Ticket Stubs from the past/Catalina on the Fury

Our house is in the final throes of a interior remodeling venture. In the process, I am finding stuff from long ago - disposable and indisposable. One of the thing I found is a small plastic bag with old ticket stubs from fishing trips. I used to put the dates, boat and what I caught on the backs of them. Here are a few....13SEPT92, on the new Shogun when it was just launched. Norm took the overnight boat passengers to Cortez Bank on a day and a half trip. I recall a group of guys who used to frequent Yo's Tackle shop in Gardena on the boat. We had a nice trip over and started fishing in the morning. The Bluefin Tuna were biting. The usual light line and small hook affair. They was a good current and the fish were on the chumline. It was one of those 'can't do any wrong' days. The corners were crowded. It didn't matter which corner I threw in - I had an instant bite. Ten fish for the day. When you consider 30 or 40 guys catching 30 or 40 fish - that's not bad. All the fish were 20 to 30 lbs. I was using an old Silaflex PT70 with a small 229 Newell with 15 lb, and #6 hooks. Ted Kagawa - Norm's dad took a picture of my catch that day and sent it to the Rafu Shimpo (A Japanese-American Newspaper/Los Angeles). They even published it. Hurt a few folks feelings on the boat that day. One of my favorite things to do on a boat is throwing surface irons - particularly Candy Bars, #112's in green and yellow. While going through College - El Camino and Long Beach, I worked on a few boats on weekends and summers. The first boat I worked on was the Fury II out of what was then Ports-O-Call Sportfishing in San Pedro. Tim Ullon was the skipper and ran the boat for John Haas the owner. Catalina was the place of choice to fish. The boat left at midnight every night and fished Catalina. Winters and Springs were spent in competition with other boats to catch the most fish. The original Shogun (a 65' Seaway), the Mustang (a 65' Drake) and other boats would fish the same areas. I recall days at Isthmus Reef - all three of the mentioned boats would be fishing Calico Bass there. We would be close enough to yell at each other. Danny Kadota (Mustang) would be throwing his Tady 9's, Norm Kagawa (Shogun) had his Lamiglass 6909 and throwing the Candy Bar. We would give each other endless grief as to who had the most and the biggest. At this time, I was given a nickname, well actually two nicknames. On the Fury, Tim named me 'Bohunka'. The name was out of a current at the time Playboy article - a parody of sushi. Bohunka was whale anus. Lovely. The other name was 'Vavoom'. Vavoom was a character out of the Felix the Cat cartoon series. He was the little guys from the Alps who would yell - 'Vavoom!!!!' and blow holes in the side of mountains. Even as a deckhand, I would find time during the day to throw the surface iron. Some of the wildest bass bites in memory would occur here. The best time was late Spring when most of the charter boats would head to San Diego for the Albacore bite. We would have Catalina all to ourselves. One particular day, we had a light load - maybe 12 people. It was summer and we had tanks full of chummers - small anchovies that were great for chum, but terrible for hook bait. We would be sitting at the edge of Isthmus Reef and throw a nice steady chum. The Calico's would come out of the reef and go nuts on our chum. Frank Garcia Jr. was the other deckhand. The passengers just weren't able to throw the surface iron and the baits just weren't big enough to cast out. So, Frank and I would take turns coming off the tank and catching one bass after another on the iron. By noon, we would have filled everyone's limit of bass - along with a few bass for ourselves. And these weren't little guys - all 3 to 5 pound units. I had a Sabre 540 with a couple of inches cut off the tip, with a 338 Newell and 40 lb line. It was awesome. Our pinhead was a kid by the name of Jason. His parents were attorneys, and would drop him off at the landing every night during the summers. What a way to keep your kid out of trouble. Anyway, so here we had filled a bass limit for 12 people - 120 bass. We made a few traditional galley moves, before heading for home. Frank and I cleaned/filleted all the bass. I'll never forget this one guy. We charged .75 apiece for filleting. His bill was $6.75 - so he flips us $7. I thought....a $0.25 tip, cheap bastard. Not. Not even a $0.25 tip. That guy waited until we were completely done - to collect his $0.25 change. He said, 'If you guys had given me MY tenth bass, I would have given you the twenty five cents!!'. You see all kinds when you're working on a boat.