Hall of Fame Fish story from the past -Fearless: The Wahoodad/Willy Intrepid 8-Day Report

[vegasandre]

So I said I was going to post some previous fish stories/reports from "back in the day"- that I really loved.
now some may say : Why post an old damn fishing report?
I say: "Why not"?

there is often some good nuggets in these stories for everyone (even for the A.D.D guys who only like pictures)
- entertaining reading -something to do when you are bored
- indepth descriptions of fishing locations / LR boats and crew
- fun detail about fellow fisherman and crew ; past and present with some true Hall of Famers in there...
- cool tidbits on fishing patterns from years past that could pertain to today
- weren't posted on BD..

so here is the first one and it's a long one.. so I will post it as he originally did over consecutive days.

Writer- Rodless Jim (he doesn't know I am posting it, but if he reads this..sorry I didn't ask, it is out of appreciation)

If you don't know Jim , let me say he is a fantastic writer and makes zero grammatical errors (unlike me -because I dont spell check or anything lol)
He lives in MX city . Claim to fame is his writing is in great detail and full of emotion- a newbie or veteran angler can get the sense of feeling the moment.
you will feel like you know him.. and everyone on the boat.
but just don't ever him ask about politics..

The older posts are when he was learning the LR ropes..

this thread will be through the eyes of a Novice LR fisherman:

I hope you like it.

Fearless: The Wahoodad/Willy Intrepid 8-Day Report​

July 2010

FOREWARD: This was a unique trip for me, encompassing several "firsts." As a result, I suspect this will turn out to be a different kind of report. For those who preferred my previous reports, I can only apologize, and say that I did my best to pay attention, and will do my best to report.

The issues that make this report different are:

1. The boat is huge, and it is harder to be aware of what is happening on the opposite rail---and to whom---than it has ever been for me before. If you're on the stern, you may have an idea of some of the people who are up on the bow, but probably not all of them, nor can you keep an eye on who is fighting fish, if they won or lost, and (if the fish got off) why. It's just a BIG boat.

2. Until I got on board, I really didn't know anyone on the trip. Yes, I made some friends on the boat, and one or two that I think (and hope) will become really good friends in time. Even so, I didn't show up with even one "buddy," and that is a much bigger part of this than some people realize, at least for how I remember a trip. In the past, I was better able to keep track of what was going on across the boat because I was also paying attention to what Harddrive was doing, and last year, to what JL was doing too. It isn't that I neglected my own fishing (I do that a little to take photos for Outhouse's amusement), but it does give me more than one place to focus on the action. Consequently, I seem to remember more of what happens, and more clearly. I really don't know how that will work out in this report.

3. This trip was by far my longest ever in terms of time spent on the water. On a 5-day trip, you really only have to remember what happens during the course of 3 days of fishing, plus anecdotes about the other time. This time around, we spent more than 6 days at least nominally trying to catch fish. If the fishing had been any better, it would all have become a horrible blur, even though this time I did try to take some notes. Even so, I am sure I am going to get some details mixed up, out of sequence, or just plain wrong. I offer the writer's standard apology: all mistakes you find in the report that follows are my own, and simply demonstrate my inadequacies as a reporter.

4. Emotions color how anyone sees a story, and my own emotions had some ups and downs during the course of the trip. For one thing, I was physically ill during much of the trip (more on that later), and that (with the accompanying weakness I felt) had an effect, not on the events that occurred, but rather on how I saw them...and thus remember them.

In any case---and for better or worse!---I hereby embark upon the tale. "The Wahoodad/Willy Intrepid 8-Day Trip," as seen through the eyes of Rodless_Jim...


PART I: Leaving Mexico is Easy...

Departure:

Leaving Mexico really was easy, too. Not only did I post incessantly before the trip, I also spent a fair amount of time trying to prepare, and that preparation paid off handsomely when the time came to depart. Packing was as easy as it has ever been, though I was carrying more (and, as it turns out, way too much), and I had a free ride to the airline terminal. Really the only headaches were the untoward weight of my duffle bag, and how to travel with two wide-brimmed hats at once.

I was traveling not directly to San Diego or LA (much easier in some ways), but to Tijuana. That means I was going to be flying Volaris Airlines, and flying out of the Toluca airport. I am sure I mentioned this in last year's report, but Toluca isn't IN Mexico City...it is on the other side of some mountains that ring the city. Volaris handles that in a novel, and considerate way: they have their very own terminal in Mexico City, where you can check in for your flight, check your bags, get your boarding pass, the whole nine yards. Then you board a luxury bus for the 45 minute ride to Toluca and the airport. When you arrive at the airport in Toluca, you are already set. Pass through security, get a cup of coffee (there's a Starbucks in the departure lounge), and wait to board your flight.

For me, going through the Volaris terminal in Mexico City had an added bonus. I am 95% certain that my bag was overweight, but the scale they were using wasn't well-designed to handle a soft-sided duffle bag. Better still, the person doing the weighing was incompetent and disinterested in his job. Result: my bag passed weigh-in without ringing the overweight cherries, thus saving me some coin. At the very same time, many other passengers were being assessed overweight charges of $200 or more.

This is a good beginning!

So nothing much to tell here. I was driven to the terminal by my wife's chauffeur, and I was checked in for my flight 10 minutes later. I rode the bus to Toluca, and got myself a damned big cup of coffee, with three extra shots of espresso in it, plus cream and Splenda, then started exchanging text messages with Fishybuzz. Damn, it seemed like I waited FOREVER to board my flight. And I got a lot of strange looks for my heavy beard and two hats. The Heck with 'em. I'm going FISHING!

Well, we boarded as you might expect, taxied, took off, and flew to Tijuana. The flight was extremely uneventful, especially for me: I slept the entire way! I only woke up as we began our descent...


The Crossing:

Tijuana is still Mexico. I am forcibly reminded of that fact whenever I fly into that airport. It's a few heartbeats from US soil, but it is still completely Mexico. Getting off the plane, swarms of "maleteros" (porters who work for tips) accosted me, demanding that I permit them to carry my bags for me. I was offered taxis, rental cars, hotel rooms, elegant meals, cold beers, strong tequila, and 14 year old virgins. OK, that's not entirely true...no one offered me an elegant meal. In any case, I had already made my plans: Christian.

Christian is a contract taxi driver with a Sentry pass. That means he can cross the border more or less at will. More importantly, it means he can drive me directly from the Tijuana airport to the La Jolla Enterprise Rent-A-Car location. More importantly, Christian has done the same (or similar) for many, many wealthy and or important people from Mexico City. I, of course, am neither! But I knew for a fact that I could trust Christian, and I had already arranged for him to drive me. It was expensive, but in this case I believe it is money well spent.

As I was waiting to collect my bag, I called Christian and told him I had arrived (30 minutes early, as it happened), and he told me where to meet him. Smooth, all so very smooth...

Christian loaded my bag (he had to grunt to get it in the trunk), and headed off for the Otay Mesa border crossing (usually a much better choice than San Ysidro). He dropped me and my bag in the pedestrian line (I had to cross on my own...no Sentry pass!), and I started to wait. This was actually unusual. The Otay Mesa crossing is typically less crowded, both for cars and for pedestrians. If the line of cars that was passing had been shorter---and if we had been driving a car with US plates---I could have just stayed in the van, and we could have crossed together in one of the non-Sentry lines. But the lines were long for everyone except Sentry pass holders, so no dice.

I was only in the line for about 45 minutes, with hordes of people desperately trying to sell me anything. Christian charities were begging for donations (we can talk about that in another thread...I am charitable by nature, but there's more to the story than you know), chewing gum and cigarettes and cold drinks of all kinds...tacos and flautas, cookies, sandwiches...knick-knacks and mementos...the line was a marketplace, and desperation was in the air.

Finally I passed through the swinging bars and onto US soil. Five minutes later, I was facing the Border Patrol. And for whatever reason, he decided to give me a hard time. He asked me if I was bringing anything into the US from Mexico, any food items or things like that. I told him I had a bag of caramelized pecans, but since they were cooked, I was allowed to bring them in. I told him I had some cigars too, but they were of Mexican manufacture (mostly true), so also legal to bring in.

He asked me to show him the cigars.

No problem...two boxes of Mexican cigars. But in the process, I laid a packet of Owner hooks on the counter, and it looks like I forgot them there. I never saw them again, anyway. So I re-packed, and zipped up, and he let me pass. The guy at the other end responsible for the REAL inspection had me open up AGAIN (what am I? A pecan smuggler?), and he rummaged through the bag for a while. Finally he had me zip up, and I was through and free. Total time to cross: 1 hour, 20 minutes. For a US citizen. Oh well, it can't ALL be easy, right?

I couldn't find Christian on the other side.

I called him, but I couldn't understand where he said he was. He couldn't understand where I was, either. It took another 25 minutes, and I had to lug that heavy bag about 500 yards up the road to find my ride, sweating like the the overgrown bear I am all the way. Finally we managed to intersect, my bags got loaded---again---and off we headed to La Jolla.

From there, everything started going like clockwork again. Christian dropped me at Enterprise and I paid him and rented my car. I went to CVS to buy some things I would need, then to my brother-in-law's house to pick up some gear. By 2:30, I was on the road to LA to see Harddrive and family.

Traffic was annoying getting out of SD, and I ran into several heavy patches along the way, but I still arrived at Harddrive's house before 6:00, so it couldn't have been that bad. Anyway, I was here, with all of my stuff, and ready to do the final rig up of my tackle...


Next Up: THAT'S Not 100lb Spectra!

Part II: The Last Little Tasks...

Evening at Harddrive's:

I am not going to go into detail describing Harddrive this time around. For one thing, he can speak for himself! I will say, though, that it is his fault that you are reading these words. He was the one who got me into Pacific fishing to begin with with, and then tuna, and finally long range. If you find me annoying (and I am sure many of you do!), blame him.


Harddrive has a wife and two lovely daughters, a nice house in/near Santa Monica, a good job, and is becoming a tackle ho. All of this works to my benefit! When I buy a new reel, I have it sent to Harddrive, along with the spectra I want on it. He spools it for me. If I need a new hook put on a jig, he does the welding. When I need advice about what to buy or how to fish, he is one of the people I feel I can ask and get a clear, straight answer. Me? I bring him cigars and pay for the pizza. Most of all, I let him believe he really is smarter than I am. It all works out...

Anyway, in the past we have had some late nights before trips, where we had a ton of things to do and limited time in which to do them. It has almost become a pre-trip ritual for us. This time would be different, because Harddrive wasn't coming. I have to tell you, that felt truly weird...

Still, we needed to wind mono topshots onto a couple of reels, and put spectra on a couple more. He swapped me a good jig of his for a broken one of mine. All is going well. One of his friends came by to schmooze, and we left the spooling for a couple of hours while we ate pizza and chicken and they drank beer. I stuck with Diet Coke...

So we go back to spooling reels, and we have a discussion about something that puzzles Harddrive. He is in the process of winding 65lb solid spectra (JB Line One) onto a new Saltist Lever Drag reel, and he observes that the line feels "thick" to him. I tell him that it seems the same to me, so what's up? He explains that he has already wound on 600 yards of 100lb spectra on my new Taigra 30W LRS, and something doesn't seem right. For one thing, 600 yards didn't hardly fill the reel at all. For another, the 65lb spectra he's spooling now feels thicker than the 100 he spooled on the Tiagra. So we take a closer look at the line on the Tiagra...

That is NOT 100lb line, not solid, not hollow, not 100. You know, it really looks like...damn, it is! It's 50lb line! We look at the spool it came off of...says 100lbs as clear as day, but there's just no way. It's 50lb line, plain and simple. OK, this is not good. It's nighttime, and there's no place to find 100lb spectra now. I need to spool the Tiagra NOW, but how?

Harddrive makes me a trade. He has 600 yards of 80lb PowerPro, and he'll swap it to me for the 50lb JB. It's not the perfect solution, but it works for me. We unspool and respool, then add 150 yards of 80lb mono topshot. Now I'm good.

That was really it. My brother-in-law had been holding my new tackle bag for me, and two of my rods, along with some clothes. Harddrive had four of my reels, and two more of my rods. Gear-wise, all I was missing was the one reel (bought) and the one rod (borrowed) that Fishy was bringing me, and the long rod Titan05 was loaning me. I had all kinds of lures and hooks and sundry small things that I would need to arrange in my tackle bag once I met up with Fishy, but the big stuff was all set. I was well fed, well rigged, and by midnight I was asleep.

The next morning, Mrs. Harddrive woke me with breakfast, and I got to say goodbye to Harddrive as he went to work (yes, I stuck my tongue out at him as he left). Then I showered, packed my stuff into the rental car, and at about 9:45 I was headed for San Diego, easy as pie...


More Shopping, A Tailgate Party, JWFogg, and the Inimitable Fishybuzz

I said before that the drive up from SD to LA was uneventful, with little traffic to frustrate me, and that was true. The drive down was better still. Getting out of LA was much easier than I expected (it was harder getting in the day before), and once I was out, I just flew South all the way to Encinitas. From there, I had a whole list of things I wanted to buy, at a whole series of places, and I had about two and a half hours to get it all done.

Being clever, I decided to seriously edit the "to do" list, and just do without those items. I managed to cut it down to Squidco, Home Depot, Big 5, and Costco. I got to the Vagabond Inn right at 2:15, in perfect time to meet up with Fishybuzz...who wasn't there.

Turns out Fishy was having lunch with Willy, and didn't arrive for another half hour. He also forgot to pick up the chicken feet! neither omission mattered to me. I was checked in to the hotel, my stuff was out of the rental car and under lock and key, and I was ready for the vacation to begin in earnest.

When Fishy arrived, he checked in, and off we went to return my rental car. From there, we ran a couple of errands, and looked around to see if we could find chicken feet for the trip, but no dice. One Asian market had become a Pho restaurant, and we decided not to bother going all the way to Convoy to find them. Next time I'll bring them myself! We did stop to pick up some beer, and then we headed over to Seaforth to meet up with some friends who were going out on a 2-day that night.

Getting to Seaforth was easy enough, though (to be honest!) Fishy got lost...twice. He was using his GPS guide, and he made a turn too quickly. That got us to the tailgate 45 minutes later than projected, but it didn't matter, because the tailgate hadn't really started yet. There were only a few people there drinking beer and soda, including SaltyDog and SaltyPup. Fishy was the life of the party, picking up two rods he'd had SaltyDog wrap for him, but especially showing off his new Black Hole blank. To be fair, it is an amazing rod blank, as light as a fly rod, but strong and stiff enough to match a Seeker 2x4. Seriously. It is one cool blank, and I can't wait to see what kind of rod it makes.

Of course you all realize that Fishy knows everyone. He's fished with them, laughed with them, he is the clown prince at the center of the tailgate...and we're not even on that trip!

About 45 minutes after Fishy and I showed up, this great big guy with a sardonic grin came up. I mean a BIIIIIG man, tall and broad, clean cut, Clark Kent looking type, but broader than heck. He comes up to me and asks me "Are you Rodless_Jim?"

OK, how can I put this?

He wasn't the first person at the tailgate to ask me that question. Fishy even introduced me to some of the people there (TunaBelly, for example, who happens to be a really nice guy) as Rodless_Jim. And in a way, I suppose that's only natural. I have posted enough by now that everyone knows me by that name. The thing is, they know my handle, and some of my posts, but the don't really know me...but they think they do. They think they know my life and my personality, even when many don't even remember/realize that I live in Mexico, etc. For better or for worse, I found myself to be a weird kind of minor celebrity, and the truth is, the last thing I am is celebrated, pretty much anywhere in the world.

In person I am not the man you read here. I am like that man...I am as honest as I can be with my opinions and such. But somehow, people seem to expect me to be louder, cockier, and nuttier than I really am. Believe it or not, I am actually pretty shy. Stop laughing Fishy! I mean it. It takes me a while to get used to new people. To compensate for that, I make the effort to take the initiative. I'll walk up to people and say "Hi! I'm Jim!" I did that at the docks the next morning, in fact. But believe it or not, that is something that is really hard for me.

At the time that the big man walked up to me, I was actually feeling kind of isolated. I wasn't going out on the 2-day with the tailgaters, and I didn't know what to say to them. The only person around that I could say I knew at all was Fishybuzz, and I'd just met him face-to-face for the first time about three hours before.

OK, to be clear: Fishy and I have been chatting for a while. I count him as a real friend, and I felt that way before we met in SD. So I wasn't "alone." I was with my friend Fishy. But just him, and I felt very much out of place, like I didn't belong where I was.

So this rather large, bearish gentleman walks up, and asks me if I'm Rodless_Jim. I figure he could have asked me if I was Donald Duck...the feeling would have been the same. But he was smiling, so I told him "sure, in one of my alternate universe existences that's me. But you can call me Jim." He introduced himself, and explained that his handle on the board is "JWFogg," (I remember his one and only post in the Countdown thread), and that he was on our trip, not the 2-day. He just had a bunch of friends on the 2-day, so he came over to say hello.

That was a good feeling. JW seemed like a nice guy, a little reserved with a wicked sense of humor. Definitely not a loudmouth type, and more like I happen to see myself. We started talking fishing, and that was that. I knew JW and I were going to get along. That turned out to be a very good thing indeed, but I anticipate myself.

Fishy had arranged for some people to go to dinner at around 7:00 at an Italian restaurant close to the Vagabond Inn where we were staying. Willy was supposed to be one of them, but he had already said he couldn't make it. JW was invited to join us, and we pulled out of the tailgate at like 6:15.


Titan05, A Long Rod, Lasagna, And A Lost Hat

Traffic was awful trying to get out of Seaforth, and we had to wait quite a while in the stop and go mess. We persevered, though, and eventually found room to maneuver. It was maybe 7:00 by the time we got back to the hotel, maybe a hair earlier, and we waited in Fishy's room for Titan05 to show up. It was about 7:15 by the time he did, and Fishy made introductions. Titan loaned me a rod then, a lovely Calstar 900J (I think that's right). with an Avet JX 2-speed already clamped on. A beautiful setup indeed. Fishy, of course, had to show off his new Black Hole blank one more time, and finally we set off for dinner.

As we walked out of the hotel parking lot, who should we meet but JWFogg again. Turns out he's staying in the Vagabond too. We'd told him 7:00 at the restaurant, and since it was now after 7:30, obviously we'd left him hanging. He was cool about it, and walked with us back there. We got a table, sat down and in the course of a couple of hours, had dinner.

Point of note: I was wearing my favorite fishing hat as we walked over to the restaurant, and I hung it over the back of the chair as we sat down.

OK, now I am going to speak honestly, and I apologize in advance if I offend. The drink was good and the company was outstanding...the food was not. I asked the waiter for a recommendation and he immediately suggested the lasagna. Apparently it is a great favorite in the restaurant. I think that has to be because of the size of the portion, because it was large. It just wasn't particularly good. Not bad, but nothing to write home about. Later on it gave me heartburn too. I think there are other dishes there that must be better, because Fishy, Titan, and JW were all (apparently) happy with their dinners. I was hungry though (I had gone without lunch), and the lasagna wasn't bad, so I ate it all. I was, at least, satisfied.

At a certain point, we suddenly realized that it was getting later, and Titan had to go to the airport to pick up his son. We asked for and paid the bill pretty quickly, and once we had, we all got up and headed right for the door.

Yup. I left my hat sitting on the back of the chair. I am pretty annoyed about that...

So, we all shook hands with Titan, and I thanked him again for the loan of the rod. He is a very gracious man, of course, and said "don't worry about it" or something along those lines. Then he headed for his car, and we walked back to the hotel.

In a sense, that was the end of Friday, even though I had many hours to go. We walked over to the landing to do a little more shopping in the tackle store (I got a pink and white Zuker feather that I am sure will catch fish...some day), and then we all went to our rooms.

I wasn't done, of course. I had to reorganize and repack EVERYTHING. I was ripping open boxes and arranging my tackle bag, folding and repacking clothes, the whole nine yards. Again. This became a repetitive, torturous theme for the entire trip, and this wasn't even the first repacking episode since I'd left Mexico. But this was the BIG one. I finished around 1:00 and tried to sleep. At 1:30, I decided to read some. At 2:00 I tried to sleep again. At 2:30, I decided to take some Melatonin and read some more...

At 4:00 am, I finally fell asleep...

 

[nicodemus]

Thanks for posting this, Andre. A handful of "likes," a couple hundred views, and mine being the only comment to this point - somewhere in there is some part of the answer to you're recent post, "Where did everyone go?"

Nonetheless, I'll keep reading the posts/reports/stories and continue my relatively recent trip reports myself. I probably have a fairly unique style of writing/reporting/story telling - ain't for everyone, I get that. But for me, it's really cool to see a couple of my passions converge - fishing long range, and writing - in the well-written and in-depth style of Rodless and a few others on here.

I hope Jim didn't take 2 or 3 weeks before he wrote part 2! Really looking forward to the next installment!

 

[hagridfish]

This is great!!! I remember reading this stuff and wanting to send a nasty gram to the author for leaving “to be continued”. Always hated that line. The only thing that comes close to this anymore is “Sodas” on the water reports, and The stuff Nebraska would write. There are several wonderful authors on this board, since my brain surgery, I can’t remember their names, but there are some whose trip reports are truly works of art!!!

 

[Tom123]

I actually read this one the other day as well as a few others when Rodless Jim was mentioned in that post that you started last week.

His posts, Loreto Joe (picasso), Soda, Wahoodad and yours are well worth reviving for others. Hopefully Nebraska will be posting soon too.

And to think I spent much of 2020 catching up on the exploits of Byeye, Saluki, the Fat Cat and that Misuse dude.

Thanks!

 

[JWFogg]

Thanks for posting. Yes, brought back some great memories. I am still on that trip and only missed one since 2010. Now called the Ray Jarvis Memorial if anyone didn't know. Fishy is still the CM and Jim Hall joined us last year. Rodless Jim is one of the best writers around and tells a good story. Great characters and great friends made on the trip.

 

[hucklongfin]

I remember that report! An oldie but a goodie!

 

[Jedfish]

So I said I was going to post some previous fish stories/reports from "back in the day"- that I really loved.
now some may say : Why post an old damn fishing report?
I say: "Why not"?

there is often some good nuggets in these stories for everyone (even for the A.D.D guys who only like pictures)
- entertaining reading -something to do when you are bored
- indepth descriptions of fishing locations / LR boats and crew
- fun detail about fellow fisherman and crew ; past and present with some true Hall of Famers in there...
- cool tidbits on fishing patterns from years past that could pertain to today
- weren't posted on BD..

so here is the first one and it's a long one.. so I will post it as he originally did over consecutive days.

Writer- Rodless Jim (he doesn't know I am posting it, but if he reads this..sorry I didn't ask, it is out of appreciation)

If you don't know Jim , let me say he is a fantastic writer and makes zero grammatical errors (unlike me -because I dont spell check or anything lol)
He lives in MX city . Claim to fame is his writing is in great detail and full of emotion- a newbie or veteran angler can get the sense of feeling the moment.
you will feel like you know him.. and everyone on the boat.
but just don't ever him ask about politics..

The older posts are when he was learning the LR ropes..

this thread will be through the eyes of a Novice LR fisherman:

I hope you like it.

Fearless: The Wahoodad/Willy Intrepid 8-Day Report​

July 2010

FOREWARD: This was a unique trip for me, encompassing several "firsts." As a result, I suspect this will turn out to be a different kind of report. For those who preferred my previous reports, I can only apologize, and say that I did my best to pay attention, and will do my best to report.

The issues that make this report different are:

1. The boat is huge, and it is harder to be aware of what is happening on the opposite rail---and to whom---than it has ever been for me before. If you're on the stern, you may have an idea of some of the people who are up on the bow, but probably not all of them, nor can you keep an eye on who is fighting fish, if they won or lost, and (if the fish got off) why. It's just a BIG boat.

