Bluefin bite at Black Rock, and other unusual bites

The jumbo albacore bite outside the Horseshoe Kelp was in 1984. Terry Randall (Art's Tackle) recalled that one. Around the same timeframe, there was reports of Bluefin Tuna being caught at Catalina Island. I immediately hopped on an open party boat (dang if I can remember which boat it was). Front side of the island at a spot where they used to get the bluefin before. At times like this - and others too, I really miss my friend Russ Izor. I know in the '50's and before, the bluefin used to bite all around the island. This bite only lasted a week or so - but a sustained week anyway. There were the incidental catches - the oops catches that occur on occasion. But this was a bonafide bite, where a few fish were caught every day.....for a week. Anyway, the boat left at midnight - and the island is only a couple of hours away. The spot is on the front side of the island (the East side, or the mainland side) called Black Rock. Though I wasn't there when it was named - its obvious. The cliffish rock is plainly visible from a mile away and is 'black'. There were a few other boats that left about the same time so we baited up and got there, we all slept until daybreak. We sat just outside the kelpline and at the first peek of sunlight, we started to chum. The calico bass and bonito started boiling pretty much right away. So I just waited, with my eyes peeled on the chumline. Sometime around mid-morning, in the middle of all the little boils - there it was. A boil distinctly different from the others, and bigger. I immediately grabbed my Silaflex PT-70 with a Penn 501 loaded with 15 lb. I had heard these fish weren't monsters - just little guys, 25 to 30 lbs. I flylined an anchovy on a #6 hook and proceeded to work the chumline. A few baits later - bingo!! As usual, the initial run was at least 100 yards - maybe more. The interesting part was, we were pretty close to the kelpline. So unless the fish decided to swim toward open-water, it couldn't go that far. Mine went straight into the kelp. I got this fish to come out here and there, but it just kept going right back in. All this time, I'm thinking about how this fish is staying alive. Tuna have to keep moving - I thought. So if this thing dives into the kelp and stops - it's going to die. And I may never get this fish. Not wanting to lose this fish, I worked and worked at trying get this fish loose. Sometimes giving your line a sawing motion will cut through the kelp. Sometimes putting the reel in freespool will guide the fish back out. I tried all sorts of stuff - and I know it was a good 20 to 30 minutes of this. I finally started to gain line. Another 10 to 15 minutes later and a sizable wad of kelp is headed toward the boat. Great!! The fish is dead, and I'm going to get it. 20 or 30 yards from the boat, the kelp starts to fall off little by little. All of the sudden, all the kelp comes off, and this tuna came alive and quickly peeled off 150 yards of line in the open water direction. These tuna were supercharged!! All together, it took over an hour to get this fish to the boat - 30 lb Bluefin Tuna. At Catalina Island no less. I was so excited.

I just thought of another interesting bite. Late summer, there were a few albacore still being caught in SoCal. But for the most part it was over. I was fishing Catalina a lot - bass, bonito and few yellows. I off that one night and was on the Toronado out of Queen's Wharf in Long Beach. I was deadheading on a lot of boats at the time, and really liked to Toronado. Specially late summer, because that's when the Bluefin bite would go off at San Clemente Island. Not sure if it was Dennis Luckenbach or Ray Lagmay running the boat. Come to think of it, Ray may not have had his license yet. I don't remember. We started fishing around the East end of the island - looking for yellowtail or whatever. Dennis or Ray hear a pot (we used to call all private boaters - pots) on the radio. He just came out of a stop for a few albacore - just off the East end. Immediately, he told everybody to rig up a few trolling rods and for the passengers to take the weights off their rigs. We got about 10 miles off the East end - we could still see the island. In go the jigs. Bang - 'Hookup'. We get a double on the troll, the chum goes out and the fish are on the corner. Not real big ones - 20 lbs or so. One of my favorite rods for this type of fishing is a Sabre 6870 with 25 lb. In a 15 minute bite, I had three fish. The boat only had a dozen fish or so - including the jig fish. We trolled for another hour or so and nothing. So we went back to Catalina and spent the rest of the day. I don't remember what else we caught that day. Bass, bonito, blue perch and other various bottom grabbers. All I remember is, at the end of the day - some of the folks had a few albacore along with the usual Catalina fish.

