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.