The First Job
I vividly remember the first job I got on a party boat. It was the summer of 1984 when I was hired as a deckhand on the boat "Pescador" (formerly the long-range boat "Red Rooster") out of Queen's Wharf Sportfishing in Long Beach. I thought it was odd that a boat which used to runs trips as long as 16-days was now demoted to the local half-day grind. But the 85-footer could carry as many as 88 passengers (we did that more than once) and I guess they were able to make money running three trips per day. The morning and afternoon runs were enough for me.
On my first day on the job, I showed up at the boat dark and early to meet up with the "senior deckhand." I don't think he was even 20 years old. "First thing," he told me, "is stand here and take a ticket from EVERYONE who comes on board. You have to make sure they all paid to come on the trip."
"Right, Gotcha, Will Do!" I replied with enthusiasm.
After we had around two dozen eager anglers come on board, we were just about ready to go. But wait, there's one more guy walking down the dock. Ah, the last passenger we must be waiting for, I thought to myself.
Just as he was about to step on board, I asked him for his ticket, since he didn't hand me one and it was my job to take a ticket from EVERYONE who came on the boat.
"I'M THE SKIPPER OF THIS BOAT, WHO THE HELL ARE YOU?" is how Allyn Watson responded to my query.
"Uh, I'm your new deckhand. Sorry, but I thought you were..."
"CLOSE THE GATE, UNTIE THE STERN LINE AND LET'S GET THE HELL OUTTA HERE. BY THE WAY, HAVE YOU EVER DONE THIS BEFORE? "he said.
"Uh, no, but I'm a quick learner."
(After all, I'd just learned who ran the boat!)
"Look What I Found at the End of my Line!"
Have you ever heard that saying, "10% of the fishermen catch 90% of the fish?" Well, that is true much of the time. The ones who take the time to sharpen their hooks, re-spool with fresh line, tie a good knot, and pick a lively bait are usually the ones who catch the most fish day in and day out. But every once in a while, a big, really dumb fish slips through the cracks and ends up at the end of a novice angler's line. You know, the guy on vacation from Iowa who has never seen the ocean. He reels in his line with the clicker on, brings along a jar of salmon eggs for bait and wears a clean all-white shirt and pants (just waiting for that first shot of squid ink).
I've heard of bluefin tuna caught on rockcod gangions, I've seen a striped marlin hooked on a rent rod while at anchor at San Clemente Island (That one lasted about 10 seconds) and I recall one passenger on a half-day trip who brought his own rod (a Charlie Brown and Snoopy spincast setup) along with a stringer for his fish... and he caught a limit of sand bass!!!???
I also vividly remember this guy who thought he was stuck on the bottom. He kept yanking on his line to free it from the rocks. Since we were over a sandy bottom, I became suspicious. After he handed me the rod to see if I could break the line, I felt the thump thump of a pulsating fish tail. I told him, "There's a fish on here and it feels BIG!"
After taking the rod back, and fighting the "bottom" for another 30 minutes, and two gaffs later, he ended up with a 36-pound halibut!
His question: "So, is that good?"
14 Days on the Red Rooster III
If you're a local 1/2 day boat angler, or maybe you've made a 2 or 3-day trip for albacore, you've probably dreamed of going on one of those two-week-long trips for giant tuna and wahoo. But what's it really like? What can you expect from one of these expeditions? Most of us only see the pictures of big fish back at the dock or those 30-minute videos jam-packed with exciting action. Well, here's another point of view---a crew member's point of view. My day-by-day recollection of a 14-day trip:
Red Rooster III
14-day trip
March 28-April 11, 1986
22 passengers
8 crew members
Day 1- Depart San Diego at 8:00pm. Load up with bait at the receivers and start heading South.
Day 2- Very calm and beautiful weather. Sunny and warm as we spend the entire day traveling.
Day 3- Unsuccessful attempt to make bait around San Pablo area. Quite a few barracuda and bass on the bait rigs, though. Left for San Benedicto at 10:00am. Traveled the rest of the day.
Day 4- Travel all day. Weather getting warmer. A little choppy late in the day.
Day 5- Arrive at San Benedicto at 7am. An impressive looking volcano island. We caught wahoo as soon as we got there. Average around 30-40 pounds. George the cook caught the first one, which turned into dinner that night. We had about 15 wahoo by noon. Anchored on the South end for the night but had trouble making bait because of the sharks and high winds. Lots of flying fish around.
Day 6- Traveled to Socorro Island in the morning. Weather rough due to the high winds. Only 1 wahoo by noon. Tuna bit fairly well at sunset. We caught about 20 or 30 averaging 40 pounds. Bait still tough to catch that night.
Day 7- Fishing slow in the morning, so we went back to San Benedicto. The 30-mile trip was pretty rough, 6-9 foot seas. Caught 7 wahoo by 1:00. Anchored up for the night. Fair bait bite on the caballitos. Headed for Roca Pardita at 1:00am.
