My last season on the Mustang

It was the mid-1980's, and one of the last banner years for albacore. It June, and I had gotten a job decking on the Mustang. Now I was going to make BIG sidemoney. Around that time, the albies were already biting in San Diego, but it was not yet time for us to go yet. One day, we all had a trip off and we were all itching to go fishing. Danny Kadota called Islandia in San Diego to see if there were any boats available that we could commandeer. The Pursuit was available - however, the steering was shot. There was a couple of guys that hung around Ports'O'Call at the time - Tom Vernor and a friend of his, they were welders. So, off we all went to San Diego - Danny, Marty, Ed, Tom, Target, Timmy and a couple of others I don't remember. Once we got down to San Diego, the welders went right to work. Within a couple of hours, the steering was fixed and we were on our way to the bait receivers. The steering was not the only thing not working. The loran was not working either. Oh well. We were underway around 2 in the morning. By daylight - we didn't really know where we were. Some of us had a bit of whiskey the night before and were not in the best of shape. We proceeded to put out the jigs and BAM. We were into the fish. WIDE OPEN. The rest of the fleet were having a tough day - and wanted to know where we were. We could not tell them where we were. By around noon, we had more albacore than we knew what to do with - well over 100 fish for 10 guys or so. We started towards home - and I remember Tom had this meat stick of a trolling rod he was trolling with. We all decided not to fish anymore - except Tom. He had his jig in the water as soon as we started for home. Well, while he was not paying attention to his rod - he gets bit. We all see it, but decide not to tell Tom. It took him a couple of minutes - but once he realized he was on, neither Timmy or Danny would stop the boat. All of us laughed our heads off while Tom struggled with the fish. We were back to the docks by 1 or 2 in the afternoon with 0ver 100 albacore. What the heck were we going to do with it all? Off the back of the boat, we would give an albacore to anyone walking by that wanted one. This trip started thing off for the upcoming season. By the time we took the Mustang to San Diego, the bite was WFO. Most of the boats were reporting 150+ fish daily. The Mustang was a very popular charter boat at the time and was booked almost solid with charters from the time we got down there in early July to well into September. A normal day would start at around 8 or 9 at night when the charter group would start to arrive. The excited people would ask the same questions every night - what time did the fish start biting, what pound test should they use, what size hook should they use, how big were the fish, etc etc. After a while, you would not have to pay attention to the questions - the answers were programmed in our heads. At around 10 pm, we would leave the docks and head for the bait receivers. After loading bait, we were out of the harbor by 11 or so. Normally, the fish were out 60 to 80 miles or more sometimes. Which meant 6 to 8 hours of driving the boat. Since the pinhead wasn't allowed to drive, the three deckhands would have to drive until daybreak. Every third day was the reprieve - 5 to 6 hours of sleep! It was amazing that we would all function. We would fish until 2 in the afternoon or so, and start our way back to the docks. A couple of us would scrub the boat while the other two would cut fish - fileting and head/gut. Most days when we had over 150 fish, the scrubbers would finish and help finish cutting the fish. By 7 or 8 at night, we would be pulling into the docks and help the passengers unload their fish and tackle. And the whole routine would start all over again. After two weeks of this, I remember calling around to see who had the day off and wanted to work relief. The Fortune - which parked next to us was also busy with charters, but not like us. DeWayne Fox - who is now a respected professor in Delaware, would work relief for me sometimes. Brian Kiyohara - who is now a respected owner/operator of the American Angler used to work relief too. I recall begging and pleading with Brian on the radio - please work for me!! Sometimes, we would get lucky and get to the docks while there was sunlight left. Bonus time!!!! We got to take showers. My favorite thing to do with what little time I had was to sit in the dark behind the tackle shop with a wine cooler. Sometimes we had a couple of minutes, sometimes we had an hour or two. Most of the time it was an hour or less. And on really rare occasions, the boat would break down and have to cancel a trip the next day. OH BOY!!!! We got to go the friendly neighborhood bar and get shitfaced. It might still be there - across the street from the Islandia Hyatt. I was into gin gimlets, Moose was into Whiskey Sours. Yucch. How can anybody drink those. The boat broke down one time and we all went to the bar. We had already been working for a while by then and had plenty of cash. Each of us must have taken a few hundred dollars - and made some waitresses very happy. Somehow, we all made it back to the boat and passed out. The next morning, we all woke up one by one - except Moose. And Danny - being the worst prankster of us all, had an idea. He said - 'when Moose wakes up, what's the first thing he's going to do? He's going to walk around the boat a bit, fill the bucket full of water and go to the head for his morning ritual'. Now a couple of things to mention here - when the boat is tied up at the dock, the shore power is plugged in so that everything works, except the toilets. The toilets usually have running water when the generator is running - but not when we are tied up at the dock. So, you had to take a bucket of water with you if you wanted to go 'number two'. Also, we did have showers on the boat - however, they were in the same room as the toilets. Now, we pointed the shower heads right at the toilet - and shut off the power to the water pump. Get the picture? Now all we had to do was wait for Moose to wake up and go to the head for his morning routine. A while later, Moose wakes up. While the rest of us sat in the galley and watched - just as Danny said, he walked around a bit, then filled up one of the buckets with water and slowly made his way to the head. OH BOY!!!! We made sure to give him plenty of time to pull down his pants, sit down and start concentrating. And then.........'click' - we turned on the water pumps. Moose came out a minute later - thoroughly soaked and cursing at all of us. 'Payback's a bitch!!!!!'. This was one of the most memorable moments during the time I spent on the boats. Hell, this may have been one of the memorable moments in my LIFE!!. All in all, I think we all had a great time working on the Mustang. Another one of the guys we worked with - Mike Frank, went on to get his license, buy a crew boat and converted it to a fishing boat - 'New Image' he called it. After that, he and a partner bought the Freedom from Fred Carrozzo.