albacore at the guide 8/25/07

scott and john will tell the story.  here are the pics!

Oh My God!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yes...it getting better.  Guys are getting like 44 fish for 4 guys.  Atun out of Moss Landing reporting 30 to 35 for 6 guys at noon.  Still, getting a lot of small fish and a lot trolled fish. Live bait is so much better.  So, better days ahead.  Alan's boat got 12 for 4 guys.  Guide is still a 50 mile run.

Maybe, I go Tues.  If there is a party boat or 6 pack running that day.

Ken kickfish

FREAKING AWESOME!!!!!!
Can we have some pics of what you were using to catch them? How fast were you trollong? How deep?
And to think I passed up a trip to go today because of a bum shoulder.
Nice job you guys.

Tote,

There are some good websites that will tell you how to fish for them.  One is http://titelines.net/index.php/idx/11/004/article/.

Dark colors on dark days and bright colors on sunny days.  A lot of guys like the Zuker's tuna clones because of the moving eyes.  I also like cedar plugs.  The odd ball lures seem to get hit first.  Odd ball by color, shape or action.

How deep?  The tuna come up to the boat  because they think it is a bait ball moving on the surface.  It is more like how far back you set up or lures.  All boats are different because of the wake they produce.  But, usually about 3 to 6 wakes back does the trick.  We do add like 12 to 16 oz. torpedo weights....like 3 to 4 feet in front of the lures.  This makes them run down below the other lures on the surface.

Ken kickfish

scott and john will tell the story.  here are the pics!

Well Scott and John... 

...and where's the yak?!   

Alan, thanks for the pics along with everything else!   

here's some text to go with the pics.

We bailed on the kayak mothership idea because:
1) the weather was a little iffy early.
2) scott and I had never landed an albacore at all.
3) it was a spread-out steady troll pick, not a bait stop kind of day.

that said, we had a killer time with captain tani, experienced tuna hunter pete kokelar (sp?), the maker of Alan's custom reel handles, and albie noobs scott thornely and myself.

I got up @ 2 a.m. and met the crew @ HMB harbour at 3:15 and we visited the bait dock around 4 but nobody  home.

the equipment was considered:

4 6'6'" calstar 10-25lb rods with progear reels spooled with 20lb line. ringed owner mutus at the ready, but also some swimbaits and megabaits along for the ride.

alan had 4 calstar trolling rods with Shimano TLD 20's spooled with 80lb spectra to a 60lb mono top shot to a 150lb mono leader to medium size jet head tuna lures. drag set at 15 lbs I think. two 5'5 rods for the inside positions and two 6'6 for the outside positions.

Should we wait an hour for the bait guy or go?

Pete might have waited for the bait guy, as he likes to bring the tuna up on bait and get them that way. look for jumpers or birds, toss bait out (chum sort of), then when the fish come up, toss out live bait.  Sometimes he doesn't troll at all.  This kind of bite would be ideal for kayak fishing but then landing the fish might be difficult as you'd have a light leader. topic for another time...

But the rest of us were ready to go. So alan fired up the twin 150hp yamahas on the Grady-White. He has Forward Looking Infrared Radar (FLIR) for what was more or less night vision, a 1,000,000 candlepower spotlight, regular foruno Radar and a top of the line furuno fish finder fired up too. Basically he has all the toys and then some,  .

So we blasted out to the Guide at around 22 knots, a 50 mile trip. The Guide is an underwater mountain due west of pigeon point at the edge of the continental shelf (I think).

You look for a temp spike of about 2 degrees from the cold green coastal water to warm blue offshore water.

But in our case the water was warm just 10 miles out and the breaks were small and spread out, no big jumps.

some guys did get fish 10 or 11 miles before the Guide, like the infamous lazlo (REELEMUP) of coastside.

The lures are deployed around 70-85 feet back, between the 3rd and 4th wake wave. Alan used a marker on his lines to mark 75 feet. One theory of tuna fishing (Bob Franko's) is that there should be no "weak buffalo" back there otherwise you get single hookups all day long. Go with identical lures, arranged in your wake and prop wash to get multiple hookups.

We used this for awhile but we got our biggest hook-up, a triple, including a 35lber with different lures on the outside positions.

Every boat is different and this was Alan's first trip for tuna on this boat so he's probably cooking up some ideas for a refined spread. The rod holders he had worked great. Same with the trolling equipment. The drag on a couple reels was a little sticky tho. JUST KIDDING!  .

Why these stupid fish streak up from the deep blue to nail your lures so close to the boat is beyond me but that is what they do.

Once you see one rod go off, you wait to see if you get multiple hookups. Then you clear the lines that don't hook up and reel in the fish that are hooked up.

