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!!'.