2. Until I got on board, I really didn't know anyone on the trip. Yes, I made some friends on the boat, and one or two that I think (and hope) will become really good friends in time. Even so, I didn't show up with even one "buddy," and that is a much bigger part of this than some people realize, at least for how I remember a trip. In the past, I was better able to keep track of what was going on across the boat because I was also paying attention to what Harddrive was doing, and last year, to what JL was doing too. It isn't that I neglected my own fishing (I do that a little to take photos for Outhouse's amusement), but it does give me more than one place to focus on the action. Consequently, I seem to remember more of what happens, and more clearly. I really don't know how that will work out in this report.

3. This trip was by far my longest ever in terms of time spent on the water. On a 5-day trip, you really only have to remember what happens during the course of 3 days of fishing, plus anecdotes about the other time. This time around, we spent more than 6 days at least nominally trying to catch fish. If the fishing had been any better, it would all have become a horrible blur, even though this time I did try to take some notes. Even so, I am sure I am going to get some details mixed up, out of sequence, or just plain wrong. I offer the writer's standard apology: all mistakes you find in the report that follows are my own, and simply demonstrate my inadequacies as a reporter.

4. Emotions color how anyone sees a story, and my own emotions had some ups and downs during the course of the trip. For one thing, I was physically ill during much of the trip (more on that later), and that (with the accompanying weakness I felt) had an effect, not on the events that occurred, but rather on how I saw them...and thus remember them.

In any case---and for better or worse!---I hereby embark upon the tale. "The Wahoodad/Willy Intrepid 8-Day Trip," as seen through the eyes of Rodless_Jim...


PART I: Leaving Mexico is Easy...

Departure:

Leaving Mexico really was easy, too. Not only did I post incessantly before the trip, I also spent a fair amount of time trying to prepare, and that preparation paid off handsomely when the time came to depart. Packing was as easy as it has ever been, though I was carrying more (and, as it turns out, way too much), and I had a free ride to the airline terminal. Really the only headaches were the untoward weight of my duffle bag, and how to travel with two wide-brimmed hats at once.

I was traveling not directly to San Diego or LA (much easier in some ways), but to Tijuana. That means I was going to be flying Volaris Airlines, and flying out of the Toluca airport. I am sure I mentioned this in last year's report, but Toluca isn't IN Mexico City...it is on the other side of some mountains that ring the city. Volaris handles that in a novel, and considerate way: they have their very own terminal in Mexico City, where you can check in for your flight, check your bags, get your boarding pass, the whole nine yards. Then you board a luxury bus for the 45 minute ride to Toluca and the airport. When you arrive at the airport in Toluca, you are already set. Pass through security, get a cup of coffee (there's a Starbucks in the departure lounge), and wait to board your flight.

For me, going through the Volaris terminal in Mexico City had an added bonus. I am 95% certain that my bag was overweight, but the scale they were using wasn't well-designed to handle a soft-sided duffle bag. Better still, the person doing the weighing was incompetent and disinterested in his job. Result: my bag passed weigh-in without ringing the overweight cherries, thus saving me some coin. At the very same time, many other passengers were being assessed overweight charges of $200 or more.

This is a good beginning!

So nothing much to tell here. I was driven to the terminal by my wife's chauffeur, and I was checked in for my flight 10 minutes later. I rode the bus to Toluca, and got myself a damned big cup of coffee, with three extra shots of espresso in it, plus cream and Splenda, then started exchanging text messages with Fishybuzz. Damn, it seemed like I waited FOREVER to board my flight. And I got a lot of strange looks for my heavy beard and two hats. The Heck with 'em. I'm going FISHING!

Well, we boarded as you might expect, taxied, took off, and flew to Tijuana. The flight was extremely uneventful, especially for me: I slept the entire way! I only woke up as we began our descent...


The Crossing:

Tijuana is still Mexico. I am forcibly reminded of that fact whenever I fly into that airport. It's a few heartbeats from US soil, but it is still completely Mexico. Getting off the plane, swarms of "maleteros" (porters who work for tips) accosted me, demanding that I permit them to carry my bags for me. I was offered taxis, rental cars, hotel rooms, elegant meals, cold beers, strong tequila, and 14 year old virgins. OK, that's not entirely true...no one offered me an elegant meal. In any case, I had already made my plans: Christian.

Christian is a contract taxi driver with a Sentry pass. That means he can cross the border more or less at will. More importantly, it means he can drive me directly from the Tijuana airport to the La Jolla Enterprise Rent-A-Car location. More importantly, Christian has done the same (or similar) for many, many wealthy and or important people from Mexico City. I, of course, am neither! But I knew for a fact that I could trust Christian, and I had already arranged for him to drive me. It was expensive, but in this case I believe it is money well spent.

As I was waiting to collect my bag, I called Christian and told him I had arrived (30 minutes early, as it happened), and he told me where to meet him. Smooth, all so very smooth...

Christian loaded my bag (he had to grunt to get it in the trunk), and headed off for the Otay Mesa border crossing (usually a much better choice than San Ysidro). He dropped me and my bag in the pedestrian line (I had to cross on my own...no Sentry pass!), and I started to wait. This was actually unusual. The Otay Mesa crossing is typically less crowded, both for cars and for pedestrians. If the line of cars that was passing had been shorter---and if we had been driving a car with US plates---I could have just stayed in the van, and we could have crossed together in one of the non-Sentry lines. But the lines were long for everyone except Sentry pass holders, so no dice.

I was only in the line for about 45 minutes, with hordes of people desperately trying to sell me anything. Christian charities were begging for donations (we can talk about that in another thread...I am charitable by nature, but there's more to the story than you know), chewing gum and cigarettes and cold drinks of all kinds...tacos and flautas, cookies, sandwiches...knick-knacks and mementos...the line was a marketplace, and desperation was in the air.

Finally I passed through the swinging bars and onto US soil. Five minutes later, I was facing the Border Patrol. And for whatever reason, he decided to give me a hard time. He asked me if I was bringing anything into the US from Mexico, any food items or things like that. I told him I had a bag of caramelized pecans, but since they were cooked, I was allowed to bring them in. I told him I had some cigars too, but they were of Mexican manufacture (mostly true), so also legal to bring in.

He asked me to show him the cigars.

No problem...two boxes of Mexican cigars. But in the process, I laid a packet of Owner hooks on the counter, and it looks like I forgot them there. I never saw them again, anyway. So I re-packed, and zipped up, and he let me pass. The guy at the other end responsible for the REAL inspection had me open up AGAIN (what am I? A pecan smuggler?), and he rummaged through the bag for a while. Finally he had me zip up, and I was through and free. Total time to cross: 1 hour, 20 minutes. For a US citizen. Oh well, it can't ALL be easy, right?

I couldn't find Christian on the other side.

I called him, but I couldn't understand where he said he was. He couldn't understand where I was, either. It took another 25 minutes, and I had to lug that heavy bag about 500 yards up the road to find my ride, sweating like the the overgrown bear I am all the way. Finally we managed to intersect, my bags got loaded---again---and off we headed to La Jolla.

From there, everything started going like clockwork again. Christian dropped me at Enterprise and I paid him and rented my car. I went to CVS to buy some things I would need, then to my brother-in-law's house to pick up some gear. By 2:30, I was on the road to LA to see Harddrive and family.

Traffic was annoying getting out of SD, and I ran into several heavy patches along the way, but I still arrived at Harddrive's house before 6:00, so it couldn't have been that bad. Anyway, I was here, with all of my stuff, and ready to do the final rig up of my tackle...


Next Up: THAT'S Not 100lb Spectra!

Part II: The Last Little Tasks...

Evening at Harddrive's:

I am not going to go into detail describing Harddrive this time around. For one thing, he can speak for himself! I will say, though, that it is his fault that you are reading these words. He was the one who got me into Pacific fishing to begin with with, and then tuna, and finally long range. If you find me annoying (and I am sure many of you do!), blame him.


Harddrive has a wife and two lovely daughters, a nice house in/near Santa Monica, a good job, and is becoming a tackle ho. All of this works to my benefit! When I buy a new reel, I have it sent to Harddrive, along with the spectra I want on it. He spools it for me. If I need a new hook put on a jig, he does the welding. When I need advice about what to buy or how to fish, he is one of the people I feel I can ask and get a clear, straight answer. Me? I bring him cigars and pay for the pizza. Most of all, I let him believe he really is smarter than I am. It all works out...

Anyway, in the past we have had some late nights before trips, where we had a ton of things to do and limited time in which to do them. It has almost become a pre-trip ritual for us. This time would be different, because Harddrive wasn't coming. I have to tell you, that felt truly weird...

Still, we needed to wind mono topshots onto a couple of reels, and put spectra on a couple more. He swapped me a good jig of his for a broken one of mine. All is going well. One of his friends came by to schmooze, and we left the spooling for a couple of hours while we ate pizza and chicken and they drank beer. I stuck with Diet Coke...

So we go back to spooling reels, and we have a discussion about something that puzzles Harddrive. He is in the process of winding 65lb solid spectra (JB Line One) onto a new Saltist Lever Drag reel, and he observes that the line feels "thick" to him. I tell him that it seems the same to me, so what's up? He explains that he has already wound on 600 yards of 100lb spectra on my new Taigra 30W LRS, and something doesn't seem right. For one thing, 600 yards didn't hardly fill the reel at all. For another, the 65lb spectra he's spooling now feels thicker than the 100 he spooled on the Tiagra. So we take a closer look at the line on the Tiagra...

That is NOT 100lb line, not solid, not hollow, not 100. You know, it really looks like...damn, it is! It's 50lb line! We look at the spool it came off of...says 100lbs as clear as day, but there's just no way. It's 50lb line, plain and simple. OK, this is not good. It's nighttime, and there's no place to find 100lb spectra now. I need to spool the Tiagra NOW, but how?

Harddrive makes me a trade. He has 600 yards of 80lb PowerPro, and he'll swap it to me for the 50lb JB. It's not the perfect solution, but it works for me. We unspool and respool, then add 150 yards of 80lb mono topshot. Now I'm good.

That was really it. My brother-in-law had been holding my new tackle bag for me, and two of my rods, along with some clothes. Harddrive had four of my reels, and two more of my rods. Gear-wise, all I was missing was the one reel (bought) and the one rod (borrowed) that Fishy was bringing me, and the long rod Titan05 was loaning me. I had all kinds of lures and hooks and sundry small things that I would need to arrange in my tackle bag once I met up with Fishy, but the big stuff was all set. I was well fed, well rigged, and by midnight I was asleep.

The next morning, Mrs. Harddrive woke me with breakfast, and I got to say goodbye to Harddrive as he went to work (yes, I stuck my tongue out at him as he left). Then I showered, packed my stuff into the rental car, and at about 9:45 I was headed for San Diego, easy as pie...


More Shopping, A Tailgate Party, JWFogg, and the Inimitable Fishybuzz

I said before that the drive up from SD to LA was uneventful, with little traffic to frustrate me, and that was true. The drive down was better still. Getting out of LA was much easier than I expected (it was harder getting in the day before), and once I was out, I just flew South all the way to Encinitas. From there, I had a whole list of things I wanted to buy, at a whole series of places, and I had about two and a half hours to get it all done.

Being clever, I decided to seriously edit the "to do" list, and just do without those items. I managed to cut it down to Squidco, Home Depot, Big 5, and Costco. I got to the Vagabond Inn right at 2:15, in perfect time to meet up with Fishybuzz...who wasn't there.

Turns out Fishy was having lunch with Willy, and didn't arrive for another half hour. He also forgot to pick up the chicken feet! neither omission mattered to me. I was checked in to the hotel, my stuff was out of the rental car and under lock and key, and I was ready for the vacation to begin in earnest.

When Fishy arrived, he checked in, and off we went to return my rental car. From there, we ran a couple of errands, and looked around to see if we could find chicken feet for the trip, but no dice. One Asian market had become a Pho restaurant, and we decided not to bother going all the way to Convoy to find them. Next time I'll bring them myself! We did stop to pick up some beer, and then we headed over to Seaforth to meet up with some friends who were going out on a 2-day that night.

Getting to Seaforth was easy enough, though (to be honest!) Fishy got lost...twice. He was using his GPS guide, and he made a turn too quickly. That got us to the tailgate 45 minutes later than projected, but it didn't matter, because the tailgate hadn't really started yet. There were only a few people there drinking beer and soda, including SaltyDog and SaltyPup. Fishy was the life of the party, picking up two rods he'd had SaltyDog wrap for him, but especially showing off his new Black Hole blank. To be fair, it is an amazing rod blank, as light as a fly rod, but strong and stiff enough to match a Seeker 2x4. Seriously. It is one cool blank, and I can't wait to see what kind of rod it makes.

Of course you all realize that Fishy knows everyone. He's fished with them, laughed with them, he is the clown prince at the center of the tailgate...and we're not even on that trip!

About 45 minutes after Fishy and I showed up, this great big guy with a sardonic grin came up. I mean a BIIIIIG man, tall and broad, clean cut, Clark Kent looking type, but broader than heck. He comes up to me and asks me "Are you Rodless_Jim?"

OK, how can I put this?

He wasn't the first person at the tailgate to ask me that question. Fishy even introduced me to some of the people there (TunaBelly, for example, who happens to be a really nice guy) as Rodless_Jim. And in a way, I suppose that's only natural. I have posted enough by now that everyone knows me by that name. The thing is, they know my handle, and some of my posts, but the don't really know me...but they think they do. They think they know my life and my personality, even when many don't even remember/realize that I live in Mexico, etc. For better or for worse, I found myself to be a weird kind of minor celebrity, and the truth is, the last thing I am is celebrated, pretty much anywhere in the world.

In person I am not the man you read here. I am like that man...I am as honest as I can be with my opinions and such. But somehow, people seem to expect me to be louder, cockier, and nuttier than I really am. Believe it or not, I am actually pretty shy. Stop laughing Fishy! I mean it. It takes me a while to get used to new people. To compensate for that, I make the effort to take the initiative. I'll walk up to people and say "Hi! I'm Jim!" I did that at the docks the next morning, in fact. But believe it or not, that is something that is really hard for me.

At the time that the big man walked up to me, I was actually feeling kind of isolated. I wasn't going out on the 2-day with the tailgaters, and I didn't know what to say to them. The only person around that I could say I knew at all was Fishybuzz, and I'd just met him face-to-face for the first time about three hours before.

OK, to be clear: Fishy and I have been chatting for a while. I count him as a real friend, and I felt that way before we met in SD. So I wasn't "alone." I was with my friend Fishy. But just him, and I felt very much out of place, like I didn't belong where I was.

So this rather large, bearish gentleman walks up, and asks me if I'm Rodless_Jim. I figure he could have asked me if I was Donald Duck...the feeling would have been the same. But he was smiling, so I told him "sure, in one of my alternate universe existences that's me. But you can call me Jim." He introduced himself, and explained that his handle on the board is "JWFogg," (I remember his one and only post in the Countdown thread), and that he was on our trip, not the 2-day. He just had a bunch of friends on the 2-day, so he came over to say hello.

That was a good feeling. JW seemed like a nice guy, a little reserved with a wicked sense of humor. Definitely not a loudmouth type, and more like I happen to see myself. We started talking fishing, and that was that. I knew JW and I were going to get along. That turned out to be a very good thing indeed, but I anticipate myself.

Fishy had arranged for some people to go to dinner at around 7:00 at an Italian restaurant close to the Vagabond Inn where we were staying. Willy was supposed to be one of them, but he had already said he couldn't make it. JW was invited to join us, and we pulled out of the tailgate at like 6:15.


Titan05, A Long Rod, Lasagna, And A Lost Hat

Traffic was awful trying to get out of Seaforth, and we had to wait quite a while in the stop and go mess. We persevered, though, and eventually found room to maneuver. It was maybe 7:00 by the time we got back to the hotel, maybe a hair earlier, and we waited in Fishy's room for Titan05 to show up. It was about 7:15 by the time he did, and Fishy made introductions. Titan loaned me a rod then, a lovely Calstar 900J (I think that's right). with an Avet JX 2-speed already clamped on. A beautiful setup indeed. Fishy, of course, had to show off his new Black Hole blank one more time, and finally we set off for dinner.

As we walked out of the hotel parking lot, who should we meet but JWFogg again. Turns out he's staying in the Vagabond too. We'd told him 7:00 at the restaurant, and since it was now after 7:30, obviously we'd left him hanging. He was cool about it, and walked with us back there. We got a table, sat down and in the course of a couple of hours, had dinner.

Point of note: I was wearing my favorite fishing hat as we walked over to the restaurant, and I hung it over the back of the chair as we sat down.

OK, now I am going to speak honestly, and I apologize in advance if I offend. The drink was good and the company was outstanding...the food was not. I asked the waiter for a recommendation and he immediately suggested the lasagna. Apparently it is a great favorite in the restaurant. I think that has to be because of the size of the portion, because it was large. It just wasn't particularly good. Not bad, but nothing to write home about. Later on it gave me heartburn too. I think there are other dishes there that must be better, because Fishy, Titan, and JW were all (apparently) happy with their dinners. I was hungry though (I had gone without lunch), and the lasagna wasn't bad, so I ate it all. I was, at least, satisfied.

At a certain point, we suddenly realized that it was getting later, and Titan had to go to the airport to pick up his son. We asked for and paid the bill pretty quickly, and once we had, we all got up and headed right for the door.

Yup. I left my hat sitting on the back of the chair. I am pretty annoyed about that...

So, we all shook hands with Titan, and I thanked him again for the loan of the rod. He is a very gracious man, of course, and said "don't worry about it" or something along those lines. Then he headed for his car, and we walked back to the hotel.

In a sense, that was the end of Friday, even though I had many hours to go. We walked over to the landing to do a little more shopping in the tackle store (I got a pink and white Zuker feather that I am sure will catch fish...some day), and then we all went to our rooms.

I wasn't done, of course. I had to reorganize and repack EVERYTHING. I was ripping open boxes and arranging my tackle bag, folding and repacking clothes, the whole nine yards. Again. This became a repetitive, torturous theme for the entire trip, and this wasn't even the first repacking episode since I'd left Mexico. But this was the BIG one. I finished around 1:00 and tried to sleep. At 1:30, I decided to read some. At 2:00 I tried to sleep again. At 2:30, I decided to take some Melatonin and read some more...

At 4:00 am, I finally fell asleep...

 

[vegasandre]

Part III: Can We Go Already...?

"Why Am I Awake?", A Saturday Morning at the Docks, And LOTS Of New Friends

One thing that we had casually decided at dinner was that we would all go to breakfast at a place called Red Sails at 7:00 the next morning. I was exhausted, and I took that to mean that we would start walking at 7:00, when we would all be more or less up and about. Well my alarm clock went off at 7:00, sure enough, but all I did was hit the snooze and keep right on dreaming of wahoo. A minute or two later (I guess), there was a brief knock on the door (I think!), but I was unmoved. Literally. Finally, at 7:30 the sound of the alarm---and what it meant---penetrated my consciousness, and I awoke.

In retrospect, what I should have done was reset the alarm for 9:30, or even 10:00, and gone right on sleeping. It's not like there was any hurry, or much of anything I needed to do before 8:00. But it was Saturday...Trip Day!...and once I was awake, there was no going back. Adrenaline junkies, eat your hearts out.

So I rolled my sorry butt out of bed...I was feeling the exhaustion!...showered, brushed, put in the contacts, got dressed, and finally walked down to the Landing. It was pretty quiet that early, but there were a couple of people around. I went up the stairs and found the office open, with Steve behind the desk. Of course Fishy was in there already, first to sign up, and BS'ing with everyone. He was already filling out his paperwork for the 2011 trip! JWFogg was there too. It turns out that it had been Fishy who'd banged on my door at 7:00, but not to go to breakfast. They never did go to Red Sails that morning...they just came over to the Landing first thing. In any case, I was third to sign in, and I bought a t-shirt too. I was going to buy a sweatshirt as well, but I got a sharp pain in my wallet, and decided a t-shirt was good enough.

So I clipped on my Intrepid badge, laughed at Fishy again, and went back outside. A couple of people were beginning to congregate and a pile of gear was appearing magically on the sidewalk. I didn't know them, of course, but one of them, a blocky guy in his late 50s, asked me "Hey! You're Rodless_Jim, right?" What was I supposed to do? I laughed and said "yup, that's me." He told me he was Terry_CA, and we shook. So then others started coming up too. Brad_G arrived, with Mark the Human Hurricane in tow. Then it was Just Jan the Sea Squirrel with (I kid you not!) her daughter's boyfriend. Albacore11 and Redbeard arrived, a guy they call Silent Jim, Xman, and another guy named Reider, then a couple of brothers named Mark and Chris. The party is starting!

Yes, several of them asked me if I was Rodless_Jim. It turns out that the countdown thread really caught some peoples' attention. The whole thing began to make me feel weird, especially when Cong Vu and Luan Pham asked me. They are two really nice Vietnamese guys, and excellent anglers. But when they found out that I was the Rodless One, they looked at each other, nodded wisely, and said something in Vietnamese. I am pretty sure it was:

"Do you think it's really him?"
"I don't know. He doesn't look crazy"
"I think it's him...maybe he's taking medication!"
"You're probably right."

Then, of course, they both turned to look at me at the same time, and smiled a big smile... Harold and Kumar Go Long Range Fishing? Something like that.

I admit it was a difficult morning for me. Everyone was very nice, by the way. That wasn't at all an issue. Even with the various and sundry "Rodless" conversations, they are all good folk, and I knew that in time I would feel comfortable with all of them. That's the way it worked out, too. But just about everyone had been on at least one previous trip with someone else on our trip. They knew each other...they'd shared the rail before. That's a deep bond in some ways, a connection that is surprisingly strong. I didn't let it bother me that I didn't have that with these people...yet. I smiled and introduced myself, and did my best to memorize names.

Then Willy and Wahoodad showed up. They were both very gracious, and that made me feel more comfortable. Fishy and JW came down from the office, and we talked some. Then I started to get to know Brad_G in person. In no time we were laughing like old friends, and the "weirdness" started to pass.

DirtyGirl arrived then with her son Garret. He was shy, and totally devoted to his pocket video game (Nintendo?), but a cute kid nonetheless, with a winning smile. He and the Human Hurricane were friends from previous short trips, and they were soon as thick as thieves.

I met Boltar and a guy I called "John the Stealth Angler," but more about him later. There was a guy named Ken and another guy named Miles, both of whom turned out to be pretty hot sticks. They were all nice people, and spirits were high. OK, Boltar never looks like he's happy...if there had been a dwarf named Grumpy, Boltar could have been the model. But it turns out he's actually a really cool character...just very deadpan and serious-looking. My sense of anxiety finally fled, more or less for good. This was a great bunch of people with whom to fish...if "That Guy" was here, it was probably me.

Fishy had already moved his stuff from the hotel to the landing...packed it all in his car and drove it across. He brought JW's stuff too, but I guess I wasn't around when he made the move because my stuff was still in my room. I didn't have a car (a good thing, really), so I needed to find a way to carry/move the gear. I managed to find an empty cart (fortune favors the brave, I guess!), and trundled it across the parking lot to the side gate of the hotel. I moved my gear in stages from the room to the gate, then from the gate to the cart. People were walking and driving by, and I didn't want to tempt a pelican. Once I had the gear in the cart, I trundled it back over to the Landing and asked Brad_G if he would watch it for me while I checked out of the hotel. He said he would, so back I went.

First, though, I went back to the restaurant (La Scala) to see if maybe some prep cooks were there early, and I could get my hat back. No luck, of course. I asked the woman in the truffle shop next door, and she said she never sees anyone get there until after noon, so I gave up on the hat (feeling pretty stupid and grumpy myself), and headed back to the hotel. On the way, I stopped at a little burrito shop (I didn't get the name) and bought a breakfast burrito. Don't worry about trying to find it, the burrito wasn't anything special. It was hot and filling, though, which is what I needed.

One more check of the room, where I discovered I had left my cologne in the bathroom, then checked out once and for all. I walked over to the Landing again, this time to stay, finishing my burrito once I got there.

Everyone was still milling about, talking with friends and telling stories. I was sort of left out of that---no shared stories yet to tell!---but I was fine with it. I sat and smoked a short cigar, and enjoyed the morning.