No angle, no tangle and you have to do the tuna shuffle to not get tangled. You follow your fish around the boat and with three guys doing this it gets kind of interesting. Unless you are me then you just stand there with a 35lber tail hooked and suffer while Pete dances around you unravelling the lines.  . Thanks Pete!

With 150lb leaders, they can be leader landed, but we gaffed the bigger ones (like the 35lber I reeled in). Then a hand gaff is put through the fishes eye sockets, the gills are ripped out and the fish is bled over the side. As you can see, sometimes a little blood gets on the deck of Alan's very clean boat anyways, 

finally the fish is pulled aboard and an attempt is made to kill the fish with a spike to the brain. I say attempt because Alan pretty much had to re-spike a few of our fish for us.

I did note these fish are stupid and their brain is not that big. that is my excuse,  .

Theoretically once the trolled fish are mainly aboard, you can huck bait or swimbaits out to try to get more of the school. We pretty much had our hands full with the troll fish chaos, but we hooked up a couple times on
a swimbait trolled way back "for fun" and landed one of those.

As I noted, although we bled the fish over the side, somehow a "little" blood got on the decks. After we revived Alan with some smelling salts. (it's not the blood, it's the sight of his boat dirty that causes his fainting spells),
we washed the tuna blood off the decks, rods, our legs, scott's face, etc. 

Then Alan slabbed the fish on the boat, quartered the slabs. We put the slabs in a bucket of saltwater with a hose providing new salt water all the time. We removed the slabs, dryed them a bit, put them in ziplocs and put them on ice in the cooler.

I did not use any seasickness meds and was fine reeling in fish, spiking them, rinsing and bagging filets and hosing down the deck, but I don't think I could have filleted 12 albacore on a boat without getting a little
woozy at least. the man is GNAR!

Alan fed the carcasses to the blue sharks.  I think he is their favorite Grady-White owner!

I felt like part of a giant carnivorous beast during the cycle of troll, reel, land, bleed, slab, quarter, rinse, bag and ice, stopping to hose off the blood when it got ankle deep or so.

as Pete said, "this is MAN SH1T, baby!"  during the height of the carnage.     
Pete is a 42 year old grandfather. He was a ton of fun on that boat.

We boated 12 fish, to 35lbs, pretty much all on the trolling rods, one came on a bait stick but as I noted I think we effectivlely just used it as a 5th trollling rod.

The fish mainly had small sauries in them, so we used smaller lures on the outside rods for a bit and one of those tiny 4" lures got the 35lber, but a couple of the 20lb fish coughed up a 12"+ mackerel!

Alan used his navigation equipment and the radio and fleet intel to great effect but there was no real special hotspot, the fish were spread out over a large area with no boats having bait stops with many fish. Basically it was a steady pick trolling kind of day I think.

Alan made the run home with a friend in a smaller Whaler Outrage that had a similar number of fish aboard. That pic is of his boat. I think if I break down and get a PB, it will be an outrage. a PB for kayakers kind of.

We crossed paths with some small pacific dolphins and some whopper Risso's dolphins. great fun!

Yep, I had a BIG bowl of Albie Poki last night and a large number of bags of tuna quarters to process.

Well, I feel that an albacore could be landed from a mothershipped kayak, but there is a reason nobody has done it so far. It would be hard. and require some luck.

Okay, hope that answers some questions for the curious! I'm sure I forgot something important.

Thanks again to scott and pete for being way better deckhands and fishermen than me and to Alan for letting me in on a fantastic opportunity.

Best,
John

 Congrats on you two poppin your Longfin cherries. Now you NEED to get some on live bait. Theres nothing like the feel of you bait getting nervous and the spool going off when you flick the lever. Then you really get to feel the fish run and test your drag washers and knot tying skilz.
 
Tuna fishing is a powerful drug! Now Alan's made 2 more Tuna junkies.

Nice fish...I have never caught an albacore, but it looks awesome!

I ran into Alan leaving the parking lot at HMB.  I was bummed that you guys didn't get out on yaks.  Later on I met some buddies at the dock.  They came in with 25.  Live bait was the ticket to bigger numbers.

-Allen

I ran into Alan leaving the parking lot at HMB.  I was bummed that you guys didn't get out on yaks.  Later on I met some buddies at the dock.  They came in with 25.  Live bait was the ticket to bigger numbers.

-Allen

The conditions were great coming home. I would have been happy to yak in those conditions. But saturday morning it was a bit uglier. I was glad I could stay on the comfy boat then!

But the real issue for scott and myself was that we'd never landed an albie. I am glad I can claim my first salmon came on a kayak, but I was quite happy to log a few albies from a boat first. Especially from Alan's boat with only 4 guys on board.

