished with the Burns Bombs, and did best with the orange and gold color and the multi-colored ones in red, orange and yellow."

Norm Moltar of Marina del Rey turned 84 on the trip, and the birthday boy got his best wahoo ever (the very first one of the trip), a 73.9-pounder, on the troll.

Chartermaster Larry Brown won first place on his trip, for a 61.8-pound wahoo. He said he got it with a red and green Catchy Tackle bomb, 40-pound clear Izorline, and Trinidad 40 reel and a Calstar 700M rod, "...in five minutes."

Eric Rogger of LA was second, for a 60.8-pound'hoo and Ron Stafford of Minot, ND was third, for a 59.2-pound wahoo.

Anglers on the trip also had a good catch of dorado and yellowtail.

Wahoo Under Objects
"We found our wahoo under floating objects," said Vagabond skipper Mike Lackey November 8. He had just docked the rig after a nine-day trip that took his anglers as far south as the southern banks.

"The wahoo definitely preferred the bombs," continued Lackey. "We had a lot of wind, and some green water that turned blue. The yellowtail up at Cedros were really biting. We had to drive away from 'em."

Dorado fishing was also very good. Scott Colpitts of Newark, CA showed off a nice brace.

There was no jackpot, but Ken Raymond of LA and the Marina del Rey Anglers and Roger Williams of Laguna Beach displayed a pair of big 'skins (Williams' fish weighed 66 pounds and came on a green and silver bomb), and Fernando Casillas of Alhambra showed another big dorado.

Stand-Up Fishing Show Schedule

Bill Roecker owns Oceanic Productions and provides promotional services for the San Diego Sportfishing Council.