It wasn't that early anymore by then. The American Angler had come in, with Intrepid on her heels. The Angler had unloaded a nice catch, but nothing too exciting. Intrepid had been on a longer trip, and had more to show for it, including a big wahoo, and a good-sized amberjack. Not bluefin or albacore, though...nary a one, though the Angler had caught some of each. Intrepid had a nice load of yellowfin, though, and plenty of yellowtail, along with some sheepshead. My off-the-cuff analysis was "nice trip...good grade of tuna!...maybe a little light on the numbers...I bet the anglers are happy...I hope we do a little better!" What caught my attention most was that Intrepid brought home a few fish over 100lbs. The trips I've been on, the boats I've seen unload, I'd never even seen a 100lb tuna hit the dock. I've seen the photos, of course, but never the real deal at my feet. My personal best tuna was a Guadalupe yellowfin that tipped the scales at 62.4.

Yes, it got me pumped up...

Once unloaded, the Angler had headed off for gas, and they had their next charter waiting to load. Intrepid followed close after, but it was already 10:40, and the Angler hadn't loaded yet. Then Steve told us what I was already guessing: we were going to get a late start...probably wouldn't load until noon. There was something else involved besides the Angler being ahead of us in line, too. I don't remember what...maybe a small repair, or some supplies that hadn't yet arrived. But the combination meant a late start...all the while with me dreaming of big tuna.

The Angler eventually loaded, and the landing personnel got us lined up in our carts to load...but we didn't. Not for yet another half hour or so. The waiting was killing me at that point...the worst it has ever felt for me. I know that everyone was doing all they could to get us going; I have no complaints on that score! It just took that long to get the boat ready. Then...suddenly...it was 12:30, and we were loading! Cart after cart down the dock...the deckies absolutely flying to get the stuff on board...giving all of us grief because they were putting the stuff on the deck faster than we could move it off, which was a fair criticism. But they were in high gear, which definitely suited my mood...

Rooms And Roommates, The Seminar That Wasn't, And The Open Ocean

Turns out that JWFogg was my roommate, and let me tell you, that is all to the good. He's just about the nicest, calmest guy you ever met, and funny to boot. He's laid back, organized, and is never fazed by much of anything. I get the feeling he and I will fish together again more than once; I already consider him a friend.

We were in Cabin #2.

Those of you who have fished Intrepid may know this, those who haven't probably do not: Intrepid has 13 cabins, 11 of them below decks. Two of the cabins, though, are on the main deck far above the keel, and they are significantly smaller than the other cabins. They have virtually no storage space, and precious little floor space. They are good for sleeping, and that's all. And if anyone is watching a movie in the dining room, you can forget the sleeping part. Those cabins, the small ones on the main deck, are cabins #1 and #2.

Did I mention that JWFogg is a big guy? For that matter, have I mentioned that I'M a pretty big guy myself? Or that I brought too much gear for an 8-day trip?

1. We were definitely the largest anglers on the boat.
2. We had the smallest room.
3. We had no place to store our stuff.
4. As the smaller of the two of us, I was in the top bunk.

I repeat, it is a miracle that I had JW for a roommate. We really made the best of a challenging bunk arrangement, to the point where it really wasn't an issue the entire trip. It could have been so much worse. as it is, we were virtually never in each other's way, even though we both couldn't stand on the floor in the stateroom at the same time...

Anyway, I had my gear in the stateroom, if not actually stowed there. I had a nice spot for my tackle bag, and my rods were in their slots. At 1:00 we pulled away from the dock and headed out to bait up. Whatever had been an issue before was past. Intrepid was underway, and I was the happiest angler in the world.

They had announced that we would have a seminar as we were baiting up, but that never happened. We did get the safety lecture, but it was cut short when Javier served lunch. By then we were headed for the offshore grounds, and Kevin postponed the tackle seminar and the raffle until the next morning after breakfast. All he told us was that we should make sure we had 30 and 40lb bait rigs set up, in case we saw a chance to fish at the end of the afternoon. He wasn't sure we would...we were late getting out, and behind the curve, but we should be ready just in case.

Javier served us grilled chicken breasts, and so at long last we begin the true journey. We ate, we rigged, and then we schmoozed. The boat never made it to the schools before nightfall, though Kevin definitely had the pedal to the metal. Dinner was at 7:00, and I was already trying to sleep by 9:30, hoping for a gray bite...

Next: A Long, Loooooong Sunday, And a Recurring Theme...

 

[vegasandre]

Part IV: Rigging Up, Laughing It Up, and Drive By Fishing... The Crew Makes the Boat!
I haven't taken any time to speak yet of the crew aboard Intrepid, and in this case that is a major omission. From top to bottom, Intrepid's crew is by far the best group I have ever seen. They are OUTSTANDING!!! Yes, I know...I haven't been on that many trips...I have only ridden a few of the boats...most of all, perhaps, everyone has their own preferences. You can call it how you see it. For my money, I don't expect anyone to top these guys. And I really don't care if you've been long range fishing three times a year for the past three decades, and you've seen it all...if you haven't taken a trip on Intrepid with these guys, you haven't seen the best yet. Yes, I know all about how things used to be...trust me, they've changed.

Harddrive? JL? I'm talking very specifically to the two of you, along with anyone else who ever had a "Rick" experience, or dealt with any of the holdover deckhands. I've seen good captains and good deckhands, but I ain't never seen 'em like these guys...

Your starting line up, if you will:
Captain Kevin Osborne: I've fished with good captains and I've fished with friendly captains and I've fished with fishy captains. Kevin is all of these, and then some. He is a walking, smiling, laughing advertisement for long range fishing, and an ambassador for his boat. I liked fishing with him every bit as much as I liked fishing with Mike Lackey on board Vagabond, and I never expected to ever write those words. It may sound like a left-handed compliment for me to praise one captain by saying he is as good as another captain, but from where I sit, saying anyone is as good a captain as Mike Lackey is high praise indeed. Kevin deserves that and more. What you need to know about Kevin---besides the fact that he puts you on fish over and over and over again---is that he is kind and patient and very accessible. He loves a good laugh, and will cheerfully take part in a practical joke when appropriate. He treats not only his passengers, but also his crew with a very high level of respect, and in return, they respect him too. He runs a tight ship, a professional ship, but also a happy and friendly ship. When you look at a successful organization, you can see the effect of good leadership, and how it emanates from the top of the chain of command. That is so with Intrepid, and Kevin is obviously the leader of this bunch...and a very good one.

Chef Javier Quintanar: It is strange to put the boat's chef in second position, but it seems as if Javier is entitled to this place, because he is as much Intrepid's character and soul as Kevin himself. In some ways, Javier is also equally responsible for the quality of the experience the passengers enjoy on the boat. He is a kind, funny man, a natural smart aleck (like most Spaniards I have known), a friend as much as a cook...and far and away the most talented chef the San Diego fleet can boast. That is no joke, by the way. Javier's cooking is spectacular. The worst you could say about any dish that came out of his kitchen was that it was delicious. Almost everything surpassed that standard. It almost became a game with us to see what he would do next, how he could possibly top the last meal. And yet somehow he always managed to do just that. This is heresy, I know, but it was almost worth the price of the trip just to eat his food. But there is more to Intrepid's chef and his kitchen than that.

Javier's brother Hector Quintanar is his assistant, and between them they would settle for nothing less than making every meal a pleasure, for every single passenger. The very first morning, I explained to Hector that I like my morning coffee to be like Cuban "Cafe con Leche," which is astonishingly strong coffee, but mixed with cream and sugar (in my case, Splenda). Hector immediately made an entire pot of triple strength coffee, and brought baker's heavy cream from the kitchen for me to put in it. And he did the same thing every morning of the trip. In fact, he would lay out the coffee filter with the triple portion, then wait for me to poke my nose out of my cabin. When he saw that I was awake, he would brew my coffee. The only word I can think of to describe that level of service is "unreal." But it was not just me. Javier made special meals whenever needed. If anyone didn't like what he was serving (Rack of Lamb, for example, can be hit or miss with some folks), he would broil them a perfect New York Strip. Fishybuzz got his own special breakfast every morning, again without even being asked. Garret (one of the boys on the boat) got a breakfast sandwich every morning (if I recall correctly). Just thinking about their dedication to please their passengers leaves me astonished.

Mike "Kona" Meredith: Mike was the number 2 on our trip. Like all second tickets on long range boats, he functioned as captain of the deck when he wasn't helming the boat. In Mike's case, that is saying something, because he is (like all of Intrepid's hands) a truly stellar deckhand, unfailingly patient, everywhere at once, with an eye on who needed help and who didn't. He'd gaff a fish, pull out a backlash, sort out a tangle, and the be right back to gaffing another fish. He doesn't realize it---I don't think any of them do, really---but being a good deckie is an art form, and Mike is a master. He is also, by the way, a good and kind man, an inveterate practical joker, and good company on the travel days.

Jesus Companioni: Perhaps the best pure deckhand I have ever seen, Jesus is also a captain, and a walking encyclopedia of fishing. He is definitely the best I have ever seen at untangling a mess in the stern, and I never once saw him lose his smile. I have two Jesus anecdotes to share with you, one now, and one later. That first day out, I put all of my reels on their respective rods (no, I didn't bring back up reels...I don't have back up reels), and I rigged up a couple for offshore fishing. One of them was a Saltist 30T I bought used, and I put it on a custom wrapped rod that I had just bought from JL. That was to be my 30lb bait rig, and I expected to use it a lot. The first thing I did was connect the spectra on the reel to some mono, and wind on about 50 yards. Jesus was intrigued to see that I used a Pena knot for that connection, because he uses the same knot for the same purpose...we just tie it a little differently. Then I bent on a short stretch of fluoro onto the mono, and when I did, I noticed a disaster: the ring had fallen out of the guide tip. Yes, JL, the tip on the rod you sold me broke. I didn't bang it against anything, the ring just fell out of its mooring and slid down the line. I started cursing, of course. For one thing, I just bought that rod, and was really happy with it; for another, I didn't have a back up 30lb rod to use. It was a real "Damn, I'm screwed!" moment. Jesus was by my side in a second, and when I told him what was wrong, he said "Give me the rod a minute." Like 6 minutes later, he comes back. Now the rod has a new tip on it. He tells me I need to let that dry for a couple of hours before I run line through it, and that was it. Problem solved. A little later I told that story to Kona Mike. I thought someone should know what a great job Jesus was doing. Mike's response? "It took Jesus 6 minutes? He's slipping..."

Romolino Ghio: "Romo" is another fantastic deckhand, good with a gaff, great at untangling the knitting class, all you want from a deckie, and more. What makes him stand out more than anything is his wonderful attitude and smile. He may be working, but it just doesn't seem like it...he's having way too much fun. More than anyone else, Romo loves to joke with the passengers, but he never loses focus for a second. He's right there to clear a mess before it happens, getting that guy under, that guy over, and laughing the whole time. He laughs when he gills and guts a tuna, and he laughs when he scrubs the blood off the deck. He was a joy to have around. I have a Romo anecdote too---a short one, anyway---but here is not the place. What I can say is that I'd be happy to have him crewing any boat I ride in the future.

Dave Taylor: I have to apologize to Dave up front here. He's a really good deckhand...I saw that much from the beginning. It just worked out that he was the deckhand who was next to me the least during the trip. He gaffed lots of fish, just none of mine. He got people untangled, and a couple of times I was one of them...but not much. I don't have an anecdote to illuminate his character, except that he smiles as much as Romo, but is just a little quieter. He's very, very good at his job...I just never got to know or fish with him as much as I did with the other deckhands. Sometimes it just works out that way. I can say that he's a good guy, and he can crew for me anytime.

Colin Casper: Colin was the junior deckhand on our trip, a fine angler himself, and great company. It's clear that he's still learning a little, if only because the more senior deckhands have so much experience, but I'd say he is already as good or better than the vast majority of deckhands with whom I've fished before, and he has a fantastic attitude. By now, everyone knows that I caught a pretty big tuna on this trip. Let me tell you, I had a LOT of help getting that fish on the deck! But it was Colin who was the deckhand running interference for me for most of that fight, a lot of the time spent alone on the bow just the two of us. I can honestly say that without his help and encouragement, there's no way I get that fish. As I understand it, Colin sees his future in the galley (or in the restaurant world). As a former chef, I can honestly say that he has the demeanor and the determination to be very good at it, as well as potentially a fantastic mentor in Javier. I wish him all the good fortune in the world! But if he decides he wants to stay on Intrepid for a while, everyone who rides her will be happy about it.

David Choate: David wasn't an official crew member, but he might as well have been. He did plenty of fishing, of course, and he is a superlative charter master. I definitely plan on fishing with these guys again if they'll have me! But when the bite got hot, David put down his rod and grabbed a gaff. If you wanted to find him during the day, all you needed to do was go up to the bridge and you'd find him glassing for sign. Ask him any question, and he'd give you a thoughtful, considered answer that would definitely help you out. The truth is, he took being a good charter master to such a high level, he deserves mention as a member of the crew. For those who don't know him, he is also a really good guy.
Next: Part IV Continues, as I take up the story line again... Photo: "Father and Son Angling" --- Willy and Colin Casper at The Rocks

 

[redbeard]

You brought a good tear to my eye, I was on this trip. Many are no longer with us physically but are in spirit.
Some trips never reach the level of expectation or support the hype, this trip did both and was truly a trip of a lifetime in many ways .

 

[vegasandre]

Part IV (Continued)...

Go Fearlessly into The South...

I've already explained that we left late Saturday, and though we had our safety seminar that afternoon after lunch, Kevin postponed the fishing part of the seminar until the next morning. In a sense, it didn't matter. There were 26 anglers on the trip, and I'd say that some 18-20 of them were really experienced long range anglers (I put myself among the six or so who don't qualify), and all the rest still had a fair amount of fishing experience. All Kevin was going to do in the seminar was tell us what he thought we should rig up for where we were headed, and give us the general game plan.

But as far as the game plan went, we already knew (or thought we knew) most of it:

Head for the Alijos Rocks, more or less as fast as we can get there!

There's more to it than that, of course. We didn't abandon the idea of making some hay offshore on Saturday afternoon and Sunday. We were going to be passing through "the zone" on our way South, and Kevin was going to do his best to put us on Bluefin. If we found biters (very scarce lately!) we'd stay as long as we could catch fish, and no complaints. But we were going to be moving generally South pretty much at all times, and our time spent in the Bluefin/Albacore zone was as much scouting for later as it was fishing for now.

I think I can honestly speak for everyone aboard when I say:

1. We all were really hoping that we could catch some fish on the way South, and we'd give it our best shot.
2. We all agreed with the strategy of trying to get the the Rocks as quickly as we could.

We didn't need a seminar to explain that to us.

Starting late Saturday afternoon, the boat started trolling feathers. We were just at the very Northern edge of Albacore territory, and there was a shot that we might see some action before nightfall. There was no "rotation," though. The boat was trolling, and anyone who wanted to man a rod could do so. Still, Intrepid had begun fishing!

We never got a jig strike that day, though, and we never stopped on a meter mark. As best I can recall, Kevin never even called for a chum line. There may well have been fish around, but we never passed over them.

Instead, we spent the day doing the things you do. I already mentioned that I needed Jesus' help to get my 30lb rig fixed and up. I also put up two 40lb rigs and a 50lb rig. One 40 was the Saltist 40 Star Drag I bought last year from Outhouse. Since it is a star drag, I spooled it with about 50 yards of mono, four feet of fluoro, and then tied on a megabait. I was planning to try to get a Bluefin to hit that if we got into some biters.

The 50 and the other 40 were both bait sticks, and both new Saltist 2-speed Lever Drags. Harddrive spooled both of them for me with 65lb JB Line One solid, about 350 yards on the 40, and almost 500 yards on the 50. I mounted both 40s on 7' OC Rods I got from Toeknee, beautiful rods that I discovered that I like a LOT. The 50 went on a Super Seeker that Fishybuzz loaned to me for the trip, a unique rod that Seeker doesn't even make anymore according to what he told me. It is a light rod with a very flexible tip...so flexible that it took a little getting used to! But at the same time, it is a powerful, strong rod, with the power to easily lift a BIG fish. That turned out to be a great combination...I only wish Fishy would have been willing to sell me that rod!



Finally I put together my trolling rig (Tiagra 30W LRS on a 6' Calstar heavy rod) and my "long" rod that I borrowed from Titan05. Actually, the long rod was already assembled...I just tied a 200g Raider on the end of the mono and put it in the rack.

I thought I was set.

So Saturday ended without fish, javier fed us like Kings, Queens, and Crown Princes, and after a while we went to sleep. That night we blew right through Albacore Country, as expected, and we were still making some 11 or 12 knots Southbound as the gray light arrived.

JWFogg and I had made a pact from the beginning: if one of us happened to be asleep when a bit started, the other would wake him up. There was no bite to wake us on Sunday morning, and I was up even before my alarm went off, so I turned it off and let JW sleep. Hector made me my coffee, and as the light came up I went out on deck. God, it was beautiful!

I was only out there for a little while when Kevin called (softly, if that's possible) for a deckie to man the bait tank. A minute later, he called for a chum line, but after a bit, he called it off. Whatever he saw wasn't interested...yet.

A bit later...say 20-25 minutes...he called for another chum line. That went on for a bit, and then he called for the deckhands to wind in the jigs! "Here it comes!" I thought to myself, "but JW is still asleep!"

I went back in, but JW was awake after all, and sitting in the dining room. When Kevin called to us that we were going to make a drift, that we should use live bait or jigs off the bow, and 30lb line, everyone who was awake was running out the door!

On that first drift, most everyone was was fishing bait, myself included. Kevin told the people on the bow (I don't know who or how many) that they could go ahead and cast out to the downwind side, and a minute later he got the bait anglers in too.

No biters. Not a single one. I expected one or two, or even a short strike, but the fish never came up. We drifted with the school until they were long gone; most of the bait anglers killed more than one sardine before he told us to wind them in, and I think the jig throwers were done after two casts or so. It might have been a good school, but it wasn't our school.

Once the excitement was past, Javier gave the general wake up call (redundant by that point) and announced breakfast in 30 minutes. Kevin then called that our fishing/tackle seminar would take place right after breakfast. Javier was wrong, though...

Kevin found another breezing school...Bluefin at the surface! We worked around to do a drift, and the fish went down, but not too far. This was a good chance, and breakfast could wait, at least for a little while.

It was the same story though: the tuna just didn't want to bite. I was practically panting with excitement (I hope it didn't show too much!), just dying to catch a Bluefin. I never have, and it was one of my stated goals for the trip. I left my nose-hooked sardine out there and never wound in, hoping for a bite long after the fish left us in their dust.

One big part of the story this season, at least up until and through our trip, is that the Bluefin have been feeding on very small forage. Fishy had a little lure (a Dart?) that looked like it stood a good chance of getting hit, and the medium-sized megabait I had tied on to my star drag reel looked promising too. But the sardines we had...at least most of them...were on the hefty side. Strong and healthy and lively, but huge in comparison to the current hatch. I began to get the suspicion that sardine anglers might end up having a hard time this day...

By the time the school swam away from us---completely untouched---breakfast was some 15 minutes late. We were served pretty quickly, and we ate quickly too. The food was delicious (as always) and probably deserved better attention from us, but we were all pretty excited. No question the Bluefin were around, and at least some of them were feeding at the surface. We wanted to fish more than we wanted to eat...

As the tables were being cleared, Willy and Wahoodad started setting up the table for the raffle. Kevin wasn't in the salon yet, though, and it looked like we were a couple of minutes still from the seminar. But then he called for a chum line, and a minute later he came in to the salon. He gave me a smile. "Hopefully we can just have our seminar on the deck with biting fish...that's the best kind!" he told me.

So back we went out on the deck, as we prepared for our third drift of the morning. We never did though...the fish took off before we got on them, and after 20 minutes, we filed back into the salon to finally have our fishing seminar. It turned out to be a pretty brief affair.

Kevin explained what we were doing today, scouting (and fishing!) our way South, but trolling fast and making tracks for the Rocks. He went on to say that the water temperature was rising, and that we could expect to see some wahoo when we got there...that they'd gotten one wahoo in each of their past two trips, and he had a feeling we'd get more than that this time around. He talked about how we should rig up, including putting wire on a bait rig, and also on a Raider or a bomb. When we got in the zone, the boat would drag Marauders on the troll.

He told us that we would try to make bait when we could, squid and mackerel, and that it was a 100% participation team sport. We should be warned that he would be knocking on doors to make sure everyone joined in on the fun.

And finally he talked about fishing for Bluefin. He said that there have been days when there was no bite at all, and on the days when they did bite, it wasn't all the schools, and it was plunky at best. That's just the way it is with Bluefin most of the time, but we would give it our very best shot. He said that if they're willing to hit one sardine, chances are we could put together a pretty good stop, but it was hit or miss if they would because they were feeding on much smaller baitfish right then.

He commented that small jigs, chrome and blue, etc...and especially megabaits...were sometimes even more effective than live bait, and that now might be one of those times. In fact, he wanted at least some people throwing jigs on a drift, and fishing the slide on a jig strike, because that could really help bring the school to the boat. But, he warned us, Bluefin are notorious for hitting a jig on the sink, and it's very easy to miss. If we used a heavy jig and for any reason it stopped sinking, put the reel in gear and wind! Chances are you have a Bluefin on the end of your line, and that might be the only way we get any, unless they come to the boat.

At that point I decided I would be one of those on the pointy end, throwing my little megabait and praying.

That was pretty much it for the seminar. Kevin announced that Wahoodad would be giving a bait seminar later on in the afternoon, and all of the deckhands were readily available to help with knots, baiting, etc. He went back up to the bridge to find us some fish to catch, and that left the raffle...

Willy and Wahoodad started by apologizing...that times were tough for tackle companies too, and the giveaways were less than they might have been. I don't think they needed to apologize at all. It may not have been an Accurate/Seeker Christmas (Chanukah?), but everyone got some nice stuff. The proverbial t-shirt was a nice one, and I got a Squidco gift certificate, which made me happy.

When it came time for the big-ticket items, I kept my streak alive with ease: I won nothing at all! The only thing that was different is that this time, I didn't leave my t-shirt in the salon to be picked up by someone else. That's the first time I ever came home with the t-shirt, and I'm happy about that. Or to put it a different way, I have always been furious to lose the shirts before. At least once someone has taken the shirt right off my bunk, and another time, they managed to pick it off the seat next to me during the raffle. Of course none of this ever happened on Intrepid! In any case, this time I kept the t-shirt...

The truly notable part about the raffle was who won the gorgeous Accurate reel: Fishybuzz. How many Accurates does that make for you now David? 78? 79?

I repeat, in six trips I have never won one of the big items at the raffle. It has never bothered me before: I didn't come for the raffle! Besides, I may not have much gear, but it's my gear, and I'm proud of it. I will say, though, that there was something just a little bitter about that irony this time. I am pretty sure that I am not the only one on the boat who found that to be a little Alanis Morisette, too.

For me it lasted all of 90 seconds, and then I was happy for my friend David. He is about the nicest guy you'd ever wish to meet...why shouldn't fortune smile on him now and again? It smiles on me too sometimes...

Just Jan got a rod, and so did the daughter-boyfriend Frank. I am not sure who else, but there weren't a whole raft of big ticket items. maybe four rods, to go with that one reel. I repeat, though, I wasn't there for the raffle, and neither was anyone else.

From there, we went out to change our rigging as indicated, to begin the scheduled trolling rotations, and to fish our way South...


Next: Part IV Continued, A Long Day's Journey Into Mexico...Or Something Like That!

Part IV (Concluded)...

Anticipation...

I could spin out the rest of the story of that Sunday if I wanted to...there was plenty of excitement. We had two false starts and two drifts before breakfast, maybe eight more false starts and five more drifts the rest of the day. I spent some time on the bridge, and saw feeding Bluefin breaching with my own eyes. I stood my uneventful trolling rotation just like anyone else, and fished my megabait when we did drift.