Thornely and I aren't pros like you polepole we are just old guys that kayak fish on a strictly amateur basis,  .

If it's not fun, we don't do it.

I could see that the bait fishing might have been better as the weather got even better but while we were fishing it was mainly troll fish as far as the radio chatter went. 

I saw some accounts of guys trolling on straight 30lb flourocarbon well inside the guide and they said they hooked over 30 fish and landed 22 for two guys. So perhaps the leader thickness affected the numbers a little too?

Now what the heck I would do with 100lbs of albacore filets I am just not so sure anyways, dealing with 30lbs was enough of a challenge, but I guess that's a different topic,  .

Alan seemed to be concerned with how we would land the fish, but I was more concerned with how to hook up from the kayak. I guess most folks would assume you bait fish from the yak, but I am thinking you could troll a couple swimbaits or plugs during a baitstop and you'd probably hook up and be able to go with a leader that is heavy enough to allow you to grab the leader and gaf it at the same time. Then I figured you'd pull it on board, rip the gills, tow it around on a stringer a little bit, then spike it and put in the tankwell.

Best,
John

Hey John,  not knocking you at all.  You guys were there and made the call that was right for you.  And it sounds like you guys had a great day and enjoyed it.  More power to you.

Forget the bait for kayak albies.  I think the plan of attack would be to troll the big boat around until a decent concentration of fish were found, then splash the yaks and troll swimbaits or large rapalas around.  Let the mothership chum.

I don't think leader makes a different when you're trolling at 6.5 knots.  I used to, but no longer.  I've seen video of bubble trails shooting down the line when on the troll.  Perhaps they are a little less for lighter line, but I think if a fish comes up into the wake to check things out, it's going to strike a lure whether it's on 30# or 400# line.  Now when you're stopped and fishing live bait, it's a different story.  I'm a firm believer in fishing 20 fluoro, and even lighter if need be.

Landing an albie won't be a problem.  They'll do their death spiral right up into the gaff.   

-Allen

AT photo post again Now that's some eye candy... bloody decks
Sashimi fo days!!!! Congrats all around and especially AT for making trips like this. So RAD!!!

Z

BTW, the wife and I picked up some albacore @ the coast here in Wa and was off the heeeeez!! If anyone knows what a Bintoro Don is, you know what I'm talking about Hoping to someday get a mothership set up here too.

Forget the bait for kayak albies.  I think the plan of attack would be to troll the big boat around until a decent concentration of fish were found, then splash the yaks and troll swimbaits or large rapalas around.  Let the mothership chum.

-Allen

What is your feeling about leader for a lure from a kayak? you can't go 8 knots, you can only go 3 knots. So no bubble trail, you have to use a swimbait or rapala or something like that which will work at kayak speeds.

and why no bait? just the hassle factor? bait generally seems to be the answer. if you had it, why not use it?

leader has to be in between the leader for bait fishing and leader for boat trolling.

Before we nixed the kayaks I rigged up a 10-25lb ugly stick with a newell 235 with 25 lb yozuri hybrid and grabbed some 5" big hammer swimbait bodies in anchovy with 2.5oz shad heads and heavy duty owner jig hooks that mate well.  I figured I'd troll two lures like this in a hot area and hope for the best. not sure if it's enough to get a hook up.  maybe you'd have to chum some live bait as you paddled too?

I guess if you think the albie is going to just come right to the gaff then you could use 20lb flouro anyway?

But I do think the challenge is getting hooked up, not landing the fish.

J

john.  i did the sniff test on the boat this morning and it was cleaner than the day i bought it.  thank you !!!!!!   i was reading some of the other albacore posts from the other boards.  larger numbers for sure, but many posts had photos of fish stacked up on the deck that were taken home to be processed.  i always worry about the quality of the meat after some of these large takes. 

there are several reasons for cutting them up on the spot.  we save a ton of space.  12 whole fish would have filled both ice chests and both built in boxes.  it also allows us to ice down the fish most quickly to keep the meat from turning to mush.  it makes the clean up much easier.  and most importantly, it keeps your "obscessive compulsive" captain halfway sane.  as it was, we filled up 1.5 ice chests and still had room in the built-in live well and fish box. 

stuff happens quickly during an albacore bite.  an iced kill box would be nice, but it would have to be the size of a garbage can to accomodate a triple or a quad.  i just don't have that kind of room. the franko method of being able to get started on the troll within minutes will also bump up your numbers, but it requires a great deal of coordination from the crew.  i used to run 15 albacore trips a year and never ran the same crew twice in a row.  it is more important for me to have 10 fish properly filleted out, bagged and on ice, than to have 20 whole fish on the deck, turning to mush.  that means stopping in the middle of a hot bite to properly take care of your catch.  and that means catching fewer fish......