J.E.S. Sportfishing LR Trip ONE, 2004
Our spring 5-day
on Excel at
Guadalupe Island
Boy ............
isn’t it crazy how fast a departure comes after you have
had the entire winter off the water!
I was going stir crazy in March just thinking about our first trip
of 2004 and before I knew it I was on my way down to board the awesome sport fish
vessel Excel
at Fisherman’s Landing
on Point Loma in San Diego, California.
After a well rested night's sleep at my webmasters home on the
mesa, TunaQ and I arrived fresh at the landing and ready for the day's events. As we
pulled into the lot at 8:30 AM we found the parking lot to be quite passive compared to
the usual chaos and grid lock of zigzagging autos racing for the first available spot. What
a relief! As we parked we quickly recognized a few of our regular anglers
approaching us. John McFarland, Dave Wray and Gary Reid were the first to meet us and
and were quick to be followed by new comer to J.E.S., Chris Kozak ..... greeting me
with a big smile and a camera.
This was going to be great… The moon was just full and we were
headed out on the back side of the moon cycle that had been a tough week of fishing for
the fleet. As Al (TunaQ) and I loaded our gear in a dock cart we met with up with ol'
Fisher …. boy, what a great guy ….. he and his family have become quite close
to me recently after our excursion to Hawaii. Its not often two men won't bond after
working their behinds off for three days on the water just missing 3 opportunities at
Blue Marlin to @ 550lbs, but that’s another story for another time, as we were going
for Tuna and hopefully far enough for some warm water Yellowfin.
As we checked in with the staff of the Excel
inside the tackle shop we met the remaining anglers that would make up our group of
28. Yep, that's just 28 anglers aboard one of the finest long range
vessels in the world. Some of the names stayed in my mind from last years R&D trip
we ran like Tom Johnston, Bob Zackman, Don Prismon, Jeff Bernardi, to
mention only a few.
Then, when we boarded the vessel a weird quiet feeling came over
a few of us …... some of the anglers had never been
aboard
the Excel
and they hadn't realized her
immense size and accommodations. We all each unpacked our gear into our state rooms and
the crew of 8 stowed the last minute food and provisions restocking as our Captain,
Shawn Steward, announced our imminent departure to the bait receiver.
As we slowly slid into the Everingham’s bait barge you couldn’t
help but admire all the sea lions sunning themselves on the tanks… it amazing, but
creates a big nuisance. We loaded bait into the wells and the slammer for about 45
minutes and as we headed off the rumor stirred that the Albacore had come up at 35-40
miles and we were in line to get an afternoon warm up…What a great way to take off
the winter jitters.
Capt Shawn got all of us together and explained the safety
equipment and our course of action for the next day or so…. "There is a spot of fish at 38 miles
and if we see them heading thru there ...... well, we might decide to take a shot at
it. Tomorrow morning I want to have us
in the area where the 1½ to 2 day
fleet have been catching most of the Albacore. We just got back from another 5 day and it
was tough fishing, the fish are there, but they just haven't been quite ready to chew".
With that he ended his speech and introduced us to the Eldest Fleck
brother for our tackle seminar….
As Excel
cruised southward most of us
sat in the luxurious galley and chatted about the upcoming events of this outing in the
galley. That’s when I was introduced to Donnie Smith for the first time ....…
Donnie is a great, joyous man that has been all around the fleet and held many an
I.G.F.A. record. As we chatted about some of the old times, the throttles to the Cat
C12’s were backed off and 125 x 32 sport fisher came about to medium troll speed.
"OK," our Skipper announced over the PA, "I am seeing some marks here. Let’s get
trollers 1-5 on the stern and see what we can drum up".
It wasn't long before we had our first fish of the trip followed by
a bait fish, but the albacore weren’t about to make easy on us as they dropped out
beneath the boat! The afternoon progressed in the same manner and we finished our first
half day aboard with about 9 albacore, 6 of which were hauled in on the troll.
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