But the truth is, though we all did the best we could, Sunday never produced a single bite. Kevin put us on seven feeding schools. He did it with skill, so that the fish swam right under the boat! But they just wouldn't come up...would not, would not, would not feed for us.

I only had one truly exciting moment of my own. In the early afternoon, not long after lunch, we made a drift on a pretty hot school...one of the two best we passed the entire day. I whipped out my megabait, and...you guessed it!...got a small backlash. No excuses here. I know that reel and I love it. I know how to cast it too. But this time I had a small, almost trivial overrun. It took me 15 seconds to pull it out, and when I looked out at my line, it wasn't sinking. Of course that thought took a moment to register, but when it did I reacted. I threw the reel in gear and started winding fall all I was worth. But I was too late...the line started to sink out.

I don't know if I got picked up by a Bluefin that time. I'm not even sure I think I was. But the truth is, that's the only reason I can think of why the lure would stop sinking for a few seconds, then resume. Megabaits are heavy and dense for their size, not like a 6x Jr. They sink fast, and they don't stop sinking unless something stops them. It may be wishful thinking, but it sounds to me exactly like what Kevin described. Perhaps I had my Bluefin bite, and snoozed right through it...

In all honesty, I'm not sure which would be worse. That I had the bite I wanted so desperately and just missed it, or that I am so clueless that I can mistake a loop in my line for a pickup. I think the real lesson is clear: as long as I keep backlashing when I cast...even a little bit...I am going to keep missing at least some fish.

One other thing happened on Sunday in the mid-morning that pleases me a great deal. I made a new friend.

I went up to the sundeck to ask one of the deckies if they could help me rig some wire on a couple of my setups. I'd never done it before, I didn't know how, and I didn't have any of the wire or tools I'd need. Perfect time to find a deckie, right? Truth is, I was hoping to bump into Jesus or Kona Mike, but instead I found Willy Casper.

Willy was up there rigging up one of his many setups, or perhaps helping Wahoodad setup one of the 18 or so Accurate loaners he'd brought. He saw the lost look on my face, and asked me if he could help. I told him I needed to get wired for wahoo, but I didn't have any wire, and anyway, I didn't know how to do it.

Just like that, he stopped what he was doing, got out the makings, and set me up. More than that, he taught me.

Willy is a good man, a smart man, and a patient man. He showed me how he uses wire (single strand), and he explained why he makes the choices he does. He also explained why some people choose to use multi-strand, and why that can be a good idea too. He demonstrated this DuBois tool he has (where can I get one of those, by the way?), and made me up one bait setup for 30lbs. Then he let me do it, first using heavier wire to rig my big Raider jig on my long rod, then again with the bomb The Bushman gave me, and then finally with lighter wire to make a backup bait leader. All the while we talked, about wahoo and fishing for them, about fishing in general, all of that.

I have to say, I didn't know what to expect from Willy before the trip began. Turns out he's a bright man and a great guy. I really hope he and I fish together again in the future; I think we'll end up friends, and nothing would please me better. Any of you guys who have never fished one of his charters, do yourself a favor and get on one. Trust me on this.

Anyway, aside from a missed (maybe!) fish, and a new friend, Sunday was uneventful. Lots of fish in the ocean, and quite a few exciting interludes, but we didn't have a single hookup. Trolling was Hell, and only the good camaraderie made it tolerable.

By late afternoon, Kevin called us to wind in the jigs, and we all met in the salon once more. He explained that we were passing out of the zone now, leaving the good water behind. We hadn't caught any fish, but it hadn't been wasted effort. We had done a thorough scout of Bluefin territory; he knew where to find the fish on the way back. Provided that the timing was good, we'd have a real good chance to score some on the way back.

From now on and right through the night, though, we were going to make real tracks. No trolling and no drifts, no games at all. We were headed for the Rocks, and with any luck we'd see them around noon or 12:30 the next day. When we got close (and the water started warming up) we'd start dragging Marauders. For the next day or so, the plan was:

1. Troll up to and around the Rocks as we arrived, hoping to start that part of the trip with some wahoo (temps were looking really good)
2. Fish the Rocks for tuna on the anchor tomorrow afternoon until almost dark
3. Troll to the Alijos Bank in the evening
4. Make squid if we could that night, then fish dropper loop for BIG yellows
5. Troll back to the Rocks early the next morning to spend another day fishing tuna on the anchor

That was all we needed to know. We all wished we'd put a fish or two on the boat by now...the wait was making me a little anxious...but it was the game plan we expected. All I wanted was for Kevin to kick up the throttle a notch or two, and get us there as quickly as possible. I can't be sure, but after dinner had been served and cleared, it felt like he did just that...




Next: Part V, Teaching An Old Rodless Some New Tricks, A Long Morning, And A Welcome Arrival

 

[picasso]

Thank You Andre, Enjoying this flashback.

 

[Peteb]

Part IV (Continued)...

Go Fearlessly into The South...

I've already explained that we left late Saturday, and though we had our safety seminar that afternoon after lunch, Kevin postponed the fishing part of the seminar until the next morning. In a sense, it didn't matter. There were 26 anglers on the trip, and I'd say that some 18-20 of them were really experienced long range anglers (I put myself among the six or so who don't qualify), and all the rest still had a fair amount of fishing experience. All Kevin was going to do in the seminar was tell us what he thought we should rig up for where we were headed, and give us the general game plan.

But as far as the game plan went, we already knew (or thought we knew) most of it:

Head for the Alijos Rocks, more or less as fast as we can get there!

There's more to it than that, of course. We didn't abandon the idea of making some hay offshore on Saturday afternoon and Sunday. We were going to be passing through "the zone" on our way South, and Kevin was going to do his best to put us on Bluefin. If we found biters (very scarce lately!) we'd stay as long as we could catch fish, and no complaints. But we were going to be moving generally South pretty much at all times, and our time spent in the Bluefin/Albacore zone was as much scouting for later as it was fishing for now.

I think I can honestly speak for everyone aboard when I say:

1. We all were really hoping that we could catch some fish on the way South, and we'd give it our best shot.
2. We all agreed with the strategy of trying to get the the Rocks as quickly as we could.

We didn't need a seminar to explain that to us.

Starting late Saturday afternoon, the boat started trolling feathers. We were just at the very Northern edge of Albacore territory, and there was a shot that we might see some action before nightfall. There was no "rotation," though. The boat was trolling, and anyone who wanted to man a rod could do so. Still, Intrepid had begun fishing!

We never got a jig strike that day, though, and we never stopped on a meter mark. As best I can recall, Kevin never even called for a chum line. There may well have been fish around, but we never passed over them.

Instead, we spent the day doing the things you do. I already mentioned that I needed Jesus' help to get my 30lb rig fixed and up. I also put up two 40lb rigs and a 50lb rig. One 40 was the Saltist 40 Star Drag I bought last year from Outhouse. Since it is a star drag, I spooled it with about 50 yards of mono, four feet of fluoro, and then tied on a megabait. I was planning to try to get a Bluefin to hit that if we got into some biters.

The 50 and the other 40 were both bait sticks, and both new Saltist 2-speed Lever Drags. Harddrive spooled both of them for me with 65lb JB Line One solid, about 350 yards on the 40, and almost 500 yards on the 50. I mounted both 40s on 7' OC Rods I got from Toeknee, beautiful rods that I discovered that I like a LOT. The 50 went on a Super Seeker that Fishybuzz loaned to me for the trip, a unique rod that Seeker doesn't even make anymore according to what he told me. It is a light rod with a very flexible tip...so flexible that it took a little getting used to! But at the same time, it is a powerful, strong rod, with the power to easily lift a BIG fish. That turned out to be a great combination...I only wish Fishy would have been willing to sell me that rod!



Finally I put together my trolling rig (Tiagra 30W LRS on a 6' Calstar heavy rod) and my "long" rod that I borrowed from Titan05. Actually, the long rod was already assembled...I just tied a 200g Raider on the end of the mono and put it in the rack.

I thought I was set.

So Saturday ended without fish, javier fed us like Kings, Queens, and Crown Princes, and after a while we went to sleep. That night we blew right through Albacore Country, as expected, and we were still making some 11 or 12 knots Southbound as the gray light arrived.

JWFogg and I had made a pact from the beginning: if one of us happened to be asleep when a bit started, the other would wake him up. There was no bite to wake us on Sunday morning, and I was up even before my alarm went off, so I turned it off and let JW sleep. Hector made me my coffee, and as the light came up I went out on deck. God, it was beautiful!

I was only out there for a little while when Kevin called (softly, if that's possible) for a deckie to man the bait tank. A minute later, he called for a chum line, but after a bit, he called it off. Whatever he saw wasn't interested...yet.

A bit later...say 20-25 minutes...he called for another chum line. That went on for a bit, and then he called for the deckhands to wind in the jigs! "Here it comes!" I thought to myself, "but JW is still asleep!"

I went back in, but JW was awake after all, and sitting in the dining room. When Kevin called to us that we were going to make a drift, that we should use live bait or jigs off the bow, and 30lb line, everyone who was awake was running out the door!

On that first drift, most everyone was was fishing bait, myself included. Kevin told the people on the bow (I don't know who or how many) that they could go ahead and cast out to the downwind side, and a minute later he got the bait anglers in too.

No biters. Not a single one. I expected one or two, or even a short strike, but the fish never came up. We drifted with the school until they were long gone; most of the bait anglers killed more than one sardine before he told us to wind them in, and I think the jig throwers were done after two casts or so. It might have been a good school, but it wasn't our school.

Once the excitement was past, Javier gave the general wake up call (redundant by that point) and announced breakfast in 30 minutes. Kevin then called that our fishing/tackle seminar would take place right after breakfast. Javier was wrong, though...

Kevin found another breezing school...Bluefin at the surface! We worked around to do a drift, and the fish went down, but not too far. This was a good chance, and breakfast could wait, at least for a little while.

It was the same story though: the tuna just didn't want to bite. I was practically panting with excitement (I hope it didn't show too much!), just dying to catch a Bluefin. I never have, and it was one of my stated goals for the trip. I left my nose-hooked sardine out there and never wound in, hoping for a bite long after the fish left us in their dust.

One big part of the story this season, at least up until and through our trip, is that the Bluefin have been feeding on very small forage. Fishy had a little lure (a Dart?) that looked like it stood a good chance of getting hit, and the medium-sized megabait I had tied on to my star drag reel looked promising too. But the sardines we had...at least most of them...were on the hefty side. Strong and healthy and lively, but huge in comparison to the current hatch. I began to get the suspicion that sardine anglers might end up having a hard time this day...

By the time the school swam away from us---completely untouched---breakfast was some 15 minutes late. We were served pretty quickly, and we ate quickly too. The food was delicious (as always) and probably deserved better attention from us, but we were all pretty excited. No question the Bluefin were around, and at least some of them were feeding at the surface. We wanted to fish more than we wanted to eat...

As the tables were being cleared, Willy and Wahoodad started setting up the table for the raffle. Kevin wasn't in the salon yet, though, and it looked like we were a couple of minutes still from the seminar. But then he called for a chum line, and a minute later he came in to the salon. He gave me a smile. "Hopefully we can just have our seminar on the deck with biting fish...that's the best kind!" he told me.

So back we went out on the deck, as we prepared for our third drift of the morning. We never did though...the fish took off before we got on them, and after 20 minutes, we filed back into the salon to finally have our fishing seminar. It turned out to be a pretty brief affair.

Kevin explained what we were doing today, scouting (and fishing!) our way South, but trolling fast and making tracks for the Rocks. He went on to say that the water temperature was rising, and that we could expect to see some wahoo when we got there...that they'd gotten one wahoo in each of their past two trips, and he had a feeling we'd get more than that this time around. He talked about how we should rig up, including putting wire on a bait rig, and also on a Raider or a bomb. When we got in the zone, the boat would drag Marauders on the troll.

He told us that we would try to make bait when we could, squid and mackerel, and that it was a 100% participation team sport. We should be warned that he would be knocking on doors to make sure everyone joined in on the fun.

And finally he talked about fishing for Bluefin. He said that there have been days when there was no bite at all, and on the days when they did bite, it wasn't all the schools, and it was plunky at best. That's just the way it is with Bluefin most of the time, but we would give it our very best shot. He said that if they're willing to hit one sardine, chances are we could put together a pretty good stop, but it was hit or miss if they would because they were feeding on much smaller baitfish right then.

He commented that small jigs, chrome and blue, etc...and especially megabaits...were sometimes even more effective than live bait, and that now might be one of those times. In fact, he wanted at least some people throwing jigs on a drift, and fishing the slide on a jig strike, because that could really help bring the school to the boat. But, he warned us, Bluefin are notorious for hitting a jig on the sink, and it's very easy to miss. If we used a heavy jig and for any reason it stopped sinking, put the reel in gear and wind! Chances are you have a Bluefin on the end of your line, and that might be the only way we get any, unless they come to the boat.

At that point I decided I would be one of those on the pointy end, throwing my little megabait and praying.

That was pretty much it for the seminar. Kevin announced that Wahoodad would be giving a bait seminar later on in the afternoon, and all of the deckhands were readily available to help with knots, baiting, etc. He went back up to the bridge to find us some fish to catch, and that left the raffle...

Willy and Wahoodad started by apologizing...that times were tough for tackle companies too, and the giveaways were less than they might have been. I don't think they needed to apologize at all. It may not have been an Accurate/Seeker Christmas (Chanukah?), but everyone got some nice stuff. The proverbial t-shirt was a nice one, and I got a Squidco gift certificate, which made me happy.

When it came time for the big-ticket items, I kept my streak alive with ease: I won nothing at all! The only thing that was different is that this time, I didn't leave my t-shirt in the salon to be picked up by someone else. That's the first time I ever came home with the t-shirt, and I'm happy about that. Or to put it a different way, I have always been furious to lose the shirts before. At least once someone has taken the shirt right off my bunk, and another time, they managed to pick it off the seat next to me during the raffle. Of course none of this ever happened on Intrepid! In any case, this time I kept the t-shirt...

The truly notable part about the raffle was who won the gorgeous Accurate reel: Fishybuzz. How many Accurates does that make for you now David? 78? 79?

I repeat, in six trips I have never won one of the big items at the raffle. It has never bothered me before: I didn't come for the raffle! Besides, I may not have much gear, but it's my gear, and I'm proud of it. I will say, though, that there was something just a little bitter about that irony this time. I am pretty sure that I am not the only one on the boat who found that to be a little Alanis Morisette, too.

For me it lasted all of 90 seconds, and then I was happy for my friend David. He is about the nicest guy you'd ever wish to meet...why shouldn't fortune smile on him now and again? It smiles on me too sometimes...

Just Jan got a rod, and so did the daughter-boyfriend Frank. I am not sure who else, but there weren't a whole raft of big ticket items. maybe four rods, to go with that one reel. I repeat, though, I wasn't there for the raffle, and neither was anyone else.

From there, we went out to change our rigging as indicated, to begin the scheduled trolling rotations, and to fish our way South...


Next: Part IV Continued, A Long Day's Journey Into Mexico...Or Something Like That!

Part IV (Concluded)...

Anticipation...

I could spin out the rest of the story of that Sunday if I wanted to...there was plenty of excitement. We had two false starts and two drifts before breakfast, maybe eight more false starts and five more drifts the rest of the day. I spent some time on the bridge, and saw feeding Bluefin breaching with my own eyes. I stood my uneventful trolling rotation just like anyone else, and fished my megabait when we did drift.

But the truth is, though we all did the best we could, Sunday never produced a single bite. Kevin put us on seven feeding schools. He did it with skill, so that the fish swam right under the boat! But they just wouldn't come up...would not, would not, would not feed for us.

I only had one truly exciting moment of my own. In the early afternoon, not long after lunch, we made a drift on a pretty hot school...one of the two best we passed the entire day. I whipped out my megabait, and...you guessed it!...got a small backlash. No excuses here. I know that reel and I love it. I know how to cast it too. But this time I had a small, almost trivial overrun. It took me 15 seconds to pull it out, and when I looked out at my line, it wasn't sinking. Of course that thought took a moment to register, but when it did I reacted. I threw the reel in gear and started winding fall all I was worth. But I was too late...the line started to sink out.

I don't know if I got picked up by a Bluefin that time. I'm not even sure I think I was. But the truth is, that's the only reason I can think of why the lure would stop sinking for a few seconds, then resume. Megabaits are heavy and dense for their size, not like a 6x Jr. They sink fast, and they don't stop sinking unless something stops them. It may be wishful thinking, but it sounds to me exactly like what Kevin described. Perhaps I had my Bluefin bite, and snoozed right through it...

In all honesty, I'm not sure which would be worse. That I had the bite I wanted so desperately and just missed it, or that I am so clueless that I can mistake a loop in my line for a pickup. I think the real lesson is clear: as long as I keep backlashing when I cast...even a little bit...I am going to keep missing at least some fish.

One other thing happened on Sunday in the mid-morning that pleases me a great deal. I made a new friend.

I went up to the sundeck to ask one of the deckies if they could help me rig some wire on a couple of my setups. I'd never done it before, I didn't know how, and I didn't have any of the wire or tools I'd need. Perfect time to find a deckie, right? Truth is, I was hoping to bump into Jesus or Kona Mike, but instead I found Willy Casper.

Willy was up there rigging up one of his many setups, or perhaps helping Wahoodad setup one of the 18 or so Accurate loaners he'd brought. He saw the lost look on my face, and asked me if he could help. I told him I needed to get wired for wahoo, but I didn't have any wire, and anyway, I didn't know how to do it.

Just like that, he stopped what he was doing, got out the makings, and set me up. More than that, he taught me.

Willy is a good man, a smart man, and a patient man. He showed me how he uses wire (single strand), and he explained why he makes the choices he does. He also explained why some people choose to use multi-strand, and why that can be a good idea too. He demonstrated this DuBois tool he has (where can I get one of those, by the way?), and made me up one bait setup for 30lbs. Then he let me do it, first using heavier wire to rig my big Raider jig on my long rod, then again with the bomb The Bushman gave me, and then finally with lighter wire to make a backup bait leader. All the while we talked, about wahoo and fishing for them, about fishing in general, all of that.

I have to say, I didn't know what to expect from Willy before the trip began. Turns out he's a bright man and a great guy. I really hope he and I fish together again in the future; I think we'll end up friends, and nothing would please me better. Any of you guys who have never fished one of his charters, do yourself a favor and get on one. Trust me on this.

Anyway, aside from a missed (maybe!) fish, and a new friend, Sunday was uneventful. Lots of fish in the ocean, and quite a few exciting interludes, but we didn't have a single hookup. Trolling was Hell, and only the good camaraderie made it tolerable.

By late afternoon, Kevin called us to wind in the jigs, and we all met in the salon once more. He explained that we were passing out of the zone now, leaving the good water behind. We hadn't caught any fish, but it hadn't been wasted effort. We had done a thorough scout of Bluefin territory; he knew where to find the fish on the way back. Provided that the timing was good, we'd have a real good chance to score some on the way back.

From now on and right through the night, though, we were going to make real tracks. No trolling and no drifts, no games at all. We were headed for the Rocks, and with any luck we'd see them around noon or 12:30 the next day. When we got close (and the water started warming up) we'd start dragging Marauders. For the next day or so, the plan was:

1. Troll up to and around the Rocks as we arrived, hoping to start that part of the trip with some wahoo (temps were looking really good)
2. Fish the Rocks for tuna on the anchor tomorrow afternoon until almost dark
3. Troll to the Alijos Bank in the evening
4. Make squid if we could that night, then fish dropper loop for BIG yellows
5. Troll back to the Rocks early the next morning to spend another day fishing tuna on the anchor

That was all we needed to know. We all wished we'd put a fish or two on the boat by now...the wait was making me a little anxious...but it was the game plan we expected. All I wanted was for Kevin to kick up the throttle a notch or two, and get us there as quickly as possible. I can't be sure, but after dinner had been served and cleared, it felt like he did just that...




Next: Part V, Teaching An Old Rodless Some New Tricks, A Long Morning, And A Welcome Arrival

Dude you're killing me! I need more!
I'm jonesing so bad right now. Got a couple more doctors appointments to clear me to go fishing starting in May. Watch out SD, this ex San Diegan (SP?) now desert rat is coming for your fish. Not that you need to worry cause I kinda suck at it, but I'm coming nether the less.
Finish the damn story!
Please.

 

[Fishybuzz]

WoW!!!! The memories just explode when I read this.......seems like yesterday but on the other hand a eternity ago too ..... lots of good people on that trip no longer with us RIP .....I still go on the Intrepid a couple times a year with lots of the same anglers and on the same trip in July...... makes me smile.

 

[Rodless_Jim]

Thanks Andre for posting this. It's a bit strange to read this...it almost feels like I am reading someone else' story. At the same time, I remember every single thing. It's like a blast of cool, fresh air blowing the cobwebs out of my foggy mind.

For all who enjoy (or, at least, bother to read!) this report, I'm glad. I wanted to share the experience with the only people in the world who could appreciate it: other anglers.

Tight lines y buena pesca, y'all.

 

[vegasandre]

Part IV: Addendum

Some Things I Forgot To Mention:

This always happens...

People say that they are surprised at how I remember the trips in detail, but the truth is, they do too. My memory really isn't any better than theirs, and it might not be as good! So to write this stuff up, I have to really take my time, and think back about what happened.

Still, when you try to tell the story, things slip through the cracks. Even memorable events...the ones you will think of for years to come...don't occur to you when you try to tell someone what happened. Other times, you remember things happening quite clearly, but you remember them out of sequence.

In any case, as we move into Monday morning, there are a couple of things that happened Sunday that I left out, and are worth including. The first is a practical joke that took place immediately after Kevin's fishing seminar in the morning. Those who know about this will probably smile...

Any of you remember "The Great Pecan Caper?" I wasn't on that trip, but people got a great laugh about Brad_G being caught on camera pillaging a leftover coffee cake of its decorative pecans. Given that Brad apparently thought he was flying under the radar, it made for a good joke. Well, I decided to to poke a little good-natured fun at Brad, so I brought (all the way from Mexico) an entire kilo bag of caramelized pecans. I gave them to Fishy, and he passed them to Kevin. At the end of his seminar, Kevin presented the bag to Brad, more or less saying "here are plenty of pecans for you...leave our cakes alone!" Or, at least something to that effect. It got a pretty good laugh, and I didn't want to leave it out of the story.

But maybe the best part about it is what a good sport Brad was about the whole thing. If I thought he would have been hurt or offended, I would never have played the joke on him, but he was as amused as everyone else about it. Kevin, of course, laughed the hardest.

The other thing I left out may seem trivial, but it means something to me, because I believe it means the beginning of what I hope will be another friendship...

I made a big point of saying before we left that I was bringing cigars with me on the trip, and planned to smoke one or even two a day myself, as well as have some for any friends who wanted them. I did indeed smoke at least one cigar a day, and shared with any who wanted them.

For the record, the cigars I smoke are Mexican. If you ask me the origin of all of the cigars I brought with me on board, I'd have to take the 5th...

Anyway, Sunday evening after dinner I went up to the sun deck to smoke a big old churchill (for most cigar brands, the largest size they make). There were a couple of people up there already, but it was cold and windy, and they were about to go downstairs again. One of them, though, was Redbeard, and we struck up a conversation.

Going back to Saturday morning, Redbeard was one of those whose first question to me was "Are you Rodless?" We hadn't talked much then though, and I didn't know what to think of him any more than, I guess, he knew what to think of me.

This time, I sat there and lit my stogie, and we sat on a bench out of the wind and talked.

Redbeard and I have had very different life experiences, and it has led us to see some of the same things from very different perspectives. But at the same time, it turned out that we had shared perspectives on some issues, including things like personal integrity and responsibility to one's family. I discovered that he is a thoughtful, even wise man in his own way, and also quite funny. The cigar lasted well over an hour, and the conversation could easily have gone on longer than that. It was cold, though (we were still in Bluefin country), and we needed to get out of the wind.