Day 8- Arrived at Roca Pardita at 8:30am. Saw lots of whales (humpbacks) but only caught 8 wahoo. The largest went 60 pounds. Weather was beautiful and seas not too bad. Headed for Clarion Island about 1:00pm. Traveled all night.
Day 9- Arrived at Clarion around 3:30am. I awoke to see a 150-pound tuna already on deck, and another we estimated to be 300-pounds was just being brought on board.
Wahoo trolling that day was pretty good. A few nice amberjacks, black jacks, and football yellowfins rounded out the day. Weather was exceptionally calm and nice. Although the sun didn't shine much, I got fried. Bait bit pretty well that night, once we found them.
Day 10- Another tuna around-300 pounds was lost at gaff early in the morning. We almost went out to Hurricane Bank, but the fishing at Clarion got better. 21 wahoo and 8 yellowfins by noon. Two marlin were hooked and lost in the afternoon. Still decent weather. Both bait and sharks were thick that night.
Day 11- Morning tuna bite yielded a 250-pounder. Wahoo fishing a little slower, but steady throughout the day. Weather calmed down nicely today. Hope it holds for the trip home. This is our last day of fishing. Whew! We left Clarion around 8:00pm. Seas started to pick up later that night.
Day 12- Travel all day. Weather pretty miserable.
Day 13- Travel all day. Weather got worse overnight. We took water over the wheelhouse several times. Estimated 12-15 foot seas. Passed Alijos Rocks at 10:00am.
Day 14- Travel all day. Looks like the weather is flattening out somewhat. Tomorrow we are home.
Day 15- Arrive in San Diego at 8:30am. Largest fish of the trip was caught by lady angler June Pierce---Yellowfin Tuna weighing 302 pounds, if I remember correctly.
Total fish count:
141 Wahoo
45 Yellowfin Tuna
2 Amberjack
3 Skipjack
And one tired deckhand!
Invasion of the Squid!
There was a couple of months in the summer of 1987 when, for some reason, the squid decided to stage a convention off the Northern Baja coast. Working on the Spirit of Adventure, I remember pulling into El Pescadero around 10:00 one night. Just as soon as we hung the lights over the side, thousands of squid followed the boat as if we were leading them to the promised land. It was an impressive sight.
We then dropped the anchor surrounded by this mass of squid. One of the other deckhands joked, "The last time we were in dry dock we painted a giant pink squid on the bottom of the boat...now they're all trying to latch on!"
The squid were so thick, we were able to use the crowder (a net attached to two long poles, usually only used at the bait receiver) to corral the little squirters.
Once we had the slammer and bait tanks filled with live squid, we headed down the line to Cabo Colnett. When we got there, we didn't find many yellowtail, but boy did we strike it rich on the jumbo-sized ocean whitefish. If you've ever caught a whitefish, you know how small their mouths are. So imagine how big these fish must have been in order to eat WHOLE LIVE SQUID! We're talking an average of 6-9 pounds.
Time for one of my not-so-great moments. Question: What happens when you drop a freshly-caught ocean whitefish into a bait tank full of live squid? Answer: The squid don't like it at all!
Skipper Mike Keating wasn't too happy with me either. After about 15 minutes of digging through the tank, we finally managed to fish out the squirmy critter that got away from me. Tasted pretty good at lunch that afternoon!
A 3-Day Fishing Frenzy
The regular skipper, Mike Keating, is taking a well-deserved trip off. Joe Dunn (no relation, just in case you were wondering) is running the boat this trip.
We leave the dock around 8pm with a very light load of passengers; only 18 people on the boat. We fill up the tanks with anchovies at the receiver, and head South, WAY South.
DAY 1 -
Fishing fairly slow. We keep heading "down the line", fishing an area offshore between Cabo Colnett and San Martin Island. Only picked up 30 Albacore on the day. Weather is fair and typical for this time of year---breezy and overcast with a few breaks in the clouds.
DAY 2 -
A steady pick on Albacore throughout the morning. Then, the bite exploded. THE BEST Albacore fishing I have ever seen! Our "stop" lasted from 1:00pm until it got dark, around 8:00pm. Normally, the rule is no crew fishing. That's one rule I very much respect and appreciate. It's also one rule that went out the scupper this trip. To tell you the truth, none of the passengers really cared. They were far too busy catching as many fish as they could haul in.
I managed to catch 5 albies---3 fish on a 60# trolling rig that I converted to a bait stick. Just pin three anchovies on a big meathook, fling it over the side on "the corner", and hang on! We had 292 fish (all albacore) on the day.
DAY 3 -
Started off the morning with a few albies, but then hung a bigeye. The guy fought the fish for over three hours. We even followed the fish with the boat to help speed up the process, but guess what happened when we got the fish to deep color. Yep...SNAP! Well, we were so far from home we needed to leave then to get back to San Diego in time for the next trip later that day.
