Guadalupe Island 10/11 to 10/16 Epic Trip on Private Boat Scotty D

**ShadBurke** · Oct-19-2010, 11:00 AM

Quick report just back from Guadalupe aboard my boat, Scotty D, a 35' Cabo Express. This was a trip that had been planned for some time with my 65 year old father. A redemption trip in sorts for such a crappy local offshore season that we all just had. Countless trips this season yielding just a handful of fish and big fuel bills. So we hoped to go big and put the wood to the yellowfin

EPIC TRIP. Tuna Alley was the place to be. We plugged the boat in 5 hours. Fished the helium ballons with huge baits that resulted in the plus size yellowfin making a showing. We spent the last 1.5 days killing big fish and donating them to the locals. The Yellowfin went from 40 to 125 lbs+/-. We also had a stray 25lb dorado in the mix and some broomtail grouper as well. Thank god for the tuna door as we put it to good use dragging in one fish after another.

Total fish count was: Yellowfin limits, 1 Dorado (dinner), 1 Broomtail Grouper (65 lbs) released

Water temp was 60-61.

All of our sardine bait from San Dieg died in route, most likely due to poor water conditions in Marina Coral I believe. We caught bait at the island, greenback mackeral, spanish and large scad.

All fish caught in 140-350 feet of water.

South end of island not sharky. Westies and north: forget it, the tax man was heavy. We lost some big troll fish that way along with the lures et all.

36 hours of run time down to the island burned 85 gallons. Run home was 25 hours and burned 140 gallons. Sea conditions were great. Check in/out at Ensenada was as "expected". Only took 5 hours to get cleared to leave for the island which was pretty good in my book. Much better than the 28 hours that Shawn endured a few weeks eariler on his trip.

Fish were not line shy. 20-30lb line with small baits yielded tuna from 40 to 70 lbs.

The balloon was definitely the hot ticket. We initally fished 60lbs line on the balloons but quickly moved up to 80-100lbs and 30lbs of drag for the larger models. Bait of choice was scad mackeral, about 18 inches long, and perfect for the 3 foot helium balloons.

The locals were very helpful. At one point we had a double going and they came by to offer assistance and ended up coming aboard our boat and gaffing one of our fish.

An Epic trip that we will remember.

Enjoy the pics