It was a conversation I will remember, though. It made sharing the rail with Redbeard throughout the trip a great laugh. I hope he and I get a chance to talk again in the dog watch, and share Intrepid's rail again too. He's a good guy, and good company...

Next: On To Part V!

 

[vegasandre]

Part V: Monday at Long Last...

Like Sunday before it, Monday was in large measure a travel day. Kevin had told us it would be in the "after action" meeting we'd had the evening before. He said he thought we might get to the Rocks by noon or a little before, maybe a little after, all depending on the wind and the current. We could all cross our fingers!

Until then, it was a time to relax. Anyone who had not finished rigging up for the Rocks would have plenty of time to do so Monday morning. We should sleep in and enjoy the ride. The call for breakfast would be late (7:30, which doesn't seem so late to me, but I am a fat, lazy old writer and inveterate sack rat), we should all remember that we were on vacation, and act like it.

After dinner the boat watched a movie, and in the hour or so that followed, pretty much everyone turned in.

I slept straight through to the morning wake up call (7:00, half an hour til breakfast), and managed to do as little as possible until after we ate. Then I engaged in what became a daily ritual for the rest of the trip: housekeeping.

I've already said that we had very little space in our stateroom, and that I had brought too much stuff with me too. It would have been intolerable of me to let my gear spread out across the room, so I got in the habit of reorganizing every day, getting the dirty clothes bagged and out of the way, laying out clean clothes to wear the next day, and then getting my gear as much out of the way as possible. It's actually a habit I have anyway when I'm on fishing trips, but given that we just had no space to spare, I became more diligent about it than ever before...

The Longest Monday Morning Ever

It really was too. We all knew where we were going, we were all equally anxious to get there, too. There just wasn't anything we could do...in a situation like that, it takes as long as it takes. What didn't help is that we'd had unfavorable winds and current overnight. We weren't as close as Kevin had hoped we'd be, and it was taking us longer than we'd hoped even now. After breakfast he suggested it would probably be 1:00 before we got there, and even that turned out to be optimistic.

In the meantime, I did some very creative mooching. Brad_G really is a good sport. In spite of the dig with the pecans, he was happy to lend me a Marauder to troll on my 80lb rig, a very fishy looking number in "Tony the Tiger" markings and plenty of wahoo scars. I tied it on in great anticipation...but that was pretty much all I had to do. With Willy's help I'd already wired what I wanted to wire. My bait rigs were ready, I had a Raider set up to fish the slide or throw for wahoo. It was 9:00...

Are We There Yet?

I did what I always do in situations like this: I went to the bridge and annoyed the captain.

Actually, I went up there, mostly kept my mouth shut, watched and learned. Wahoodad was up there with Kevin, Jesus too. People were glassing and talking fishing in a kind of a shorthand code. It was interesting, and I killed an hour that way. Then I went out to smoke a cigar. As I was going down to my stateroom to get one, I passed John Keeler (I have no idea if I am spelling that correctly), the guy I called the stealth angler. He was sitting in a folding chair, in the sun but out of the wind, reading Stieg Larssen's The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. It's a book I've read myself, and a good one, and I told him so. He and I hadn't spoken at all (he seems like a quiet guy), and this was my chance to say hello. We had a very brief conversation about the book, and I left him reading...

I was just about done with my cigar when finally we had indications that we were getting closer: Kevin called for the deckhands to put out the Marauders and start the trolling rotation. The water was getting warmer, and we were finally approaching our destination...

And then we were there: we could see the Rocks in the distance. Kevin had told me when I was on the bridge that you can only see the Rocks from about four miles away, and that on a clear day. Well, we could see them now, and the day wasn't that clear. We were already pretty close, and it wasn't that long until we were circling them on the troll.

It was, perhaps, the most exciting moment I had ever yet felt on a fishing boat...


Next: Part V Continues, As We Anchor Up, And Actually Catch Fish...


Photos:
1. Mark the Human Hurricane Shares a Trolling Rotation with DirtyGirl
2. JustJan (The Sea Squirrel!) and JWFogg
3. See? Rodless_Jim was really there at the Alijos Rocks!

 

[vegasandre]

Part V Continued...

Last year I fished Isla Cedros on Shogun, and in the afternoon we anchored up at what they call "The Salt Mine" to catch big yellows. I'd been hearing about the spot for the better part of two days, and when we got there the sense of anticlimax was palpable. It just didn't seem like much there, even though the fishing was off the hook.

This time around, the feeling couldn't possibly have been more different. My first view of Las Rocas Alijos literally took my breath away, and the feeling never really left the entire time we were there. I might fish for an hour or two at the rail without thinking about the stones, but then suddenly I would turn and see them, and my heart would jump. It is a spectacular place, far beyond what I had imagined, these gorgeous, savage columns of stone rising from an empty sea...

Never mind the fishing, or even Javier's cooking...I would cheerfully pay the price just to be there.

Catching Tuna Is Easy...Right?

I think Kevin wanted to begin with wahoo. The water temps were right, and we had a shot to begin our visit with a bang, but the skinny fish wouldn't cooperate. We trolled a complete circle around the Rocks as he looked for a good spot to anchor up, hoping all the while for a jig strike, but no such luck. Kevin found a spot he liked, dropped the anchor, and called for the bait tank to start a chum line.

It was 2:00 pm on Monday, and Intrepid had yet to put a fish on the deck. By 2:15 that would change...

OK, here is where my not knowing anybody makes the storytelling harder. I don't remember who was the first to hook up. I know the first bite was a yellow, not a tuna, and a pretty good one. I know it hit the deck in like five minutes, and by the time it was gaffed we had a couple more people hooked up. And we stayed hooked up for a while, too.

It was not a wide open bite. It never was the entire time we were there. The fish never charged the boat, and it seemed like there was always a gap between one pickup and the next. On the other hand, these were decent fish in the 40-70lb range, so no one was jackpoling them over the rail... and we lost more than we probably should have too. But by the time a fish was gaffed or lost, it seemed like there was always at least one new one hooked up. After two days without fish---and too much unsatisfied excitement among the Bluefin---the boat was rocking.

There was an interruption early on, though. The boat drifted off its intended spot, and Kevin had to reposition us. That happened a couple of times during the trip, but it's normal. Not even the best captain can judge wind and tide perfectly every instant, and taking the time to re-anchor the boat almost always pays off in more fish. Once we reset, we didn't budge for the rest of the day.

Fishybuzz got on the board, and so did Wahoodad and Willy. Those seem to have the knack of walking up, grabbing a bait out of the tank, pitching out in some random spot, and hooking up. It is awesome to see. They also tend not to lose fish the way we mere mortals do.

But other people were hot too. Silent Jim was on fire, and so was John the Stealth Angler. I call John that because he always seems to fly under the radar. He says very little, makes no noise, no fuss. It's just so easy to overlook him standing there at the rail. And then suddenly he's hooked up. Over and over and over again. Man does that guy catch fish! Out of nowhere, and there he is...

Xman is a hot stick too, but I don't remember if he did well that first afternoon. Miles was pretty hot, though, and I am pretty sure his buddy Ken the Bushman hooked up once or twice. I have the feeling, though, that Ken may have been snakebit that day. I think he lost a good fish in the bow...and he wasn't the only one.

DirtyGirl hooked up more than once, but was also (I believe) snakebitten, while the two boys on the boat, Mark and Garret each hooked up more than once. Mark was unlucky, fighting a big damned fish for an hour, only to have it break him off just out of reach of the gaff. I'm sure it was over 100lbs, and he was fighting it on 40lbs too.

Garret did a little better than his Mom, putting at least one tuna in the boat. By the way, I feel like I have to say this now... I have no idea what Garret's trick was. He lost a fair number of fish, but he never got down on himself, even for a second. For that matter, neither did Mark. But it seemed to me like Garret got bit more than anyone on the boat. Every time I turned around, he was getting picked up, and that is over the course of our time at the Rocks, not just Monday afternoon. It was uncanny. JustJan, Silent Jim, and Miles were all the same way, getting bit much more frequently than the rest of us. Luan Pham and Cong Vu seemed to be doing OK too, and I am pretty sure I saw Redbeard hooked up at least once.

But the hottest stick was Half Day.

They called him that to tease him that he did all his fishing on half day cattle boats, and like some jokes, it just seemed to get funnier and funnier as the trip wore on. His handle here is actually Reider, but whatever you want to call him, the boy can fish. He hooked up more than anyone, and unlike most of us, he seemed to put all of his fish in the boat. A lot of this is impression and not fact, but even so he is one angler who did very, very well at the Rocks.

And Rodless? Well...

I wasn't exactly putting on a clinic. That afternoon I was OK with how I fished, but it was nothing to write home about. I got two bites, one from a little 10lb cacahuate. That one I actually gaffed and kept, because Fishy had asked me to tag a small one for FishnRust. Otherwise I would have released it. But hey, a tuna in the boat, right?

Later on I got a better bite, and it was a better fight, too. I was fishing 50lbs using one of my new Saltist Lever Drags and the Super Seeker Fishy had loaned to me, and I really manhandled that fish to the boat quickly. Five minutes and it was coming up to the stern, and then it took me up the port rail, step by step, all the way to the bow. Then suddenly it decided it wanted to fight, and took a little drag. Going by how it pulled, I'm guessing it was a 45-50lb fish. But I was fresh, and I had the hardware. It had hardly started to run when I turned it. That was my mistake...

The fish had been running for open water, away from the boat and ever so slightly towards the stern. I really reared back on it, and I stopped the run pretty quickly. When I did, it did a 180, heading back to the boat and right at the bow. I already had the fish pretty close, and as soon as it crossed the bow, it wrapped the anchor. 3...2...1... and off.

This fight happened at a time when several people were hooked up at once. There was no deckie nearby, but to be honest, I didn't think I would need one, and I also don't think a deckie, even the ones on Intrepid, could have saved that fish. It went around the anchor line three or four times, then broke off. Hey, stuff happens.

I didn't feel bad about losing that fish, though. There was still time in the afternoon for more bites. And in my mind I already had that fish beaten. If it hadn't wrapped itself in the anchor line, it would have come to gaff in just a couple of minutes. So the fish got away...so what, right? I fought it and won...time for more.

Unfortunately, the bite had gone into a lull. I never got another bite that day, and we fished pretty close to dark. Other people did, of course. I guess the boat tagged 25-30 fish in just that afternoon from 2:00 till about 6:00. The highlight of the day was two wahoo caught on bait...with no wire. Several people got 'hoo'ed, of course, losing hook and leader almost without feeling a thing. But Silent Jim and Stealthy John each got the last laugh...they each put nice wahoo in the RSW.

I wasn't the only one to have a slow day, of course. My roommate JWFogg was having a tough time getting bit, and he wasn't the only one. Albacore11 was just as unlucky an angler as I have seen in a while, Ken the Bushman had some bad luck too, and Boltar just couldn't win for losing. I felt bad for them, but there was plenty of time yet at the Rocks...


Next: Part V Concluded...


Photos:
1. Boltar and Albacore11 gird for battle...
2. Redbeard and JustJan on the Kite
3. Garret puts a yellowfin on the deck!
4. Cong Trolling
5. Can you spot DirtyGirl?

 

[vegasandre]

Part V Concluded.

One more note about Monday afternoon before darkness shut us down. I mentioned that Mark The Human Hurricane had a great fight against a big tuna, only to lose the fish at close color. It was a good fish, and he fought it well. It was just a matter of the tuna outlasting---barely---an 11-year old boy who had its number. At the very end, the line snapped. But like I said before, mark never once got down on himself. He was back at the rail inside of two minutes, and it wasn't too damned long before he was hooked up again...

I don't know about you guys, but I tend not to spend much time in the galley during the fishing day, unless we're traveling or eating. I spend a great deal of time at the rail, but I also spend some time with my camera out trying to take photos and video. I freely admit that how much time I spend doing that depends on how well I've been scoring myself, and also if I remember to do so. If I am at the rail trying to get mine, I won't be shooting you. But on most trips I spend some time taking photos, and this was no different.

While Mark was fighting his tuna, I was taking video for like the last 30 minutes of the fight. I don't get it, though, because that one video never came out. It just wasn't on the memory card, and I don't know why. It was a 4gig card! In any case, Mark lost the fish, and I lost the video. Seems about right, I guess...

But I still wasn't in the water when Mark hooked up again. I followed him up to the bow, took a few shots, and noticed that he was kind of all alone. There was a deckie up there, but he had two people with big fish going back and forth across the bow. Brad was fishing himself too, so I came up to mark and asked him if he wanted some help.

His first reply was, of course: "No, it's OK. I've got this." But then the fish really started to pull, and began to take drag. Mark was fishing the rail using the correct technique (much better than I can...but again, I anticipate), but he was having the same trouble that a lot of folks do: when he tried to turn the handle, the rod turned in his hands. Making cranks, even in low gear, was just hard as heck, because 90% of his effort was just twisting the rod under his arm.

So I asked him, "how about if I just steady the butt of the rod for you?" "OK" he said.

So I followed Mark for the rest of that fight, with my left hand holding the butt so the rod wouldn't twist, and as the fight when on, helping him to see when the rod tip was coming up, and he could gain some line. You know, he fought that fish like a champ, he really did. He needs a couple of inches and a pound or two before he'll be ready for a cow trip, but the truth is, all he really needed was a little stability on the back en of the rod. If I have to say this, I didn't do a thing to boat that fish. It was all Mark. I was just...the coach. Or maybe the cheering section...

About 10 minutes in, up comes Javier, because there were quite a few people hooked up then. That explained the deckies all being occupied! Javier came out to lend a hand, and he kept an eye on Mark and me. I suppose it was really a case of the deaf leading the blind, but Javier said something very nice then. It was untruthful, but truly kind: "You just listen to what my friend here tells you, Mark...he knows what he's doing this guy...do what he says and you'll catch that fish!"

In comparison to most of the people on the boat, I am sure that is praise that I personally did not deserve, but I was gratified to hear Javier say that, and it definitely seemed to give mark more confidence. Right about then, the fish crossed the bow from Starboard to Port, and I took the rod to lift it over the bullhead. Mark took the rod right back, and we worked our way down the Port rail a ways, until the fish was at medium color. Mark couldn't see the fish over the rail, of course, so I called for a gaff, and Dave came running up. "I've got this," he said, and he did. In a flash, he had the fish gaffed---a nice yellowtail---and was walking it down the rail to the stern. Mark knew to put the reel in free spool, and followed the fish back.

Then I got a photo!

That's really the last story to tell of Monday afternoon...the last fish caught that figures into the story as I witnessed it. As I've said before, there were hot sticks that day, and some cold ones too. I guess I qualify for the "cold" team, with just an itty bitty tuna on the boat, but I had fought a better one, and only lost it (I felt) to bad fortune. Other people had worse fortune than myself, and I had had a wonderful day regardless, so I was happy. I think anyone in my shoe's would have been, too.

Javier announced dinner for 45 minutes, and Intrepid pulled the anchor. We were headed for the Alijos Bank, hoping for trophy yellowtail overnight. On the way, we were planning to try and make squid if we could, then when we got there, maybe make some macks too.

We trolled as we went, pulling Marauders and hoping for skinfish, but we found no love that time. When darkness fell, we wound them in and made a little more speed for the bank. Javier called us in to eat, and that ended the afternoon...

A bad sign, some sleep lost, and we make bait...sort of

When we went in to dinner, my first thought was "I'm not hungry." When we sat down, I thought "Damn, I am really not hungry. Oh-oh..."

Those who know me well know that this is never a good sign. I am always hungry. After I finish the 20oz Porterhouse and the baked potato the size of my own head, I always get some coffee and start looking at the dessert menu. Even if I had a snack 40 minutes...a big snack...I never spoil my appetite. Even when I think the food is only so-so, I clean my plate. Rodless_Jim is always hungry...except when he is getting sick. "Oh dear God," I thought, "I don't need this again...now."

Didn't matter. Javier put out a nice spread, but I could barely pick at it. I didn't feel sick, but I wasn't hungry.

ASIDE: Amazing how the worst illnesses can begin with the slightest of symptoms, isn't it? But in a way, my recent ordeal notwithstanding, I was really lucky, as you all will see...

So I sat at dinner and drank as much water as I could. I had a feeling I would be glad I did. Then Kevin came down and explained that we would try to make bait as soon as he found a piece of water that seemed squidy to him. Then when we got to the bank and anchored up, we'd wait a while for the bait to build up under the boat, and try to make some big macks. All of this was as we'd expected...now we knew more or less when. I managed to bum a squid jig from Jesus, and a sabiki rig from Brad, so I was good. I just went up on the sundeck (moondeck?) to smoke a cigar.

Afterward my smoke, I went down into the galley and started to try to make some notes for this report. That didn't work very well though. I'm sure a lot of you on the trip saw me there, and you were all very good about giving me some space to write! There were just a couple of people who asked if I was already writing the trip report, and no one wanted to intrude at all. I explained that I could never do that while still on the boat. I was just making notes to try and keep events clear in my head for when I did start to write. And that's the way it was. This is also the first time I ever tried to take notes, and I didn't do a very good job. In the end, I have gone almost completely from memory as I always have done, but the notes helped some for the beginning of the report.

Anyway, it was around 9:30 when Kevin stopped the boat and put out the squid lights. I had already tied on my squid jig, but I was still taking notes, and when I looked out on the deck there were only a couple of people trying it. An awful lot of people I respect a great deal were nowhere to be seen then, and I am ashamed to admit that I followed their example...but only up to a certain point. I was finishing some notes, and waiting for someone to actually catch a squid. I promised myself I would do my level best to make bait, but I would take another 5-10 minutes just to finish what I was already writing.

"Hey, Frank got one!"

Man, did he ever! Frank, the daughter-boyfriend (if we can say "baby-daddy," we can say "daughter-boyfriend" too!) had dredged up a 14" piece of tuna candy. Suddenly the rail was full of anglers trying to make squid.

There is only one person I cannot swear to: Willy. He may have been there...if he says he was, I believe him! But he has a God-awful back, and if he chose to take a pass on making bait, I am not about to castigate him for it. He's a good guy, fishing with legitimate handicaps, and he wears a smile all day long. If you really weren't there Mr. Casper, ego te absolvo.

Everyone else was there. Wahoodad and everyone else. The deckies and Kevin and even Hector. When Kevin said that making bait on Intrepid is a 100% participation activity, he wasn't kidding...but it turned out to be a waste of time.

We saw the squid. They were big and active and moving in and out of the light. They were deep for a while, and then they came up. I must have seen two dozen a few feet below the surface, all more or less the same size as the one Frank caught. I even saw them take notice of squid jigs...they just weren't feeding.

It has been a long, long time now, but I remember making squid at night on the Legend. It was a 3-day trip, and we never got to use them as bait, but they were as easy as pie to catch...and fun too. The same size or even larger, and very aggressive. Some of the people on the trip froze them and took them home to eat. I caught 5-6 and gave them to people who wanted them, then gave it up. On another trip, even farther back in memory...2001 maybe? Or 2003? We caught a mess of smaller squid that we did use for bait, to great effect.Those were the 4" models, and we could catch as many as 5 or 6 with every drop. It took next to know time to fill the bait well.

Those are my memories of making squid, and squid was easy to make. This time, though, no dice. Somewhere along the line, someone caught a second squid, but that was all. I was talking to Romo, and saying "I can see the damned things...if we try long enough, won't they start biting?" Romo's reply was prophetic: "If we stay here long enough, I'm sure they will. Sooner or later they always do. But I don't think Kevin will wait. He wants to get to the bank." Romo had barely finished saying those words when Kevin went on the loud speaker, telling us to pack it in...that maybe the squid would get aggressive if we waited long enough, but we needed to be on our way. Once we got to the bank, though, we'd try it again for mackerel.

Me? I went to bed.

Comes 1:00 in the morning, and we're there. JWFogg wakes me up and tells me it's time to make bait, so off I go. We spent a good 45 minutes trying, but no go. We never pulled even a single bait. Finally Kevin metered some big fish passing deep under the boat, and told us we could give up on the macks...anyone who wanted to try for big yellows, we'd be here all night. The water was deep, of course, 260+ feet, which made for a long drop and a longer retrieve. I wanted to give it a try...I had been telling myself I would do some night yellowtail fishing if I got the chance...but I knew something was up with me, and I decided that sleeping [/i]now[/i] was probably a better idea, so that's what I did.

I heard later that there were a few people who tried it, but the overnight was a bust. Only in the early morning did some people manage to tag some good yellows, including my roommate JW. I was still asleep, of course, but hearing that later made me glad I rested...





Next: Part VI: A Full Day at the Stones...

 

[Fishybuzz]

Part V Continued...

Last year I fished Isla Cedros on Shogun, and in the afternoon we anchored up at what they call "The Salt Mine" to catch big yellows. I'd been hearing about the spot for the better part of two days, and when we got there the sense of anticlimax was palpable. It just didn't seem like much there, even though the fishing was off the hook.

This time around, the feeling couldn't possibly have been more different. My first view of Las Rocas Alijos literally took my breath away, and the feeling never really left the entire time we were there. I might fish for an hour or two at the rail without thinking about the stones, but then suddenly I would turn and see them, and my heart would jump. It is a spectacular place, far beyond what I had imagined, these gorgeous, savage columns of stone rising from an empty sea...

Never mind the fishing, or even Javier's cooking...I would cheerfully pay the price just to be there.

Catching Tuna Is Easy...Right?

I think Kevin wanted to begin with wahoo. The water temps were right, and we had a shot to begin our visit with a bang, but the skinny fish wouldn't cooperate. We trolled a complete circle around the Rocks as he looked for a good spot to anchor up, hoping all the while for a jig strike, but no such luck. Kevin found a spot he liked, dropped the anchor, and called for the bait tank to start a chum line.

It was 2:00 pm on Monday, and Intrepid had yet to put a fish on the deck. By 2:15 that would change...

OK, here is where my not knowing anybody makes the storytelling harder. I don't remember who was the first to hook up. I know the first bite was a yellow, not a tuna, and a pretty good one. I know it hit the deck in like five minutes, and by the time it was gaffed we had a couple more people hooked up. And we stayed hooked up for a while, too.

It was not a wide open bite. It never was the entire time we were there. The fish never charged the boat, and it seemed like there was always a gap between one pickup and the next. On the other hand, these were decent fish in the 40-70lb range, so no one was jackpoling them over the rail... and we lost more than we probably should have too. But by the time a fish was gaffed or lost, it seemed like there was always at least one new one hooked up. After two days without fish---and too much unsatisfied excitement among the Bluefin---the boat was rocking.

There was an interruption early on, though. The boat drifted off its intended spot, and Kevin had to reposition us. That happened a couple of times during the trip, but it's normal. Not even the best captain can judge wind and tide perfectly every instant, and taking the time to re-anchor the boat almost always pays off in more fish. Once we reset, we didn't budge for the rest of the day.

Fishybuzz got on the board, and so did Wahoodad and Willy. Those seem to have the knack of walking up, grabbing a bait out of the tank, pitching out in some random spot, and hooking up. It is awesome to see. They also tend not to lose fish the way we mere mortals do.

But other people were hot too. Silent Jim was on fire, and so was John the Stealth Angler. I call John that because he always seems to fly under the radar. He says very little, makes no noise, no fuss. It's just so easy to overlook him standing there at the rail. And then suddenly he's hooked up. Over and over and over again. Man does that guy catch fish! Out of nowhere, and there he is...

Xman is a hot stick too, but I don't remember if he did well that first afternoon. Miles was pretty hot, though, and I am pretty sure his buddy Ken the Bushman hooked up once or twice. I have the feeling, though, that Ken may have been snakebit that day. I think he lost a good fish in the bow...and he wasn't the only one.

DirtyGirl hooked up more than once, but was also (I believe) snakebitten, while the two boys on the boat, Mark and Garret each hooked up more than once. Mark was unlucky, fighting a big damned fish for an hour, only to have it break him off just out of reach of the gaff. I'm sure it was over 100lbs, and he was fighting it on 40lbs too.