Around this same timeframe also, I was fishing a lot with my friend Bryan. Every year in the fall, there would be a Bluefin Tuna bite around the West end of San Clemente Island. Northwest Harbor and around the 9 fathom spot. We would normally get to the island at around daybreak. Almost invariably, the bait would be anchovies - small anchovies, chummers we'd call them. The bait tanks would be full of chummers. To me and Bryan, this was the absolute best situation. The boat can throw a lot of chum - they were called chummers because you could throw a lot of chum without the fish getting full and going away. Anyway, the boat would get setup and start a nice chumline. It usually took a bit of time - but if you kept your eyes peeled, you'd see it. Boils - that were distinct enough that we immediately knew what it was. We had rigs that were fine tuned for just this kind of fishing. Penn Monofils with newell spools (hand picked to make sure the gap between the spool and ring were minimal). The preferred line was 12 lb test, even 10 lb sometimes. I used like using a Silaflex PT60 or a Fenwick salmon rod - they were parabolic and light enough to not break the line. The preferred Monofils were the medium width model - #26, which held about 400 yds. Bryan used to use the Penn 940. And get this, a #8 or #10 mustad hook. These Bluefin were all mini size - 15 to 18 lbs., if you got one over 20 lbs, it stood out like a sore thumb. But boy, were they fun to catch. You had to have the light gear, and on top of that - you had to be able to flyline a chummer, an anchovy about 1 to 2 inches long. Choosing the right bait was a must. We'd never 'just' get a bait. You had to pick the hottest little pinner (another name for chummers) in the tank. The occasional hook bait ( a normal sized anchovy - 5 to 6 inches) was always grabbed by somebody else - who normally couldn't fish a lick and would invariably waste the bait. The whole trick was the light gear and the ability to flyline a bait in the midst of 50 other people on the boat. Bryan and I would always get the majority of the Bluefin. If there was 5 tuna on the boat, we'd have 3 or 4. If there was 10 tuna on the boat, we'd have 7 or 8. It was like that. Along with catching most of the tuna, we'd get the jackpot - which we gave to the crew - which made us designated deadheads. By way of explanation, deadheads - good ones anyway, always caught the majority of the fish. We tried not to get in everybody's way most of the time. As long as you hooked a fish right away - you had priority. Anyway, enough explanations! The tuna fishing at San Clemente used to be good. You could almost count on them to bite in the fall.

Long Range Trips / Big Tuna

I can't quite remember when it was. Had to be in the late '70s. The landing was Lee Palm's in San Diego, and the boat was the Chubasco. I believe this boat is now the Cherokee Geisha. The trip was an 8 dayer. For some reason, my recollection of this trip is minimal. I recall being at Alijos Rocks. This catch was not very memorable. No tuna or wahoo. Just some yellows and bottom grabbers. Quite disappointing - both the trip and my memory. After much time past, while working at Yo's (around 1980) I went on a 16 dayer on the Royal Polaris. Some of the more infamous fishermen of today were just starting their long range trips. The notorious Butch Green was on this trip also. This trip's report made the news. No really big fish, but lots of fish in 100 lb range. For a while, I was fish for fish with Butch. What a fishing machine that dude was!! I ended the trip with 40 or 50 fish in the 100 lb range. Wow. No 2 speed reels yet - all single speed 50's with 100 lb mono. During this timeframe, I also did good on big tuna on local one day trips. A couple of years during the 80's was good for bigeye. Somehow or another, these trips seemed to be on the New LoAn. Nick Cates was running the boat. Good skipper. One particular trip, the bite was pretty good. The fish were all larger units on lighter line - so even though the bite was good, the catching was not. I hooked a fish on 40 lb on a 500 size 300C Newell (I ended up giving this reel to Rollo-Royal Polaris on a subsequent long trip) on a Sabre 865XH (ended up fracturing on this fish - and thrown out). Funny, how I remember some things so clearly. I worked on this beast for a good part of 2 hours. This fish had me down to the knot many times. Later turned out to be 130 lbs. After I had this up, Nick hooked a fish on a heavier rig - 60 lb I think on a 4/0. He first handed the rod to his girlfriend Lori (raisins, we used to call her / Yo started calling her that). She had it for about 5 minutes and was unable to finish it, so handed the rod to me. I finished the job in 10 minutes or so - and ended up with both fish. This trip made the papers too. Incidentally, I got acquainted with Phil Friedman and Matt Kerster at this time. I think Phil was writing articles for the local papers - Gardena Valley News and the Daily Breeze. Another bigeye trip on the LoAn ended with a nice 100 lber. And yet another trip on the LoAn was a nice Bluefin bite. These were medium sized units of 40 to 90 lbs. I think I had 7 or 8 of these things. What a trip!! Probably in the early 90's by now. I recall being the Gardena house and working at Tiernay Metals. About this time, Taka Tanaka was starting his tackle shop in Buena Park. His first long trip (a 17 dayer?) was on the Royal Polaris. I was fortunate enough to go on this trip. By now, the 2 speed reels were coming into their own - no spectra yet though. On this trip, my friend Brian Kiyohara was working and was chumming chunks on the port corner. I had just walked out of the shower and walked out to survey the situation. Brian called me over and told me to get my big gear and put a chunk in NOW!! I looked in the water and it was an instant 'Holy SHIT!!'. This tuna looked like a small car gliding through the water vacuuming up the chunks Brian was throwing in. Grabbed my harness, belt and 100lb rig on a 80S. Threw in a nice chunk and was it was immediate. At strike the line melted off the reel - 150/200 yards? Then all of the sudden it just stopped. Shark? Whatever!! I just put it in low gear and started reeling. It took a while, but soon I could make out a black spot at deep color. The fish surfaced tail first. UNFUCKINGBELIEVABLE. This is by far the largest fish I have ever had on the end of my line - ended up being 262 lbs at the dock. Tail-wrapped with somebody else's rig attached. There were 3 or 4 other fish similarly sized on this trip. All caught a few days after mine. I could of swore I was in the money. 1st place - 280, 2nd place 270, 3rd place 268..........damn it. As Maxwell Smart put it - 'Missed it by THAT much!!'.