First Albie of the Year

[Popeye]

Posted on Coastside........OOps

:shocked: [img]graemlins/eek13.gif[/img]

"1ST ALBACORE on the PROSPECTOR- New Years Day with"

Happy New Year!
On December 31st, my buddy Todd Garrett and I left Newport Harbor on my boat the PROSPECTOR- 28' Baja. We ran to San Clemente Island in flat calm conditions and set up in Pyramid Cove for the night. We made a few squids, dinner, and a few celebration drinks. At 3am, we set a course for the Cortez Bank. Beautiful night, watched the porpoise and tons of bait in the moon light- looked like torpedos coming at you in the dark. Those guys at Terrafin put us on the break, which started about 7 miles SE of the bank. In this area, we found a kelp paddy, and Todd hooked a yellow on a Fish Trap- channel island chovy. While fighting the fish, we commented on the clean, purple-blue water we had found. We boated the yellwtail, and continued west. At 10:40am, the long corner outfit screamed out- were wired! The bite came on a 7strand Tuna Clone - northern jig boat color. Earlier in the year, I called 7strand for the hottest new Tuna Clone jigs and they told me the Monterey jig boats were slaying the longfins on this new color they call NJB. Todd was battling the fish on #20 dacron, it was flat calm - life was good. At deep color, we could see the long fins and made a positive ID- it was on. The albacore put up a battle, I made a decent gaff shot, and we boated the fish. Were going nuts, high fives, laughing. We worked our way up to the bank and watched 15-20' waves peel over the reef- awesome. Throttled the PROSPECTOR up to 24 knots, and ran for Avalon to weigh the fish. We took first flag honors for the Avalon Tuna Club and the Balboa Angling Club- which later weighed 26.12 lbs.
Fun trip, glad to get my buddy a albacore on New Years Day.

Cheers,

Bob Hoose & Todd Garrett

[ 01-06-2004, 11:36 AM: Message edited by: Popeye ]

[Onokai]

Congrats. Great story. I scuba dove Cortez bank back in the 80s. Real special place. Way to go! Mark

ONOKAI

[4 REEL]

That's a fun web site [img]graemlins/program.gif[/img] . Ever since you hooked me Bruce , I've been finding all these great web sites and cool catalogs [img]graemlins/lurk.gif[/img] .
Have you tried 976-tuna.com?
And what about the cover of Offshore Anglers new catalog. Went to Guy Harvey's web site and he has a bunch of really cool art, check it out!

[ 01-06-2004, 04:21 PM: Message edited by: 4 REEL ]

[puffins crew]

Thanks Popeye,

I never get tired of Tuna reports.

Peace, Tom