Garret did a little better than his Mom, putting at least one tuna in the boat. By the way, I feel like I have to say this now... I have no idea what Garret's trick was. He lost a fair number of fish, but he never got down on himself, even for a second. For that matter, neither did Mark. But it seemed to me like Garret got bit more than anyone on the boat. Every time I turned around, he was getting picked up, and that is over the course of our time at the Rocks, not just Monday afternoon. It was uncanny. JustJan, Silent Jim, and Miles were all the same way, getting bit much more frequently than the rest of us. Luan Pham and Cong Vu seemed to be doing OK too, and I am pretty sure I saw Redbeard hooked up at least once.

But the hottest stick was Half Day.

They called him that to tease him that he did all his fishing on half day cattle boats, and like some jokes, it just seemed to get funnier and funnier as the trip wore on. His handle here is actually Reider, but whatever you want to call him, the boy can fish. He hooked up more than anyone, and unlike most of us, he seemed to put all of his fish in the boat. A lot of this is impression and not fact, but even so he is one angler who did very, very well at the Rocks.

And Rodless? Well...

I wasn't exactly putting on a clinic. That afternoon I was OK with how I fished, but it was nothing to write home about. I got two bites, one from a little 10lb cacahuate. That one I actually gaffed and kept, because Fishy had asked me to tag a small one for FishnRust. Otherwise I would have released it. But hey, a tuna in the boat, right?

Later on I got a better bite, and it was a better fight, too. I was fishing 50lbs using one of my new Saltist Lever Drags and the Super Seeker Fishy had loaned to me, and I really manhandled that fish to the boat quickly. Five minutes and it was coming up to the stern, and then it took me up the port rail, step by step, all the way to the bow. Then suddenly it decided it wanted to fight, and took a little drag. Going by how it pulled, I'm guessing it was a 45-50lb fish. But I was fresh, and I had the hardware. It had hardly started to run when I turned it. That was my mistake...

The fish had been running for open water, away from the boat and ever so slightly towards the stern. I really reared back on it, and I stopped the run pretty quickly. When I did, it did a 180, heading back to the boat and right at the bow. I already had the fish pretty close, and as soon as it crossed the bow, it wrapped the anchor. 3...2...1... and off.

This fight happened at a time when several people were hooked up at once. There was no deckie nearby, but to be honest, I didn't think I would need one, and I also don't think a deckie, even the ones on Intrepid, could have saved that fish. It went around the anchor line three or four times, then broke off. Hey, stuff happens.

I didn't feel bad about losing that fish, though. There was still time in the afternoon for more bites. And in my mind I already had that fish beaten. If it hadn't wrapped itself in the anchor line, it would have come to gaff in just a couple of minutes. So the fish got away...so what, right? I fought it and won...time for more.

Unfortunately, the bite had gone into a lull. I never got another bite that day, and we fished pretty close to dark. Other people did, of course. I guess the boat tagged 25-30 fish in just that afternoon from 2:00 till about 6:00. The highlight of the day was two wahoo caught on bait...with no wire. Several people got 'hoo'ed, of course, losing hook and leader almost without feeling a thing. But Silent Jim and Stealthy John each got the last laugh...they each put nice wahoo in the RSW.

I wasn't the only one to have a slow day, of course. My roommate JWFogg was having a tough time getting bit, and he wasn't the only one. Albacore11 was just as unlucky an angler as I have seen in a while, Ken the Bushman had some bad luck too, and Boltar just couldn't win for losing. I felt bad for them, but there was plenty of time yet at the Rocks...


Next: Part V Concluded...


Photos:
1. Boltar and Albacore11 gird for battle...
2. Redbeard and JustJan on the Kite
3. Garret puts a yellowfin on the deck!
4. Cong Trolling
5. Can you spot DirtyGirl?

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Got those of you not fortunate enough to fish with Dirty Girl....you had to be there she was a really fun person to fish with and the ledgendary "Just Jan"......the memories just keep coming.

 

[Montaukmaniac]

So I said I was going to post some previous fish stories/reports from "back in the day"- that I really loved.
now some may say : Why post an old damn fishing report?
I say: "Why not"?

there is often some good nuggets in these stories for everyone (even for the A.D.D guys who only like pictures)
- entertaining reading -something to do when you are bored
- indepth descriptions of fishing locations / LR boats and crew
- fun detail about fellow fisherman and crew ; past and present with some true Hall of Famers in there...
- cool tidbits on fishing patterns from years past that could pertain to today
- weren't posted on BD..

so here is the first one and it's a long one.. so I will post it as he originally did over consecutive days.

Writer- Rodless Jim (he doesn't know I am posting it, but if he reads this..sorry I didn't ask, it is out of appreciation)

If you don't know Jim , let me say he is a fantastic writer and makes zero grammatical errors (unlike me -because I dont spell check or anything lol)
He lives in MX city . Claim to fame is his writing is in great detail and full of emotion- a newbie or veteran angler can get the sense of feeling the moment.
you will feel like you know him.. and everyone on the boat.
but just don't ever him ask about politics..

The older posts are when he was learning the LR ropes..

this thread will be through the eyes of a Novice LR fisherman:

I hope you like it.

Fearless: The Wahoodad/Willy Intrepid 8-Day Report​

July 2010

FOREWARD: This was a unique trip for me, encompassing several "firsts." As a result, I suspect this will turn out to be a different kind of report. For those who preferred my previous reports, I can only apologize, and say that I did my best to pay attention, and will do my best to report.

The issues that make this report different are:

1. The boat is huge, and it is harder to be aware of what is happening on the opposite rail---and to whom---than it has ever been for me before. If you're on the stern, you may have an idea of some of the people who are up on the bow, but probably not all of them, nor can you keep an eye on who is fighting fish, if they won or lost, and (if the fish got off) why. It's just a BIG boat.

2. Until I got on board, I really didn't know anyone on the trip. Yes, I made some friends on the boat, and one or two that I think (and hope) will become really good friends in time. Even so, I didn't show up with even one "buddy," and that is a much bigger part of this than some people realize, at least for how I remember a trip. In the past, I was better able to keep track of what was going on across the boat because I was also paying attention to what Harddrive was doing, and last year, to what JL was doing too. It isn't that I neglected my own fishing (I do that a little to take photos for Outhouse's amusement), but it does give me more than one place to focus on the action. Consequently, I seem to remember more of what happens, and more clearly. I really don't know how that will work out in this report.

3. This trip was by far my longest ever in terms of time spent on the water. On a 5-day trip, you really only have to remember what happens during the course of 3 days of fishing, plus anecdotes about the other time. This time around, we spent more than 6 days at least nominally trying to catch fish. If the fishing had been any better, it would all have become a horrible blur, even though this time I did try to take some notes. Even so, I am sure I am going to get some details mixed up, out of sequence, or just plain wrong. I offer the writer's standard apology: all mistakes you find in the report that follows are my own, and simply demonstrate my inadequacies as a reporter.

4. Emotions color how anyone sees a story, and my own emotions had some ups and downs during the course of the trip. For one thing, I was physically ill during much of the trip (more on that later), and that (with the accompanying weakness I felt) had an effect, not on the events that occurred, but rather on how I saw them...and thus remember them.

In any case---and for better or worse!---I hereby embark upon the tale. "The Wahoodad/Willy Intrepid 8-Day Trip," as seen through the eyes of Rodless_Jim...


PART I: Leaving Mexico is Easy...

Departure:

Leaving Mexico really was easy, too. Not only did I post incessantly before the trip, I also spent a fair amount of time trying to prepare, and that preparation paid off handsomely when the time came to depart. Packing was as easy as it has ever been, though I was carrying more (and, as it turns out, way too much), and I had a free ride to the airline terminal. Really the only headaches were the untoward weight of my duffle bag, and how to travel with two wide-brimmed hats at once.

I was traveling not directly to San Diego or LA (much easier in some ways), but to Tijuana. That means I was going to be flying Volaris Airlines, and flying out of the Toluca airport. I am sure I mentioned this in last year's report, but Toluca isn't IN Mexico City...it is on the other side of some mountains that ring the city. Volaris handles that in a novel, and considerate way: they have their very own terminal in Mexico City, where you can check in for your flight, check your bags, get your boarding pass, the whole nine yards. Then you board a luxury bus for the 45 minute ride to Toluca and the airport. When you arrive at the airport in Toluca, you are already set. Pass through security, get a cup of coffee (there's a Starbucks in the departure lounge), and wait to board your flight.

For me, going through the Volaris terminal in Mexico City had an added bonus. I am 95% certain that my bag was overweight, but the scale they were using wasn't well-designed to handle a soft-sided duffle bag. Better still, the person doing the weighing was incompetent and disinterested in his job. Result: my bag passed weigh-in without ringing the overweight cherries, thus saving me some coin. At the very same time, many other passengers were being assessed overweight charges of $200 or more.

This is a good beginning!

So nothing much to tell here. I was driven to the terminal by my wife's chauffeur, and I was checked in for my flight 10 minutes later. I rode the bus to Toluca, and got myself a damned big cup of coffee, with three extra shots of espresso in it, plus cream and Splenda, then started exchanging text messages with Fishybuzz. Damn, it seemed like I waited FOREVER to board my flight. And I got a lot of strange looks for my heavy beard and two hats. The Heck with 'em. I'm going FISHING!

Well, we boarded as you might expect, taxied, took off, and flew to Tijuana. The flight was extremely uneventful, especially for me: I slept the entire way! I only woke up as we began our descent...


The Crossing:

Tijuana is still Mexico. I am forcibly reminded of that fact whenever I fly into that airport. It's a few heartbeats from US soil, but it is still completely Mexico. Getting off the plane, swarms of "maleteros" (porters who work for tips) accosted me, demanding that I permit them to carry my bags for me. I was offered taxis, rental cars, hotel rooms, elegant meals, cold beers, strong tequila, and 14 year old virgins. OK, that's not entirely true...no one offered me an elegant meal. In any case, I had already made my plans: Christian.

Christian is a contract taxi driver with a Sentry pass. That means he can cross the border more or less at will. More importantly, it means he can drive me directly from the Tijuana airport to the La Jolla Enterprise Rent-A-Car location. More importantly, Christian has done the same (or similar) for many, many wealthy and or important people from Mexico City. I, of course, am neither! But I knew for a fact that I could trust Christian, and I had already arranged for him to drive me. It was expensive, but in this case I believe it is money well spent.

As I was waiting to collect my bag, I called Christian and told him I had arrived (30 minutes early, as it happened), and he told me where to meet him. Smooth, all so very smooth...

Christian loaded my bag (he had to grunt to get it in the trunk), and headed off for the Otay Mesa border crossing (usually a much better choice than San Ysidro). He dropped me and my bag in the pedestrian line (I had to cross on my own...no Sentry pass!), and I started to wait. This was actually unusual. The Otay Mesa crossing is typically less crowded, both for cars and for pedestrians. If the line of cars that was passing had been shorter---and if we had been driving a car with US plates---I could have just stayed in the van, and we could have crossed together in one of the non-Sentry lines. But the lines were long for everyone except Sentry pass holders, so no dice.

I was only in the line for about 45 minutes, with hordes of people desperately trying to sell me anything. Christian charities were begging for donations (we can talk about that in another thread...I am charitable by nature, but there's more to the story than you know), chewing gum and cigarettes and cold drinks of all kinds...tacos and flautas, cookies, sandwiches...knick-knacks and mementos...the line was a marketplace, and desperation was in the air.

Finally I passed through the swinging bars and onto US soil. Five minutes later, I was facing the Border Patrol. And for whatever reason, he decided to give me a hard time. He asked me if I was bringing anything into the US from Mexico, any food items or things like that. I told him I had a bag of caramelized pecans, but since they were cooked, I was allowed to bring them in. I told him I had some cigars too, but they were of Mexican manufacture (mostly true), so also legal to bring in.

He asked me to show him the cigars.

No problem...two boxes of Mexican cigars. But in the process, I laid a packet of Owner hooks on the counter, and it looks like I forgot them there. I never saw them again, anyway. So I re-packed, and zipped up, and he let me pass. The guy at the other end responsible for the REAL inspection had me open up AGAIN (what am I? A pecan smuggler?), and he rummaged through the bag for a while. Finally he had me zip up, and I was through and free. Total time to cross: 1 hour, 20 minutes. For a US citizen. Oh well, it can't ALL be easy, right?

I couldn't find Christian on the other side.

I called him, but I couldn't understand where he said he was. He couldn't understand where I was, either. It took another 25 minutes, and I had to lug that heavy bag about 500 yards up the road to find my ride, sweating like the the overgrown bear I am all the way. Finally we managed to intersect, my bags got loaded---again---and off we headed to La Jolla.

From there, everything started going like clockwork again. Christian dropped me at Enterprise and I paid him and rented my car. I went to CVS to buy some things I would need, then to my brother-in-law's house to pick up some gear. By 2:30, I was on the road to LA to see Harddrive and family.

Traffic was annoying getting out of SD, and I ran into several heavy patches along the way, but I still arrived at Harddrive's house before 6:00, so it couldn't have been that bad. Anyway, I was here, with all of my stuff, and ready to do the final rig up of my tackle...


Next Up: THAT'S Not 100lb Spectra!

Part II: The Last Little Tasks...

Evening at Harddrive's:

I am not going to go into detail describing Harddrive this time around. For one thing, he can speak for himself! I will say, though, that it is his fault that you are reading these words. He was the one who got me into Pacific fishing to begin with with, and then tuna, and finally long range. If you find me annoying (and I am sure many of you do!), blame him.


Harddrive has a wife and two lovely daughters, a nice house in/near Santa Monica, a good job, and is becoming a tackle ho. All of this works to my benefit! When I buy a new reel, I have it sent to Harddrive, along with the spectra I want on it. He spools it for me. If I need a new hook put on a jig, he does the welding. When I need advice about what to buy or how to fish, he is one of the people I feel I can ask and get a clear, straight answer. Me? I bring him cigars and pay for the pizza. Most of all, I let him believe he really is smarter than I am. It all works out...

Anyway, in the past we have had some late nights before trips, where we had a ton of things to do and limited time in which to do them. It has almost become a pre-trip ritual for us. This time would be different, because Harddrive wasn't coming. I have to tell you, that felt truly weird...

Still, we needed to wind mono topshots onto a couple of reels, and put spectra on a couple more. He swapped me a good jig of his for a broken one of mine. All is going well. One of his friends came by to schmooze, and we left the spooling for a couple of hours while we ate pizza and chicken and they drank beer. I stuck with Diet Coke...

So we go back to spooling reels, and we have a discussion about something that puzzles Harddrive. He is in the process of winding 65lb solid spectra (JB Line One) onto a new Saltist Lever Drag reel, and he observes that the line feels "thick" to him. I tell him that it seems the same to me, so what's up? He explains that he has already wound on 600 yards of 100lb spectra on my new Taigra 30W LRS, and something doesn't seem right. For one thing, 600 yards didn't hardly fill the reel at all. For another, the 65lb spectra he's spooling now feels thicker than the 100 he spooled on the Tiagra. So we take a closer look at the line on the Tiagra...

That is NOT 100lb line, not solid, not hollow, not 100. You know, it really looks like...damn, it is! It's 50lb line! We look at the spool it came off of...says 100lbs as clear as day, but there's just no way. It's 50lb line, plain and simple. OK, this is not good. It's nighttime, and there's no place to find 100lb spectra now. I need to spool the Tiagra NOW, but how?

Harddrive makes me a trade. He has 600 yards of 80lb PowerPro, and he'll swap it to me for the 50lb JB. It's not the perfect solution, but it works for me. We unspool and respool, then add 150 yards of 80lb mono topshot. Now I'm good.

That was really it. My brother-in-law had been holding my new tackle bag for me, and two of my rods, along with some clothes. Harddrive had four of my reels, and two more of my rods. Gear-wise, all I was missing was the one reel (bought) and the one rod (borrowed) that Fishy was bringing me, and the long rod Titan05 was loaning me. I had all kinds of lures and hooks and sundry small things that I would need to arrange in my tackle bag once I met up with Fishy, but the big stuff was all set. I was well fed, well rigged, and by midnight I was asleep.

The next morning, Mrs. Harddrive woke me with breakfast, and I got to say goodbye to Harddrive as he went to work (yes, I stuck my tongue out at him as he left). Then I showered, packed my stuff into the rental car, and at about 9:45 I was headed for San Diego, easy as pie...


More Shopping, A Tailgate Party, JWFogg, and the Inimitable Fishybuzz

I said before that the drive up from SD to LA was uneventful, with little traffic to frustrate me, and that was true. The drive down was better still. Getting out of LA was much easier than I expected (it was harder getting in the day before), and once I was out, I just flew South all the way to Encinitas. From there, I had a whole list of things I wanted to buy, at a whole series of places, and I had about two and a half hours to get it all done.

Being clever, I decided to seriously edit the "to do" list, and just do without those items. I managed to cut it down to Squidco, Home Depot, Big 5, and Costco. I got to the Vagabond Inn right at 2:15, in perfect time to meet up with Fishybuzz...who wasn't there.

Turns out Fishy was having lunch with Willy, and didn't arrive for another half hour. He also forgot to pick up the chicken feet! neither omission mattered to me. I was checked in to the hotel, my stuff was out of the rental car and under lock and key, and I was ready for the vacation to begin in earnest.

When Fishy arrived, he checked in, and off we went to return my rental car. From there, we ran a couple of errands, and looked around to see if we could find chicken feet for the trip, but no dice. One Asian market had become a Pho restaurant, and we decided not to bother going all the way to Convoy to find them. Next time I'll bring them myself! We did stop to pick up some beer, and then we headed over to Seaforth to meet up with some friends who were going out on a 2-day that night.

Getting to Seaforth was easy enough, though (to be honest!) Fishy got lost...twice. He was using his GPS guide, and he made a turn too quickly. That got us to the tailgate 45 minutes later than projected, but it didn't matter, because the tailgate hadn't really started yet. There were only a few people there drinking beer and soda, including SaltyDog and SaltyPup. Fishy was the life of the party, picking up two rods he'd had SaltyDog wrap for him, but especially showing off his new Black Hole blank. To be fair, it is an amazing rod blank, as light as a fly rod, but strong and stiff enough to match a Seeker 2x4. Seriously. It is one cool blank, and I can't wait to see what kind of rod it makes.

Of course you all realize that Fishy knows everyone. He's fished with them, laughed with them, he is the clown prince at the center of the tailgate...and we're not even on that trip!

About 45 minutes after Fishy and I showed up, this great big guy with a sardonic grin came up. I mean a BIIIIIG man, tall and broad, clean cut, Clark Kent looking type, but broader than heck. He comes up to me and asks me "Are you Rodless_Jim?"

OK, how can I put this?

He wasn't the first person at the tailgate to ask me that question. Fishy even introduced me to some of the people there (TunaBelly, for example, who happens to be a really nice guy) as Rodless_Jim. And in a way, I suppose that's only natural. I have posted enough by now that everyone knows me by that name. The thing is, they know my handle, and some of my posts, but the don't really know me...but they think they do. They think they know my life and my personality, even when many don't even remember/realize that I live in Mexico, etc. For better or for worse, I found myself to be a weird kind of minor celebrity, and the truth is, the last thing I am is celebrated, pretty much anywhere in the world.

In person I am not the man you read here. I am like that man...I am as honest as I can be with my opinions and such. But somehow, people seem to expect me to be louder, cockier, and nuttier than I really am. Believe it or not, I am actually pretty shy. Stop laughing Fishy! I mean it. It takes me a while to get used to new people. To compensate for that, I make the effort to take the initiative. I'll walk up to people and say "Hi! I'm Jim!" I did that at the docks the next morning, in fact. But believe it or not, that is something that is really hard for me.

At the time that the big man walked up to me, I was actually feeling kind of isolated. I wasn't going out on the 2-day with the tailgaters, and I didn't know what to say to them. The only person around that I could say I knew at all was Fishybuzz, and I'd just met him face-to-face for the first time about three hours before.

OK, to be clear: Fishy and I have been chatting for a while. I count him as a real friend, and I felt that way before we met in SD. So I wasn't "alone." I was with my friend Fishy. But just him, and I felt very much out of place, like I didn't belong where I was.

So this rather large, bearish gentleman walks up, and asks me if I'm Rodless_Jim. I figure he could have asked me if I was Donald Duck...the feeling would have been the same. But he was smiling, so I told him "sure, in one of my alternate universe existences that's me. But you can call me Jim." He introduced himself, and explained that his handle on the board is "JWFogg," (I remember his one and only post in the Countdown thread), and that he was on our trip, not the 2-day. He just had a bunch of friends on the 2-day, so he came over to say hello.

That was a good feeling. JW seemed like a nice guy, a little reserved with a wicked sense of humor. Definitely not a loudmouth type, and more like I happen to see myself. We started talking fishing, and that was that. I knew JW and I were going to get along. That turned out to be a very good thing indeed, but I anticipate myself.

Fishy had arranged for some people to go to dinner at around 7:00 at an Italian restaurant close to the Vagabond Inn where we were staying. Willy was supposed to be one of them, but he had already said he couldn't make it. JW was invited to join us, and we pulled out of the tailgate at like 6:15.


Titan05, A Long Rod, Lasagna, And A Lost Hat

Traffic was awful trying to get out of Seaforth, and we had to wait quite a while in the stop and go mess. We persevered, though, and eventually found room to maneuver. It was maybe 7:00 by the time we got back to the hotel, maybe a hair earlier, and we waited in Fishy's room for Titan05 to show up. It was about 7:15 by the time he did, and Fishy made introductions. Titan loaned me a rod then, a lovely Calstar 900J (I think that's right). with an Avet JX 2-speed already clamped on. A beautiful setup indeed. Fishy, of course, had to show off his new Black Hole blank one more time, and finally we set off for dinner.

As we walked out of the hotel parking lot, who should we meet but JWFogg again. Turns out he's staying in the Vagabond too. We'd told him 7:00 at the restaurant, and since it was now after 7:30, obviously we'd left him hanging. He was cool about it, and walked with us back there. We got a table, sat down and in the course of a couple of hours, had dinner.

Point of note: I was wearing my favorite fishing hat as we walked over to the restaurant, and I hung it over the back of the chair as we sat down.

OK, now I am going to speak honestly, and I apologize in advance if I offend. The drink was good and the company was outstanding...the food was not. I asked the waiter for a recommendation and he immediately suggested the lasagna. Apparently it is a great favorite in the restaurant. I think that has to be because of the size of the portion, because it was large. It just wasn't particularly good. Not bad, but nothing to write home about. Later on it gave me heartburn too. I think there are other dishes there that must be better, because Fishy, Titan, and JW were all (apparently) happy with their dinners. I was hungry though (I had gone without lunch), and the lasagna wasn't bad, so I ate it all. I was, at least, satisfied.

At a certain point, we suddenly realized that it was getting later, and Titan had to go to the airport to pick up his son. We asked for and paid the bill pretty quickly, and once we had, we all got up and headed right for the door.

Yup. I left my hat sitting on the back of the chair. I am pretty annoyed about that...

So, we all shook hands with Titan, and I thanked him again for the loan of the rod. He is a very gracious man, of course, and said "don't worry about it" or something along those lines. Then he headed for his car, and we walked back to the hotel.

In a sense, that was the end of Friday, even though I had many hours to go. We walked over to the landing to do a little more shopping in the tackle store (I got a pink and white Zuker feather that I am sure will catch fish...some day), and then we all went to our rooms.

I wasn't done, of course. I had to reorganize and repack EVERYTHING. I was ripping open boxes and arranging my tackle bag, folding and repacking clothes, the whole nine yards. Again. This became a repetitive, torturous theme for the entire trip, and this wasn't even the first repacking episode since I'd left Mexico. But this was the BIG one. I finished around 1:00 and tried to sleep. At 1:30, I decided to read some. At 2:00 I tried to sleep again. At 2:30, I decided to take some Melatonin and read some more...

At 4:00 am, I finally fell asleep...

Thanks for the re-post Andre! ! it's a classic!

