Paul Sweeney and I boarded the Searcher at 4 p.m. July 14, and after an hour or so of waiting for stragglers skipper Kevin Ward ordered the boat cast off and we headed out into the late afternoon. A good northwest breeze was blowing, and I had some concern about how windy it might be way down the line, but Kevin said he’d done some checking and the weather prediction was for the breeze to come down.
We rode downhill through the breezy chop all night, and a couple of hours after dawn we were close enough to the fishing area 160 miles south to start our day. After breakfast served up by chefs Charles Howell and Steve Lamb, we found three kelp paddies over the next ten miles or so, and all were holding yellowtail. They were stock paddy yellows of eight to 12 pounds with a couple of notable exceptions.
Rick Guevara of Anaheim popped a long, lean yellow that had obviously spawned recently. It might have weighed well over 30 pounds, but now it was thin. It was still a tough fighter. We got 20-odd yellowtail from the paddies as we trolled along looking for tuna.
There were young albatross swimming close or standing on the paddies, more of those large birds than usual. They made finding the paddies a lot easier. Little else was showing at the surface, laced with small white wavelets in the 12-mile an hour breeze.
The next paddy we spotted was holding dorado. They were good-sized, 12 to 15 pounds or so, and they caused the usual mayhem of crossed lines, hollering, wildly jumping fish and anglers milling for position. I don’t know how many were lost, because I was following my fish around to the downwind side of the boat, where it came up to be gaffed. We tried the paddy again, but only got one small dorado, so we pushed on.
Skipper Ward was correct in his assessment of the conditions. Both the breeze and the chop were subsiding. The overcast was always with us until late afternoon, but enough sunlight was coming through to make sun protection a good idea.
We had our first tuna stop around midmorning, on a blind strike. Craig Arnold of Fallbrook got the first longfin to the boat, after it bit on a root beer-colored skirted Zuker’s jig Craig called a “Charlie Brown.” He won a DVD from FishingVideos.com for the first albie of the trip.
There were three blind strike stops that morning, producing a dozen or so albacore. As on our previous day and a half trip this season on Royal Star, the fish were still rushing the boat only to break off the engagement within a minute or so. Those bait anglers who were quick to get a bait into the wake on the slide, on the correct side to account for the wind drift were the anglers who got albies.
The next albacore school came on a meter mark following a lunch of giant cheeseburgers.
We got a few more albies this time, and Craig Arnold bagged one on a plastic swimbait in anchovy flavor. Then he tried fishing green swimbaits, but the fish wouldn’t bite that color, he said.
The overcast broke up, the sun came out and we had another blind strike stop that produced several nicer albies, including one over 30 pounds caught by Brittany Fjeldstad on the troll. Fishing with her dad James, Brittany was thrilled, and later she got one on bait.
I hooked up with a sardine on my 20-pound outfit. When the fish pulled me around the stern corner and sounded, I knew I was on something bigger than the 15 to 20-pound albacore that made up the majority of what we’d been catching. It felt like a bluefin, as it dogged me at 200 feet below.
I was concerned it would chew through the light line, but I felt good about the rest of the gear: a 3/0 ringed Mustad 94150 hook on straight 20-pound Mustad line. I fought the beast on a 197 Accurate reel and a Super Seeker 660 XF rod, which was bent to the max. It put enough pressure on the fish so I could raise it, however slowly.
Second skipper Aaron Remy was at my side, starting from midship on the port side around the stern and up to the starboard bow. We went across the anchor several times, as the fish seemed unsure about which way it should go, and at last ended up ahead of the gate on the right side, in the breeze.
It was an albacore, the best one I’ve been attached to for many years. Aaron hit it with a headgaff, and we had it aboard for some pictures up by the bow, where it had given me so much grief earlier. We had bright sunlight, great conditions for a big, beautiful silver fish.
I think it weighed over 40 pounds, and Remy agreed with that, but we had no scales on the boat.
My day was made by that fish, but I wasn’t ready to stop trying. Over the next few hours I managed to fill out my limit of five albacore, and in the last bite, Paul got one, so we had six albies and a dorado to take home. Sweet!
Alex Zarfis of Westlake Village, just about to turn 81, was out there in the midst of our 29 anglers, hooking albacore. He’s not as mobile as he used to be but he got some fish despite being sawed off a couple of times.
“Alex fishes with us,” said skipper Ward. “He wins the jackpot quite often.”
We had several more stops that afternoon, and deckhands Kenny Merrell, Joe Santos and Cole Crafton did a fine job of assisting passengers with their fish and gaffing albacore. We had about 40-some longfin aboard, and everyone was feeling like the pressure was off, but hoping for something big to happen.
It did. Around six p.m. we got a jig stop that turned into a real bite, and we put 22 albacore and three bluefin on the boat. I dropped in a big silver wobbler-type jig called a Russelure on the slide. The Russelure is an unusual shape. I’d compare it roughly to a Flatfish, but the body is U-shaped instead of solid. It has a long history of success on the Gulf and East coasts, and it’s very light for the size.
My big Russelure was snapped on before it got 20 yards back, while we were still moving at two to four knots. The jig was straight-tied to 40-pound line, on an Accurate 870 N reel and a Super Seeker 6470 rod.
That rig was far more outfit than a 25-pound albie could beat, and within a very short time I led the fish to gaff. We took pictures with the fish and the shiny silver jig, which no one on the boat had ever seen before.
I was having a great day, having caught another albacore earlier on a Channel Islands ‘Chovy colored fish Trap swimbait. I brought outfits with 20, 25, 30 and 40-pound line, and got an albacore on each rig. Two longfin came on sardines disguised with Seaguar fluorocarbon leaders of 25 and 30 pounds, tied to 25-pound Izorline.
The three bluefin caught at the six o’clock rush hour were nice ones, and one of them did a number on the angler’s reel, causing the crew to jump in and do a quick splice job. That was the biggest fish of the day, but it was ineligible for the jackpot as the angler ran out of gas and needed help.
A bluefin caught by Greg Commentz of San Diego won the jackpot and a copy of my book Fresh One! Greg said he fished a sardine on a 2/0 VMC hook, with 40-pound Blackwater fluorocarbon leader and 40-pound P-Line on a Torium 30 reel and a Calstar 700 M rod. The fish fought hard for 15 minutes.
“I was expecting an albacore.” Said Greg. I wondered why he was so hard to get up.”
We had one more stop after that last prolonged bite. Around seven that evening the last stop produced two more albacore. We kept looking until it got dark, but found no more biters at 160 miles south of San Diego.
That distance meant we had to hightail it for home. We had to fight a downhill current most of the way, and we didn’t get back to Fisherman’s landing until 11:30 the next morning. Our score of 70 albacore, three bluefin, 22 yellowtail and a lonesome, 12-pound purple skipjack high-lined the fleet for the day’s fishing, we heard.
We had three father-son teams aboard and the father-daughter, so you could say it was a family trip.
The whole boat, and especially the crew, had a family feeling, I thought. The crew has been together for years, and Kevin Ward has been Art Taylor’s skipper for over a decade. She’s not the latest hull down the ways, but Searcher has put an awful lot of anglers on good fish over the years, and she’s comfortable.
I caught my first 40-pound yellowtail at Cedros Island many years ago aboard Searcher with owner-skipper Taylor, and that’s a memory I’ll always have, along with this one, of a fine day of albacore fishing a lot farther from San Diego than you’d ordinarily go. Thanks, Art and Celia, and thanks to your excellent crew.
