4 weeks and counting

It's almost time to go on my next long trip. The Royal Star this time. I have known one of the two guys that own this boat for a while. Randy used to fish on the Toronado out of Queen's Wharf many many moons ago - when the boat used to fish for Bluefin Tuna at Northwest Harbor on San Clemente Island. I think I wrote a post about that a while back. Since I was twenty-something at the time - he had to be in his early teens. Now that I think about it, Jeff DeBuys - who runs the Independence for Mark and Paul - used to fish locally on the Redondo half-day's for halibut, white sea bass and barracuda.....and so dd I. I don't know how old he is, but I think this is after the barges at Redondo Beach and the Bluefin at the Redondo Canyon in front of the Redondo Pier. Oh well. The big news around fishing is the MLPA closures on the California coastline. I have mixed feelings about that. Most of the businesses and owners dependent on the local fishery are understandably upset. Our local fishing is already regulated - I wonder if the regulations are as deficient as all of that. The ocean fishing was pretty good when I started fishing locally. But even then - everybody talked about the 'old days' when the fishing was so much better. Well, here it is forty years later - and we are all saying the same thing again. I guess the real question is - did the commercial fishing and recreational fishing really do that much damage over the years. Or is it cyclic and environmental? Is fishing going to be getting better soon? Is global warming going to affect anything? Maybe there will be a bonito and barracuda season every year in San Francisco. Maybe there will be an overall migration of calico bass northward. Well, the governmental powers to be have at least partially agreed with the environmentalists and closed off a part of our fishable coastline. I guess we will just have to see what happens.

In the meantime, my next long trip is a mere few weeks away. I have been waiting close to two years - so I am beyond ready to go. This is another area of fishing that is different now. I wrote about this before - more and more boats fishing further and further away. Perhaps it is good news that the Revillagigedos are closed to fishing. Unless more areas to fish are found than the worefully overfished Hurricane Bank, even the longest of trips will have to start offering something else. I always looked to these 15 - 16 day trips as the epitome of the type of fishing I enjoyed most. If these trips morph into something else.....what do I do now, Batman? Well, at this point in my life - assuming no catastrophes, I have maybe another 15 to 20 years left. Now, if these trips will just remain unchanged for another 15 to 20 years.