 

[vegasandre]

Part VI: Day Two at Alijos...

Dawn broke over the Bank, and everyone awoke with a sense of anticipation...we had barely scratched the surface of fishing at the Rocks, and we were all eager to get back to it. People were still trying for big yellows in the gray light when Javier called breakfast, but no one was about to put off getting back to the yellowfin even for a minute.

Lines were cranked in and Intrepid weighed anchor. As we went in to eat, trolling rods were set up to be watched (for the time being) by the deckies. We had a couple of hours to get back to the stones themselves, though, so there would be time for one or more trolling rotations after breakfast. I mostly wasn't able to keep track of what Javier served at each meal, or even on each day. There were a couple of meals that really stood out, but all I can tell you about most of them was that they were extremely well-prepared, and that generally speaking, I couldn't eat them. Tuesday morning was an exception in one sense: I remember what Javier served. Bacon and eggs cooked your way, with breakfast sausage and toast to go with it. That is my breakfast. If it ain't sausage gravy on biscuits with eggs, it's bacon and eggs, with a side of sausage. I don't do breakfast cereal... It was gorgeous, too...two sunny side up, 4 strips of perfect bacon, sour dough toast. But I couldn't eat it. I still wasn't hungry, not even a little bit. I managed about two bites of toast and egg, and I finished an entire strip of bacon...afterward I felt faintly nauseated.
And now I knew I was headed for trouble. Even so, I crossed my fingers, pretended it was just because I had eaten so well the first couple of days, and that I would be fine. At least I managed to finish my cup of coffee (delicious, of course), and then I headed out to face the day.

If You HAD To Make A Prediction For This Trip... The trolling rotation was a washout for most of the ride across. We had four Marauders dragging behind us, but it didn't seem like there was any point...we hadn't seen any wahoo since early the afternoon before, and the other boats that were at the Rocks (first Indy, then Q105) had already done some trolling across the good spots.

After about an hour, maybe a little more, Kevin called for a change in the trollers, and that brought up Wahoodad. He was dragging a Marauder that---on a previous trip---Kevin had dubbed "Ugly Betty." It has virtually no paint left on it, its hooks have been torn off and replaced half a dozen times, but it has been hit more often by more wahoo than any other Marauder anyone has ever heard of.
It just goes to proves, it's how the lure swims that counts. Ugly Betty belongs to Fishybuzz (of course), and they had it wired onto to one of the boat's trolling rods, on the Starboard corner. When Wahoodad's trolling rotation was called, he just walked back to that corner, crossed his arms, and waited. One minute...two minutes...five minutes... I'm telling you, it wasn't much longer than that, when... "Hook-up!!!!" Yes, it was Ugly Betty and Wahoodad. Yes, it was a wahoo. He brought it up in a matter of a minute, barely more than that.
The rest of us were throwing bombs and Raiders for all we were worth, and a couple with bait on wired hooks, waiting for a second hookup. So Wahoodad brings the fish to gaff.
Does he stand by and admire the fish? No, he grabs a long rod with a Raider tied on the end, and launches. 10, maybe 15 seconds on the drop, and he's winding like a madman. Yep, you guessed it. He gets bit on the jig. No one else did, of course. No bombs, no bait, no other Raiders, just Wahoodad making us all look like idiots. Unfortunately, that fish spit the jig before he could get it to gaff, and that was the end of the wahoo for the time being.

Of course the next trolling rotation was pretty pumped, but there weren't any more interruptions, and we didn't have that far to go to get to our spot for the day. And then we were there. Kevin carefully positioned us, and even before the anchor was down, we had baits in the water, and a slow chum line in progress. Keep working it until you get it right... So as an aside, I remember having a conversation on one of the boards with a wonderful guy named OldTimer, talking about fishing off the anchor. When we had the conversation, I had only done so once myself, catching decent-sized tuna at Guadalupe. People (and Harddrive in particular) told me then that it wasn't always as easy in other places as it was for us that day. The reason (so I was told) is that on that day, we had the wind and the current in line with each other, and as a result, you could cast out over either side of the boat, and in the end---if you didn't get bit before then!---your bait would end up straight out over the stern and in the chum line. You might get bitten close to the boat, but most of the pickups were well back. We had tangles, of course, but as fishing off the anchor goes, it was the best you could ask for. It's different at Alijos. All three days we ended up with the current going one way and the wind another. The strength of the wind was inconsistent at times (more on that later), but the direction was pretty consistent. Monday afternoon and Tuesday, it was coming in off the Port bow, blowing the kites well aft and to Starboard, for most of Wednesday, it was right off the Port beam, taking the kites almost directly to Starboard, and making life interesting. Again, more on that later, because by the luck of the draw, my kite rotation never came up until almost noon on Wednesday, and that's for another section of the story. The real issue was that the current was taking the baits not just aft, but also to Port. As a result, no matter where you put in or cast in, you would inevitably end up---along with everyone else---crowded in the Port corner. On Monday afternoon as well as Tuesday morning, this wasn't an insurmountable problem. People got bit pretty close to the boat, and so you could put in on the Starboard rail (or near the Starboard corner), and still get picked up. In fact, I saw both Wahoodad and Willy go in on that side and catch good fish.

There was a trick to it that I didn't pick up until much later, but it was possible. The other way in was something not a lot of people were doing at first, in part because it seemed to be unnecessary: they would go all the way up to the Port bow, and go in on that side... So Tuesday morning's fishing began, and early on I was doing OK. People were hanging fish, particularly Miles and Silent Jim. Man those guys can fish! But the whole boat was mostly doing something. We had fish lost too, probably more than we should have. That morning we were into a mixed bag of tuna, but some of them were a bit bigger than the ones we saw Monday afternoon.

Quite a few people got into long fights, only to lose the fish at the end. I am pretty sure that DirtyGirl was one of them, and her son Garrett too, but it's not like they were alone. Fishy lost several fish that day, and JustJan seemed to be a little snakebit. They call her "SeaSquirrel," but I started to call her "Secret Squirrel" in my own mind, because she seemed to have the secret to getting bit, whatever it was. I saw her get picked up in the corner, surrounded by other anglers, at least three times, and I am pretty sure it was more than that. John the Stealth Angler was making some hay too, and so was "Half Day."

Me? Well... Pretty early on, I got picked up by another little one. I tried to tell Romo not to gaff it, but it was too late, so my "huge" 12lber hit the deck. I didn't even tag it...I just told him to give it to Javier for sashimi if he wanted it. The poor thing showed up at the docks unclaimed...the deckies unloading called it a "little Billy" fish, though I never found out what that was supposed to mean. I was ashamed that I had killed that little fish, even unintentionally... Then I got into a funk. It was a precursor to what came after, but I spent a couple of hours killing sardines, and I began to get into my own head a little bit. I was mostly belly hooking, as I had just learned from Wahoodad, and I have to say, it works pretty well, even when you squeeze the bait pretty hard. I was working on that part, trying to hold the 'dines with a gentler hand, and over the course of the next two days, I got a lot better at it. I definitely liked the way the bait swam away from the boat with a vengeance, too! I was using straight spectra to fluoro (I am totally sold on that setup...the bait has so much less to pull through the water!), and I could see the bait just hauling finny butt away and pulling my spectra with it. But I wasn't getting bit. I switched to nose hooking for a little while (Miles was hot, and he told me that's how he was hooking), and as long as I got the bait pretty far away from the rail, it would end up in the landing pattern just the same. Didn't help. No bites.

Around 10:00, my digestive chickens came home to roost, too. ************************************************** WARNING!!! WARNING!!! WARNING!!! WARNING!!! WARNING!!! ************************************************** What follows may be construed by some people as TMI. Read on at your own risk! It was at around 10:00 that I got a case of "gentleman's diarrhea." I mean that in the sense that I had control over it, I didn't have to run to the head to avoid an embarrassing accident or anything. Just, for the rest of that day, and indeed for the rest of the entire trip, between three and five times each day I had to visit the head, and every time I did, the result was...well... Enough said. For as long as I was on the boat, it never got any worse than that, but it never stopped. It weakened me too, that and my total loss of appetite. I was smiling and happy that I was on the trip, I never stopped having a blast, even when I was getting down on myself, but it never got better either. ASIDE: One issue that you hear of often about these trips is that people don't always remove the evidence of their digestion. I want to state clearly, hear and now, that I left the head in pristine condition every single time that I used it. There were times when it was not so pristine when I went in---whoever you are, you know I am talking about you and you should be ashamed of yourself!---but I covered for others' sins too. There was no way for anyone to know that I was sick the entire time, except that I just couldn't eat very much.
************************************************** SAFE TO RETURN!!!! SAFE TO RETURN!!!! SAFE TO RETURN!!!! **************************************************
In any case, I was feeling a bit under the weather, and a bit weak to boot. That just kept building, until I felt about half strength, then I stayed at that energy level the rest of the trip.

So 11:00 came and went, and then 12:00. Javier called lunch in 30 then, but at the same time the boat had a small wave of biters. I bet we had eight, maybe nine people hooked up at once, all with pretty good fish, and it looked like lunch was going to be slightly delayed...as if I cared. I was still biteless. So Romo was on the bait tank, and I asked him if he could pick me out a lively bait...I just couldn't seem to buy a bite, even when the fish were passing through. Romo did me one better, though: he fished a hot bait right out of the well for me, and pinned it for me too. In fact, he collar-hooked it, and when I dropped it in, it took off like a rocket. "Well," I thought, "if this bait doesn't get hit, I've got the sankebite blues for sure..." Son of a GUN! Yup, I got hit. Never a doubt, never a fear. Actually, I did have one fear, and it came from inexperience. This trip was the first time I ever fished without mono...just spectra to about 20-25 feet of fluoro. I knew there was precious little stretch in the line, and I was a little nervous about pushing the reel all the way to strike. I've heard stories of the line breaking just like that as it comes tight, so first I pushed it up to about 6lbs of drag, and then some 20 seconds later, I slowly advanced the reel to strike. By the way, Fishy, this was on the rod you loaned me. This was no 12lb fish, either. It took some drag right off the bat, but then I turned it. It was a fast fight, but a fun one. I ended up heading up the Port rail, but I never got to the bow. I was fishing 50lb fluoro to 65lb spectra, on a Saltist 50 2-speed lever drag, using a gorgeous Super Seeker rod, and the fish had no chance. Eight minutes? Maybe 10? No longer than that. Colin did the honors, and I finally had a "respectable" tuna on board...45lbs according the Five Star scale, and that was after gutting and gilling. Call it an even 50lbs, and you're as close as you need to be.

The Advent of the Great Freeze That was right at noon...and that was all the catching I did on Tuesday. I went right back to being biteless, even though Tuesday was the best day we had for tuna numbers-wise. Lots of people were catching fish, and bigger fish than the one I'd gotten. I tried more butt-hooking, I tried to collar hook, but I made a mess of that. I tried chest hooking the way Silent Jim does it, but mostly butt hooking.
I came to be convinced that it wasn't how I was hooking the bait. My sardines were just way too hot when they hit the water, and they swam fast and hot out until I was pulled into the corner. I have to say here that not everyone on the boat was a master at this kind of fishing, and myself probably least of all. There were a lot of tangles that day, with so many lines all more or less in the same place, and not everyone very good at keeping in touch with their bait. I am proud to say that I was pretty good about it. Oh, I got caught up in quite a few little messes, including one big one, but I am pretty damned sure I didn't cause most of them. For the most part, I was keeping a tighter line than a lot of folks...maybe even too tight at times. The truth is, with 12-15 lines all congregating in the one corner, the knitting class was inevitable. I will say that the deckies---and especially Jesus---were masters at getting people clear and saving line. They were all pretty impressive. I was also proud that, more times than I could count, I was able to retrieve my line after my bait had given up without hooking anybody at all. I understand if I don't catch fish. I know that everyone can cause a tangle at some point, and the biggest victim of a tangle may not be the one who caused it.
But even if I catch nothing, I try my best not to get in anyone else' way, or ruin their chance at catching fish. I did my best, and it seemed to me like I was successful (at that at least) for the most part. And I was getting better at picking, catching, and pinning baits. It was a learning experience for me that day, and I took it to heart. At the same time, I was major league frustrated, because it seemed like everyone else was hooking up, and I wasn't.
Luan Pham later told me that he had hooked six fish, and only put one on the boat. I would have been disappointed if I had hooked six and lost five, but I would have been ecstatic to hook the six anyway. Cong Vu also hooked up a couple of times, but I don't think he boated a tuna that day. Lets face it, I wasn't the only one who didn't put a mess of fish in the hold that day. But I think it was just myself and Boltar who couldn't get bit. And yeah, that started to mess with me a bit. One other thing that happened Tuesday afternoon just added to general frustration: we got sharked up. It wasn't a small thing, either. We lost several whole fish, and we boated several more that had been mauled. The later the day got, the worse the sharks became too.

And So Ends a Lovely Day in Wrath... That was really the story of the rest of my day. Not a single bite more, though Intrepid and her guests continued to pick away. These were definitely better fish now, and we kept losing a lot of them. I bet we hooked 20 fish that were all bigger than the biggest we boated.

Fishy even had a great story about one that got away... You all remember that he had won the reel in the raffle, and he wanted to fish it on the trip. I overheard Fishy talking to Dave Taylor, and Dave told him that all they had was 80lb spectra, so that's what he was going to get. I asked Fishy what weight line he wanted, and he said 65lbs. It just so happened that I had a big old service spool of 65lb JB solid, so I gave it to Dave and they spooled the reel for him. This was on Monday. Well on Tuesday, Fishy was fishing his new reel, and he got picked up by a good one. He was fishing (so he told me) 50lb fluoro straight to the 65lb spectra...500 yards of it. He went to max drag (on an Accurate 665, no less), and it didn't help. That fish spooled him, flat out. The only good news is that the line broke out at the knot, so he didn't lose all the spectra. If I had to guess, it must have been a 170lb fish at the least to wipe him out that way. So yeah, there were some BIG fish hooked that day (David and Willy each boated at least one themselves), but we lost a heck of a lot of them. People were fishing 40, and they were under-gunned. Heck, in some cases they may have been under-gunned with 50.

But none of that mattered much to me. I was not catching fish, and I was making regular trips to the head. I kept replenishing fluids, but I still wasn't hungry, and by the time we called it, Rodless_Jim was seriously getting grumpy. There's just no other word for it.
I think I kept my whining to Fishy, maybe I let JW know that I had had a bad day too. But it was poor manners of me to say so to JW, because (if I remember correctly), he was still without tuna at the end of Tuesday. He had a good Yellowtail, for sure, but I had at least tagged two yellowfin...who was I to complain?
Ken the Bushman had scored, but I think maybe only one, perhaps two. So it's not like I was all alone low on the scoreboard. What was different---and what was making me grumpy---was that the others were losing fish...I wasn't hooking up at all. I think the only other person more or less in my shoes was Boltar. I never saw the guy hooked up at all. I don't know if Albacore11 did well either, but I know I at least saw him hooked up...

Next: Part VI Continued: We Don't Make Bait...Except, As It Turns Out, We DO...Sort Of Photos:
1. Wahoodad's Wahoo
2. Jan Hooked Up...Again
3. Kona Mike Helps Mark Show Off A Nice Yellowfin
4. JWFogg, With A Friend
5. Yes, Rodless Did Catch A Tuna Today

 

[vegasandre]

Part VI Concluded: Sometimes You Have To Be Burned Before You Can Learn About The fire...

ASIDE: At no point since we returned from this trip have I gotten lazy about writing it up. If it seems that way, I apologize! I was pretty damned sick for a while, and when it got bad, I didn't write. I've been well for almost 10 days now, but I have also been trying to work, and most of that includes a kind of writing I don't really enjoy doing. I also sometimes try to help American friends get what they need from Mexico, or help Mexican friends get what they need from the US or China (where I still have contacts), which is mostly making introductions and trying to help negotiations go smoothly. I do OK at that when I get involved, but it eats up a ton of time, and that has kept me from finishing this report.

I sincerely apologize to all who have been so enthusiastic about reading this report.

So now I expand upon the promise I made last night:

At least ONE section every day until I finish, and hopefully more. Period.

Now, on with the story...

A Good Cigar CAN Improve Your Mood...

Do you remember what disappointment felt like when you were a kid? Boltar talks about being in the Vortex, and he has it right...but sometimes it's more than that. I have experienced loss and betrayal in my life, tragedy, and decades of repeated disappointments, all of which hit me more or less as an adult, and all of which I have been able to shrug off. There are some people for whom the sun shines even in the middle of a hurricane, there are others who are called upon to carry a little more than their fair share of "glass half full" days. I believe that part of being a strong person is how well you deal with those days.

But it wasn't like that when you were a kid, was it? When the sting of a real disappointment could hang your head for you, and turn the brightest sunshine in the world into cloudy skies. The feeling that made even the happiest of us say "Oh, just leave me alone!"

I thought I had left that feeling behind me in my pre-teens, but apparently not.

Oh, I know I have grown, because even in the depths of my disappointment it was easy for me to be happy for my friends who had done well. I was happy for Mark and Garret that they had caught fish, happy for everyone who had hooked up, and I could commiserate with everyone who had been broken off. That's something with which kids have trouble relating, but as adults we get it. You really don't win all the time, and you can be the snakebitten angler on any trip.

But even so I was in a funk, and although I told myself I was being ridiculous, it didn't matter. I was learning new skills---more on this trip than ever before---and they will serve me well I know...but they weren't working Tuesday afternoon, and I couldn't see where anything was getting better. And, of course, I had no appetite for dinner. It was something delicious, I remember that much...roasted pork loin, maybe? But I just couldn't eat it. I really did feel like a 12-year old again, where everyone is having a good time, and he is left out...plus weak and sick to boot.

Walking out of the salon after dinner that night was really the lowest point on my trip. And here is where I missed Harddrive the most too. He can always make me laugh, and he always kicks my butt when I get down on myself. What's more, he can see past the wan smile and realize when I am down.

Kevin told us after dinner that we would stay right where we were all night long. The bait had already started building up under the boat, and that would go on all night too...and it would attract the sharks. Then, in the morning, we'd do a circle trolling and set up on a different spot, leaving the macks and the sharks behind to entertain each other. With any luck at all, that would keep us from getting sharked up again on our last day at the rocks

As for evening plans, when it got dark enough, we would try to make some more squid. People who wanted to were welcome to try to make macks too...any big bait for the kite would be welcome, because that had been hit mostly by bigger fish (J5Time was the exception, rather than the rule). Any time people wanted to dropper loop for big yellows would be fine too. This wasn't necessarily the most famous spot for that, but a lot of big yellows had been caught there, so anyone who was up for it should have at it.

The boat would call when it as time to make bait...best guess was maybe 9:30, and in the meantime we should amuse ourselves. I went into my stateroom to get a cigar, and when I came out I spotted Fishy in the salon. I caught his eye and waved the cigar at him, and he nodded in an exaggerated fashion to signal yes. I pointed up to show him that I would wait for him on the sundeck, and out I went.

As soon as I went out the door, their was Kona Mike. He pointed at the moon above, and told me basically "so much for making squid tonight." I asked him why, and he explained that the squid really only come to the boat on moonless nights, or during moonless times of night, when they are attracted by the lights. If the moon is bright overhead, the squid just won't come up to the boat. So given that the sky was clear and the moon was bright...and would be overhead most of the night...no squidding for us.

OK, I thought, I'll smoke a cigar, maybe try to make some macks if I can, and get some sleep. Then I went up the ladder to wait for Fishybuzz.

Now Fishy isn't a cigar smoker...not anymore. Apparently he used to burn a few stogies every trip, memories of days spent fishing in Latin America where the cigars are good and cheap, and he got in the habit for a while (I don't know how long) of enjoying one every now and again. He said that he'd quit a while back, but that if I would bring him a couple from Mexico, he'd join me for a smoke.

What most of you all don't know is that it was really FISHY who set me up for this trip. I bought a lot of gear (a lot for me, given I didn't have much to begin with), but I bought it through Fishy. It was the only way I could make it work trying to buy from Mexico. He helped me buy hooks and lures and spectra and fluoro, and two new reels to boot. Plus he sold me one of his reels too...all of this for a guy he'd never met face-to-face even once. I said before that Fishy was my friend even before I met him, even before I got to SD, and I mean it. He's been treating me like a good friend for months, and I have the highest respect for the man. Really I do. Fishybuzz is good people. Period.

So when Fishy told me that he would enjoy a good cigar, I did what any good friend living in Mexico would have done: I brought him three tubed Romeo y Julieta Robustos (that maker actually calls them "Mini Churchills," but it's the same model). I cannot tell you the origin of these cigars (and the 5th Amendment protects me from self-incrimination), but I can tell you that:

* I don't smoke them myself
* You cannot find them in your favorite US tobacco store

I felt like, after all of his many kindnesses, it was the least I could do for Fishy.

Anyway, I was up there for maybe two minutes, and here comes Fishy. We clip and light and we start talking, for all the world like a priest (Fishy) taking confession...about fishing sins! (Mine of course)

He basically asked me if the trip was all I expected, and I replied that the boat was awesome, that Javier was incredible (same goes for Kevin and the rest of the crew, but that food...come on), and that all of the people on the boat were really great. I explained (a little bit) how I had felt isolated at the beginning, but that everyone was so nice (in your own way, you too Boltar!), so friendly, that I had begun to feel at home. And then I said, well, about the fishing part... And at that moment, Fishy interrupted me.

"I know, it's awesome, isn't it? I got spooled today! It only took like 45 seconds, too!"

I just sat there with my jaw hanging, my cigar all but forgotten.

"I must have hooked three really big fish today, and I lost them all! But the fishing is off the hook, didn't I tell you?"

"How many times did you hook up today?" I asked in a quiet voice.

"Just seven times," he said, "But I also got 'Hooed twice." Meaning that he had his line cut by a wahoo and never even felt the bite. Nine bites in the day, while I spent almost every moment in the vortex. I just felt worse.

"David, I only caught two fish today."

"Me too!" he said. "I hooked up seven times and lost five of them!"

"I didn't lose any, I only hooked up twice...all in the morning."

"Well you caught as many as I did, so?"

"Fishy, I'm not getting BIT! I could handle it easily if I was hokking up and losing fish...I like the fight as much as the catching!...but I'm not fighting anything. I can't get bit!"

"Well, you know it's like that sometimes. It's not about the catching anyway...you know that," Fishy said then. "But look! Aren't you having an awesome time? Aren't the people great? You'll get your shot! And anyway, you caught two fish today...that's better than some people! Did you see DirtyGirl? She must have lost three big fish in a row...I don't think she caught a single fish today, but she's smiling."

At that moment, I started to get my sense of perspective back. Or as one of my old football coaches once told me, I stopped hanging my head. What Fishy was telling me was the truth, and besides, all I needed was one good fight, and I would see it clearly again.

Right at that moment, JustJan came up the ladder to join us. From that moment on, I was really a mostly-silent observer of the conversation between Fishy and JustJan. That was cool, because Fishy had already fixed my head, and I got to enjoy my cigar. But even listening to a random conversation can be enlightening, though it took me a good long while to learn the lesson, as you will see.

One thing that was clear is that Fishy and JustJan are great friends. I'm not insinuating anything here...it's like a sibling relationship. They know each other well, trust each other. They have obviously fished together many times. But they are comfortable together, and JustJan had clearly come up to the sundeck to talk with her friend Fishy.

That made Fishy happy, because he could tell his stories of the day again, and to an enthusiastic audience. He loves to talk about being spooled like that, and all of his other misadventures. Never mind that he tagged two 80lb+ tuna. Jan had a couple of stories too, and it made for interesting listening. When Jan asked me how I'd done, I smiled and said it hadn't been one of my better days, especially the long, looooooong afternoon.

And that segued into the most crucial conversation I think I have ever heard on a fishing trip. The comment was so small, passed so quickly, that it's meaning never penetrated my dull brain until the next day:

Fishy: "Rodless isn't the only one who has had a tough time."
Jan: "Yeah...(in an very ambiguous way) it was a scratchy bite today."
Fishy: "Where were you getting bit?"
Jan: "(Still in a kind of dreamy voice) Oh, just up from the corner. On the side, you know?
Fishy: "The side was the spot."
Jan: "Yeah...I didn't see anybody get bit in the stern at all."