Total for the three days: 300+ Albacore for 18 passengers. By the way, when one of our crew members asked a fisherman on the trip what he now thought of multi-day fishing, he replied, "Well, it was OK, but I thought the fishing would be a little better!" Believe it or not!
From Bad, to Worse, to Good...all in one trip!
On the second day of a June,1986 6-day trip aboard the Red Rooster III, we spent the day at San Martin Island, filling the bait tanks with mackerel and sardines. Since it just wasn't happening "along the beach" skipper Bob Burns decided to head over to Guadeloupe Island. About an hour after leaving San Martin, a passenger from Texas asked if we could take him back and drop him off in San Diego because he was feeling too confined! Ha! It seems he was used to the wide open spaces of Texas and couldn't handle staying on this "little" boat for another 5 days. He even asked if he could arrange for a helicopter to pick him up on Guadeloupe! "You'd better have a hell of a lot of money and a real desire to get off this boat!", one of the other crew members exclaimed.
I kind of felt sorry for the guy. After spending all this money to go fishing, he changed his mind but there was really nothing he could do about it except make the best out of a bad situation that was about to get even worse.
You see, when we got to Guadeloupe, a wide open bite on firecracker yellowtail sent most of the guys into a frenzy. When that happens, people tend to be a little less aware of their surroundings, and unfortuately "TEX" was caught in the line of fire. The treble hook of a Tady jig, to be exact. Two out of three barbs were imbedded in his upper arm. OUCH! He was o-k after an on-deck surgery by skipper Bob Burns, but clearly, this guy was really hating life at this point.
His luck did eventually change during the course of the rest of the trip, In fact, he ended up with a couple of 30# class Yellows and a whole mess of whitefish. At the end of the trip he told us all that the boat and crew really made the difference in turning his trip around. That made us feel great...along with the big tip he left the crew!
A Couple of Multi-day Albacore trips that weren't.
But there is a moral to the story!
Southern California fishermen always seem to go bonkers when they hear the word ALBACORE.
I know I do. So, the thought of a 3-day trip to go after the albies would seem to most like a dream come true. Well, I distinctly remember working on at least two of these "dream trips" that turned out to be one long boat ride.
The first was in July of 1986 on board the Red Rooster III.
Just after we left the dock, tackle was sorted, bait was loaded, fishing stories were traded, and passengers finally retired to their staterooms, where I'm sure visions of longfins danced in their heads. Little did they realize, that's as close as they would come to catching an albacore this trip!
We started out about 100 miles from San Diego. We trolled, and trolled, and trolled.....all part of albacore fishing, and most on board understood that. By the way, it's a good thing to have understanding passengers when you're not catching any fish. I had "tank patrol" most of the day. You sit on top of the bait tank and wait for a trolling strike or fish to show up on the meter. When you find the fish, the idea is to keep them with the boat with a steady chumline of live anchovies. But the key word there is FIND the fish. I spent a lot of hours on the tank that first day---no fish for the boat.
Day 2. We fished an area about 165 miles South of San Diego with a little better luck. One jig fish and one bait fish...that's it for the day.
Day 3. Working "up the line" we managed to find one more lost albacore that morning. But that was all! Had to head back home by 10am. Total fish count: 3 Albacore for 3 days. At least as far as averages go, we were batting 1000!
The other Albacore trip, that wasn't, was also in July. This time a 4-day trip in 1987 on the Spirit of Adventure.
It was one of those Point Conception adventures---you know, where the fish are nowhere else to be found and the only place they're catching them is up off Point Conception? Well, let me tell you, the weather is a LOT different up there. It's cold and it's rough. We spent the first day of the trip traveling through the channel islands, where the weather was great. That would soon change.
Day 2. We started trolling near the San Lucia Enscarpment, worked our way down to the Rodriguez Dome and ended up near the San Juan Seamount with no albacore and a boatload of queasy anglers with nothing to do. The great meals just didn't seem too appealing when our 88-foot boat is battling swells the size of a three-bedroom house.
Day 3. After spending the night on the sea anchor, we began trolling again. We did manage to pick up our first three albies of the season as we battled the weather. Most seemed to have a pretty good sense of humor about it all. One guy even drew a picture of an albacore giving us the "High Fin".
Day 4. The high seas laid down quite a bit, but we were a long way from home. We trolled all the way home with no luck. Ended the trip with just 3 ALBACORE for 4 days. Batting .750!
You know what they say---"That's why they call it fishing, not catching."
However, I must say that on both trips, even though the fishing was poor, we made every effort to make sure the passengers had an enjoyable time, fish or no fish. Sure it's great to come home from a trip with a boatload of fish, and many times on multi-day trips that is the case. But enjoying the ocean, the fresh air and having a great time is what it's really all about. Catching lots of fish is just like the icing on the cake.
