Another long trip down!

It's been a few months since the latest long trip. It was the same trip on the Royal Star - Braid 15 day, between late January and early February. The big fish catching was not quite as good as last year - but I did have one more big fish than I did last year. These last two trips have been spectacular for big fish. This year's was - 255, 237, 218 and 209. Mark had one or two deuces, while Freddie had a 280 (the last fish on the last day) good enough for second or third place. Freddie was so excited!! There were many returnees from the last year's trip - which made this trip really special. Marius Coetzee from South Africa, Bruce from Alaska, Bruce from Phoenix and many other returnees just made the trip really comfy. Compared to the 30+ big ones last year - we had 23. This latest trip was similar - lots of nice sized fish in the 150+ pounds category. Like last year, we ended up fishing at Clarion the whole trip and did really well. My first deuce was on a salami - the second or third day. The second was a night time kamikaze - ate the salami and swam right back to the boat. The third was on a kite - by far the biggest fish I have ever caught on a kite. The fourth was another salami fish. A bit of tackle modification this year. On the last trip - one of the deckhands wanted my Harnell jig stick really bad. Bad enough that he was willing to give up a Penn 70 and a 6465XXH. In addition, when we got to San Diego the day before the trip left, Mark and I went jonesing around at the local tackle shops in San Diego. At Squidco, I got a wild hair and decided to buy a 770XXXH. I was envisioning the 70 with 200# on this rod. And what a combo that turned out to be! Absolutely the best big bait stick I have ever laid my hands on. No matter how hard I pulled, no matter how tight I had the drag - I could not bottom the rod out. I put the 80 with 200 on the 6465XXH, but I never did use it. Despite having been spooled on the Accurate 30 last trip - this was the only other rod I used on this trip. And to top it off, I traded another one of my old rods - an old Roddy BR80, that I traded for another nice 130 lb outfit. Now instead of having just enough to make a long trip - I have too much shit. Well, at the end of the trip - I had another hefty bill from Fisherman's Processing, as all four of the deuces were in the RSW. On this trip, the RSW was started very early - the second or third day I think. And the fish came out absolutely pristine. On an interesting side note, Tim and Shawn were cleaning a couple of the tuna for sashimi/sushi lunch - when Shawn pulled out an interesting organ from the cavity of one of the tuna. Tough to describe what it looked like - a whitish colored ginger root. He sliced it up and said I should try it. I was very hesitant at first - but after I saw Tim eat one, I agreed. The taste was similar to shellfish - mirugai maybe, and the consistency was one of an octopus - except a tad more tender. It was great. I immediately envisioned a plate of this stuff, soy sauce and wasabi, with a hot bowl of rice. There must be a way to market this stuff. Apparently, these organs only exist in yellowfin - and not bluefin. Next time I am in Japan, I'm going back to Tsukiji and find out more. As good as this stuff tasted, I cannot imagine this has not been tried in Japan. Them guys eat everything and anything that comes out of the ocean and fish. As it happens, I did go to Japan a couple of weeks ago - but did not have an opportunity to go to Tsukiji. Oh well, next time. I recall fishing on Yo's 16 day on the RP many years ago. The islands were still open at that time, and we fished San Benedicto, Socorro (something about an Egyptian with a hardon - was one of the spots), Roca Partida - not sure if we fished Clarion or not. I don't think so. We certainly did not fish Hurricane Bank. The Bank was a place of last resort. Boats only went out there when the bite at the islands was off - which was hardly ever. We didn't have any deuces that I recall - but we sure had an awful lot of fish 120 - 150 lbs. Compared to the long trip on the RP many years ago, I think about how fine-tuned these long trips have become - in terms of tackle of the care given to the fish you keep. What a difference! My recollection is that the boat let you keep about as much as you wanted. The difference in the fish you bring home is not even a comparable issue - just about everything was traded for cans. There was an absolute fishing machine on the boat by the name of Butch Greene. I kept up with him for the first few days of fishing - almost fish for fish. But after a few days, he just pulled away. Between Butch and I, we ended up with more fish than a lot of long trips today tally on the whole trip for tuna. Wahoo trolling was done with virtually the same kind of lures - but Butch had a big Dynatroll. This thing had hooks all over it - and he would let me use it, telling me not to yell 'hook-up' when it got bit. He would tell me to wait a while (a minute or so) before yelling 'hook-up'. Butch's tackle consisted of Penn 50's with straight 100 lb mono, and an 80 for trolling. That was it. His 50's though were able to get a whole lot more drag than any 50 I knew about. He had brass bushings in place of one of the sets of clam washers - which made for very little range of drag tightness, but you could lock the drags at will. At that time, I had to borrow just about everything from Yo (whose shop I worked in). But once I started to get my own gold reels, I immediately put the 'Butch' washers in. We would buy 8 or 9 lb spools of 100 lb monofilament and dang near go through those spools on one trip. I cannot imagine the miles of monofilament we left at the islands. The only saving grace was that there were very few boats that fished the area at the time - and for just a few months every year. The hooks of choice were the Eagle Claw 118H Mags. We used to buy boxes of 100 for $10 or so. We did take tanks of anchovies - but the bait we had to catch every night were the caballito. I don't remember the official name of these things - big eye jack? Something like that, and we had to fill the tanks just about every night. But what a great bait it was! These things would tote around one of the 8/0 hooks with 100 lb on it for hours. If you did not get a bite, many times you can reel it in and throw it back out....still kicking. I don't know how many deuces Butch caught in all the trips he went on - but it must have been a lot. Frank called him 'Butchka', and Butch called Frank 'Franco'. The food was nowhere near as fancy as it is these days - but it was still good, and there was plenty of it. Many years later I went on one of Taka's first long trips on the RP. On this trip I would catch my first 200 lb+ tuna on a chunk. This was at the cusp of upcoming changes in tackle. We didn't have spectra yet - but I did have a two-speeded 80. We were still toting around the big spools of 100 lb mono - but some two speed reels had begun to show up. I recall I had just come out of a mid-day shower, when Brian called me over. He was chumming chunks and pointed out a LARGE tuna vacuuming up chunks in the chum line. I immediately grabbed my 80, harness and belt and threw in a chunk with a hook in it. A few seconds later - aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa! After 100 yds or so melted off the reel, the fish stopped. Not sure what happened - but there was still a lot of weight on the line so I kept reeling. Fifteen minutes later, the fish came up tail-wrapped and tail first. Six gaffs and it was on the boat - later to weigh 262 lbs. I thought I was in the jackpot for sure - but as it turned out, there were three fish larger than mine, and I ended up fourth best. It would be a few years later that I would go on another long trip. Tackle is constantly being fine-tuned for this specialized big-game fishing. But a lot of changes had already taken place. Spectra, sardines instead of anchovies, longer rods, smaller reels, etc. The rods are an interesting subject. I remember working at Yo's listening to Yo and Ralph talk about how to get the maximum amount of leverage and pressure out of the rods - where to put the hypalon, grooving the hypalon, roller guide placement, cutting the rods at the tip or the butt - all so that Ralph could catch the world record Yellowfin Tuna. Ralph would come to the shop and try the rods - many times almost lifting Yo off the ground! Great to see he is still around fishing for big tuna - he's got to be in his 80's. Wow. I guess when it's in your blood - you just can't get rid of it. Well, that's all for now.