The conversation went on after that. I felt welcome, but they were talking about times and trips past, people not there, fish long since caught, cleaned, and cooked. I smoked my stogie in peace, only occasionally chiming in with a question, until they were done, and started to head down.

I stayed where I was, because I still had maybe 40 minutes of cigar left (I was smoking one of the big ones). And so I got to see, from the very best possible vantage point, something I'd never seen before.

Garret was standing in the stern, really excited about something, shouting "there it is again! Can I catch it?" Then suddenly Xman99 was standing at the stern with a long-handled net in his hand. He was clearly looking at what was making Garret so excited, and he tried a couple of times to net something in the water. I figured that maybe some squid had come up, but no, because on his third try, Xman scored...

It was a nice-sized flying fish that had been lazily swimming behind the boat. They put it on one of the bait wells, and over the next 45 minutes or so, they tried to catch more. Xman bailed after a few minutes, and Garret did too. But Romo was having none of it. He kept at it, using a net with mono mesh, until he managed to net an even bigger one. After that, it seemed the flying fish disappeared, but at least we had two, and that was all the bait we made that night. After I finished my cigar, I looked for more flying fish, but I never saw any. Then I tried to catch some macks with a sabiki rig, but that was a bust too. All the bait we made on the trip was the two squid the night before, and the two flyers we made that night...and I had no part in any of that.

I hit the head yet again---some things can really get old after a while---drank a couple of paper cups worth of diet coke, and hit the rack. I was sick and weak, and I figured the more rest I could get, the better off I would be. I think that turned out to be the right decision, but when I went to bed early that night, I was giving up my last chance for that trip of catching a big nighttime yellow.

Other people were fishing, though, Garret in particular, though about all they were catching was little sharks. Half Day was playing deckhand, handlining, unhooking, and releasing these three foot Galapagos Sharks. It was interesting for a while, but my bed was calling, and soon I was asleep. I was no more successful an angler, but I had a better attitude, and eight hours of sleep can do wonders...

Next: Part VII: If You Pay Your Dues...

 

[vegasandre]

Part VII: Day Three at Alijos Rocks...

Like most mornings on the boat, I awakened before the morning wake up call. That's common with me. I sleep well at sea, virtually never have any problems. But my body's clock seems to know when it's just about fishing time. I bet I'm not the only one who has experienced that too.

Maybe it's the beginnings of the grey light coming in through the porthole, or some additional sounds outside the door.
Maybe, even feeling sick, my excitement about fishing is enough to wake me when the time comes.
In any case, I was awake at 5:00, and up at 5:20, some 30 minutes before the wake up call.

Kevin wanted the sun up before we made our move---he wanted a fighting chance at trolling up another wahoo on our big circle, I guess---so we didn't pull the anchor at 0-dark-30.
Wake up was at 6:00, and Javier announced breakfast for 7:00. With the sun fully up over the horizon, Intrepid pulled her anchor again, and set off on a 35 minute circle around the Rocks, trolling and looking for big tuna sign. We found a spot he liked...we adjusted our position for a minute...and dropped anchor.

The chumline started, and with it, our third and last day at Alijos.
It Only LOOKS Easy...
Our fishing scenario began very similar to what we had seen the previous two days. The boat was at anchor, with the stern (naturally) down current. The wind was off the Port Bow, though, pushing the boat a bit to Starboard against the current. This guaranteed that any bait left unbitten would end up off the Port Corner.
In other words, those of us who had been having a hard time here at the Rocks would have one last chance to get it right...in the same environment.
If at first you don't succeed...

Breakfast was a waste of time for me, or very nearly so. I was able to chug down a couple of glasses of OJ (delicious, of course), and choke down a single slice of bacon. Once again, the food was awesome...it was never anything less than fabulous Javier, I promise...and once again I couldn't eat a damned thing. That slice of bacon was all I ate the entire day.

So I went back out, chose the 50lb rig for my weapon, butt-hooked a sardine, and started fishing.

Oh-oh! Day Three, and I am still in the deep freeze... I varied a lot of things that morning. I switched up my hooking. I dropped 10 baits in a row, trying not to squeeze them too hard (I thought that was still my problem).
Nothing worked.
After a while, I would find myself elbow to elbow with six or eight other people, all stacked up in the Port corner, all with our baits way out in the chum line.
At first, when I felt my bait stop swimming, I'd reel in.
Sometimes I discovered that the reason I couldn't feel my bait was that it had wrapped with someone else. Did I wrap them? Did they wrap me? Who knows? But I was keeping a pretty damned tight line, backpedaling on the reel as I've been taught. Every moment I could feel the bait until suddenly I couldn't. Every time that happened, I knew I was tangled. I got to be very good at it, and to come in without causing much of a mess. A couple of times there was no avoiding it, but for better of for worse, it didn't look like I ever lost track of my line enough to create one of the BIG messes.
Later, as the pack seemed to thin ever so slightly, I started leaving my bait out there longer. People were getting bit way back, and I wondered if I just wasn't getting my bait back into the zone. That was a prophetic thought, but I still didn't pick up on it. Leaving my bait out longer simply made it more certain that I would end up tangled at some point. And whether I was wrapping others or others were wrapping me, sooner or later I would end up wrapped, and someone would wind in...and bring me with him.
Then for a while I decided I would get bit if I could keep my bait from being wrapped (prophetic again, and again I missed it), so when I got out what I thought was far enough, if I didn't get bit I would wind in. This worked out a lot better for everyone else, because by now I was getting good at not hooking anyone else' line. I would shake off my sardine, and literally wind my way back through the other lines. Of course, this might have made it more likely for other people to get bit...and people were getting bit!...but it wasn't doing me any good.
I still couldn't buy a bite, not if my life depended on it. We had a mid-morning wave where a bunch of people got hooked up, and this time a fair number of them brought their fish to gaff. They were nice fish, too, in the 80-100lb range, with a couple over 100.

Meanwhile, the kite was making some hay too. Early in the morning, right up to the mid-morning rush, the kite was getting bit regularly. No one was timing out, and no one was getting bit by babies. They were cookie cutter 80-95lb fish, biting aggressively, and not getting away on the heavy kite gear.

I was thinking then, that maybe the kite was my last, best chance. My number was second to last in the rotation. I was 15, and the number drawn to begin the rotation had been 17, but the way things were going, I was going to get my chance...wasn't I?

I feel like an utter loser admitting that I was pinning my hopes on the kite rotation. But it had been almost 24 hours, and no matter what I tried, nothing seemed to work. I'd caught one 50lb fish...I didn't need a hook and hand!...but the other two were peanuts.

Maybe the kite was going to be my only chance at a good fish.
Yes, I was falling back into the funk again.

Cong Vu and Luan Pham were getting hooked up.
Jan the Secret Squirrel had the secret.
Garret was hooking up, and so was Mark. Miles, Silent Jim, and Half Day were doing serious damage.
Boltar? He was the only person who had it worse than I did.
But Albacore11 was doing some good, and JWFogg was on tuna too.
I didn't notice Wahoodad, but I saw Willy hooked up, Ken the Bushman too.
The brothers Mark and Chris were catching fish too.
I think John Keeler was having a tougher day, though.
And DirtyGirl was...once again...hooked up to a fish bigger than herself.

Me? I was fishing in an empty ocean...

Around 10:00, I had Chris tell me something that started my mind working (I think it was Chris, anyway). I saw him nose hook a bait and cast as far as he could out over the Starboard corner, right after I had underhanded my butt-hooked bait off the same corner. Basically, he had cast right over my head, but there was no harm and no foul.
I commented that Wahoodad had told us all about underhanding the bait, and how well that works, and he replied that he knew that, and had been underhanding the whole time with little success.
But that Willy had told him that he felt that Alijos was the one place where casting the bait far away from the boat was the most important thing.
As I thought back about it, I realized that I had seen Willy making long casts over the Starboard corner, just as Christ had done. I had also seen Willy hooked up quite a bit. Maybe there was something to this idea... Actually, there was, but I still didn't get it.

I followed that model for a while then, as the kite rotation continued to cycle, people kept getting bit, and I remained in Never-Never Land.
I cast out over the Starboard rail, and I cast out off the stern...but only ever a couple of times there.
I think I might have missed the opportunity that way.
I got in more tangles (not bad ones), switched back to butt hooking... The kite was slowing down, and the wind was moving more to Port. The kites were as much abeam now as they were aft, but still getting hit.
I haven't mentioned this, but the boils around the boat never stopped once. Not on any of the days. They were often far back, or off to the side. On occasion they were close to the boat too...but they never stopped.
The tuna were feeding, and they were big. 10:30...11:00...11:30... Time was spinning off, but the kite was tapering off a bit too.
Finally it was my turn. Rodless_Jim was about to fish the kite for the very first time...

Next: Part VII Continued: EVERYBODY Catches Big Fish On The Kite...Right? Photos:
1. DirtyGirl in the Bow
2. Mark with a fish that is literally bigger than he is
3. Redbeard with a nice yellow (he's a big man...fish is bigger than you think!)
4. Silent Jim Uses the Rail...
5. ...and so does Wahoodad!

Part VII Continued: Rodless Plays With Kites, And Other Interesting Tales...

John Keeler (the stealth angler) was on the kite when I went upstairs, but he had been there a while, and was scheduled to time out in another 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, "my" kite was sagging badly.
The wind was dropping off in a major way, with only occasionally puffy gusts. Plus, it was now pretty much directly on the Port beam, which put the kites almost at a 90 degree angle to Starboard. Probably more like 80 degrees, but it was a sharp angle indeed for the kites, especially in very light wind. I'd never fished the kite before...never had the chance. So I didn't know what was involved, or even recognize that these were tough conditions to fish the kite.

I was about to learn. Flying A Kite In Light Wind...

Jesus and Dave came up just as I was sitting down, and they had me wind in my kite. They had seen that it didn't want to fly, and they were going to try to make an adjustment: tie a helium balloon onto the back of the kite. Jesus was there to help get the kite and the clip back in, then he returned to the bait tank. Dave set about inflating a balloon and tying it onto my kite.

All the while, I was thinking "I'm on the clock here...this is probably my last chance...I want you to do a good job, Dave...but please hurry!"
Of course, the first balloon he filled popped as he tried to tie a knot in the end... I was actually wondering why he thought he had to fill the balloon quite so full, but I didn't say a word. I just watched him with a sense of anticipation. The kite is actually pretty big...bigger than I had realized, and it has a fair amount of weight to carry.

As I watched Dave tie on the second balloon, I realized why the balloon had to be so big and so full of helium...without that much lift, the kite just wouldn't fly.

After what felt like two hours, but was really probably eight minutes, my kite was good to go.
Dave passed the hooks down to Jesus, who baited them, and then we sent the kite to fly.
Once I was out, they told John he was done (I think he was perfectly happy to leave Kite Jail), and they wound in his kite for the same treatment.
Next up was supposedly DirtyGirl, but she never came upstairs.
Kevin was there then to teach me how.
The first question he asked was "have you ever fished the kite before?" Of course I told him I hadn't, so he went through the entire process. He explained that I wasn't just sitting there sipping a drink or smoking a cigar...I was fishing. More specifically, it was my job to keep the baits at the surface, neither swimming too much, nor spending too much time flying above the waves. I would have to reel in line when there was too much slack, and let line out when the baits rose above the water.
He also tried to explain to me more or less how much time the baits should "fly," which is not much, but sometimes.
They really need to be splashing right on the surface, and I would have to pay attention to get it right and get a bite.
I have since learned that it is very seldom this hard. .
Most of the time, either the wind is consistent enough to make adjustments only sporadically necessary, or the boat decides that there is just not enough wind to fly the kites, and pulls them in. Given the fact that the winds were really light by the time I got up there, and that the wind speed fluctuated constantly, it was really a situation where the boat would be better off floating balloons downcurrent than fishing the kites.
But it was almost the end of our time at Alijos, and there was a kite fish (or more than one) in the running for the jackpot. If we didn't get all the way through one rotation, it wouldn't qualify. I didn't know that then...I was told later. I could, of course, have given up my spot voluntarily, and that would have completed the cycle. That's apparently more or less what happened to DirtyGirl. She passed on her kite rotation in favor of her son, and Garret passed on the kite rotation because he was on the balloon, and getting some bites....or at least some attention. I was alone up there, and would stay alone. I just didn't know it.

Rodless Has A Heart Attack, I Mean A False Alarm... One thing that made my first ever kite rotation a bit more difficult for me was that the sun was ever so slowly falling towards the Starboard. It was noon when I started, and the sun was high, but the glare off the waves was punishing, even with good sunglasses. I kept cleaning them so as to see better, but it took me a few minutes to work out the whole depth perception thing. I would let out line to drop the baits into the water, and then immediately have to wind much of it back in to get them back to the surface. At the beginning, I really stunk at it...or so I thought. I found out later that the light and variable winds were the cause of most of my problems. The kites just would not stay at any given height, helium balloons or not. The tiniest extra breath of wind, and my double-trouble sardines would soar 15-20 feet above the surface, then plunge back down as soon as that breath of air passed by. It was pretty frustrating!

Soon, I found myself in charge of two kites. Dave had set up the second kite, Jesus had baited it up, and they sent it out to fly. "My" kite was the far one, the other one was closer, and farther forward toward the bow of the boat. I yelled down to DirtyGirl maybe three times that her kite was ready and flying, and all I heard was that she'd be up in a minute. In the meantime, could I please watch both kites? I have a feeling that on a more typical day, watching both kites at once wouldn't be much trouble, especially for someone who has some experience at it. Me? I was hopping back and forth...and I had only been fishing my kite for 10 minutes.

I was finally congratulating myself that I seemed to have finally gotten my kite dialed in. The bait was dipping in and out of the water in an irregular pattern, spending about as much time flying as swimming, but staying very near the surface. As I watched, I saw the kite sag again, and my 'dines drop down under the surface. I quickly threw on three or four more cranks, and as I did, I felt another little breeze pass through. I thought to myself "in a couple of seconds, my baits are going to rise back up out of the water...maybe I should let some line out again..." I could never have made an adjustment that fast, of course. I couldn't have guessed how much line to let out, or when, so my thought was pointless.

Sure enough, in a few seconds my kite began to climb again, and in a second more the baits "jumped" out of the water...followed by the head of a huge tuna!

The fish made a massive, desperate grab at the sardines, and if they had been coming back down as they should have been, it would have been an instant hookup. But alas, I had taken in too much line when the kite fell, and as it rose, it pulled the baits a full 15 feet or so out of the water.
By the time I could lower them back down, the biter was gone. I can't begin to explain how upset I was in that moment.
I felt absolutely crushed. It only lasted a few seconds, but during that time I could have cursed the skies. It just didn't seem fair! I hung in there, though, and kept trying to man both kites as the baits rose and fell. After a while, the wind fell a bit more, and that actually made things a little easier. The kites were still very inconsistent in their movements, but the range of motion was a bit less. I was able to keep the baits at or right above the surface more of the time, with fewer long rises or drops. I did that for a while, always expecting the next big strike to come at any second. One thing that struck me as odd at the time is that I really was all alone up there, for almost all of my time on the kite. There was no one BS'ing with me, no one offering a drink or advice. If I had actually gotten a bite, there wasn't anyone there to hand the rod down to the deck while I ran down the ladder, either. I was all by myself, trying to make two kites fish, and obviously not doing a very good job.

ASIDE: Everyone is welcome to criticize my handling of the kites. I'm sure I screwed up by the numbers! All I can say is that I did my best. At the same time, it didn't seem like anyone else on the entire boat was at all interested. I guess no one was expecting me to get bit up there anyway. There was one other piece of excitement on my kite rotation: I saw a tuna just blow up about 10 feet away from where my baits were supposed to be...and then either the same tuna or another one do the very same thing about 5 seconds later. It didn't make sense to me until I reeled up a bit. My baits were gone. The last fall had knocked them off the hooks, and what I had seen was one or two big tuna cleaning up after me. Of course that made me think that my bite was right around the corner, so I called down for a deckie, and Jesus came up to help me re-bait. Then we re-baited the other rig, because those sardines had fallen off too. Hey, I admit it. I don't know what I'm doing on the kite, but I was trying.

I Get Out Of Jail, But It's Not Completely Free... I started my rotation a couple of minutes before noon...as close to 12:00 high as anyone could have guessed. People had been catching fish all morning, and during my kite rotation too. Always a pick, but always two or three hooked up, and often more.

Then, a little after 1:00, up comes Kevin from below.
He seems genuinely disconcerted that there is an abandoned angler manning two kites.
He asked me if anyone had been up there with me, and I told him that I had been OK. Almost got a big bite even, but the deckies had only come up when I'd needed to get fresh baits. He really looked puzzled then, but I told him it didn't matter. So then Kevin told me one thing that made a lot of sense to me, and another thing that froze my heart solid in my chest. "You know, you don't have to stay up here if you don't want to. You're better off flylining down below...the wind is really dying, and the chances are you won't catch anything up here." Then he said: "We'll be pulling the hook in another hour, anyway. If you want to catch another fish before we go, you'd do better trying it on the deck." Oh dear God, just remembering hearing those words is a dagger in my chest!

An hour? ONE HOUR?!!!!!! And then we were leaving the Rocks? Oh nooooooooo...

Oh I was destroyed. I literally ran down the ladder to grab a bait rod, but I didn't believe for a minute that it would do any good. I was well and truly screwed, and my first ever trip to the Rocks was just about a washout.

Three tuna? Two tagged? Only one of them even decent in size?

Please God tell me this isn't happening...

On the spur of the moment, I decided that I was going to give myself every opportunity to get bit, and still keep a fighting chance of boating a good fish. I grabbed my 40lb bait rig: Saltist 2-speed lever drag 40, and my OC 7HF (the heavy duty 7 footer, anyway). It was , at least, a beautiful looking rig, with the reel matched to the reel seat and the guides, all in beautiful metallic blue. I had 350+ yards of 65lb JB solid, and 25 feet of 40lb Blackwater Shock leader fluorocarbon.

I had one hour left to fish tuna in 2010...I was going to win or die with that setup.

I grabbed a bait, pinned it on, and underhanded it out along the Starboard corner as I had been doing. As soon as I did, I realized that I had to go to the head urgently. Romo was walking by, and I thrust the rod in his hands. "I'll be right back! Fish it or give it to someone else to fish...it's a hot bait!" I ran in and took care of business, when I came out, my rod was reeled in and leaning against a bulkhead. Hey, I didn't expect anything different, but it was a hot bait, and swimming well.
Oh well... Think Rodless...THINK!
I could feel the seconds passing, and I made myself try to calm down. After three days, time was really running out, though, and it was hard. I wasn't depressed anymore, or down on myself.
I was just desperate to try my very best to get one good bite at the Rocks.
One after the other, I fished five, maybe six sardines.
I didn't get in a tangle, which was a blessing...but I didn't get bit either.
As I was feeding line out to the sixth (I guess) sardine, my brain finally kicked into gear. "What was it that Jan said last night? All her bites came on the side, along the rail...no one was getting bit going in off the stern...
What did Chris tell me about what Willy said?
Have to cast long off the stern at Alijos... That means something. It has to mean something... And finally one other piece fell into place---on Tuesday and Wednesday, I barely saw anyone get bit going in on the side where I was going in; all of the biters were on the Port rail or in the corner...but they had all...and then it clicked for me. If you wanted to get bit, you had to get wiiiiiiide. If you cast in on the Starboard corner (like I'd been doing all trip long), you had to cast way, WAY out, or your bait would get caught up in the generalized mess at the Port corner. If you could get a hot bait 40 yards out, it would pass the mess to Starboard and drift out into the zone. That was what Willy had been doing, with excellent results. But not a lot of people cast like Willy, and I am certainly not one of them.
The other way to get wide was to go the other way...to put your bait in off the Port bow. Then if your 'dine was hot enough, it would swim wide, and pass the mess to Port. That would put you right dead center in the hit zone, probably not tangled, and hopefully with a hot bait.The vast majority of people that had been getting bit all along, they were getting most of their bites going in off the Port bow.

The image at the bottom illustrates.
IF you chose a good bait...
IF you hooked it hot (not in the nose)...
IF you put in off the Port bow...
You had a pretty good chance of getting bit. Or, at least, you had a pretty good chance of getting your bait in front of a good fish.
The rest was up to luck.
Time was really almost gone at that point. I didn't see anyone hooked up...if there wasn't a bite now, any second Kevin was going to pull us in, and I couldn't let that happen. I went to the bait well, carefully picked a hot bait, and pinned it on. I started to hurry up to the bow, and the bait fell off my hook. OK, breathe...relax... Another bait, a calmer trot up to the bow, and out into the current. It was a hot bait, and it was cutting the corner towards the strike zone...
I followed my bait back down the rail until I bumped into the other anglers who had gone in the same way. Who were they? Silent Jim...Half Day...Miles...JustJan... As my buddy Homer says: "DOH!!!!! Right in front of my eyes the entire time. We all worked slowly back to the corner, when several of us were caught up in a pretty good tangle.

Five more minutes gone, and I am back at the bait tank. At least I didn't have to re-tie.
OK, try it again. Pick a good bait...pin it on...hasten up to the bow...underhand it in...follow it back...
There was pretty good space between myself and the next angler this time. I was getting a good feeling, because my bait was acting like a rocket. Slowly I closed the space, but before I get there I notice that it's John Keeler, and he's bit! John's fish is running deep and pretty close in, relatively speaking. My dine is on the surface, far out, and swimming fast. I'm definitely over him, and as I get close, as I prepare to lift my rod and pass him on the rail, John says: "I think you're on my line." "I don't think so, John...I'm pretty sure I'm over you, and I know I'm not on anyone, because I can feel the tail beats of my bait."
John shakes his head impatiently. "I'm pretty sure you're on me!"

What are you going to do? He's on a fish, and I'm not. Maybe I get bit and maybe I don't, but I refuse to cost another angler a fish. I knew he was wrong, and I don't know why he was so sure that, if someone was on him, it was me. But it doesn't matter, does it? I jerked my line to free my hook, and reeled in. No, I wasn't on John...I wasn't on anyone. John just shrugged and said "I guess it wasn't you." "Get 'em John," I replied, and went to bait up again.
It occurred to me that John being hooked up wasn't necessarily a bad thing, because Kevin wasn't going to tell us to stop while people were fighting fish. It also occurred to me that this might just be my last bait here. John could be tangled and lose his fish at any second.
It seemed like it must be 2:00 by now. So I chose with care, and tried one more time. This time, I swore that I wasn't going to reel in until I got bit. Damn every tuna in Mexico to Hell, but give me a chance to fight one of these bigger yellowfin... Same story...butt-hook the bait...move expeditiously to the bow...underhand in... I keep saying that my baits were hot. It was a new way for me to hook, so maybe I am not that good a judge, but this one was at least as lively as all the others before. It zoomed away from the boat, and I gave it a little backpedal every 10-20 yards to keep it running. Down the rail and over John. I had a smile for him, I swear, and I told him again to get that fish. You know what? I don't know if he did. I'm not sure I'll ever know. Down the rail...down...down...all the way to the corner, where Ken the Bushman (I think...or maybe Xman99?) was on a fish. I took my rod up and over, and took three whole steps across the stern to give the angler-on-a-fish room. My bait was way back then, and I backpedaled the slack out of my line that I'd gotten going over the fish in the corner. I backpedaled three times, and no feeling. Then, the fourth backpedal, and way, way out at the end of my line, some 175 yards away I guess, I felt the tail beats. My bait was still there, still alive, and by God, still running. I smiled then, and thought well, at least I'm back where...
HOLY BAT FECES!!! I'M BIT!!!!!!!!

Next: Part VII Concluded: Rodless Falls On His Butt, But It's In A Good Cause...

 

[Rodless_Jim]

Oh how I remember that!