Captain Chris Smith
VOL. 36 • ISS. 15
BAJA TIP OF THE WEEK
Yellowfin Tuna( ìAhiî in Hawaiian) are a beautiful and tasty fish found throughout the world in warm waters. They are probably the most commonly caught offshore gamefish. Yellowfin Tuna swim great distances during their lifetimes. They attain sizes in excess of 300 lbs, although fish this size are only found in the Eastern Pacific and are generally caught in Mexico.
You should scale your tackle to the size of fish targeted. Small schoolies in the 10-15lb range are great fun on light tackle in the 15lb range, while the large ones require heavy gear and 100lb braided line. For the big guys, many recommend an Accurate Platinum ATD 50.
In terms of bait, anchovies and sardines work well for the smaller school size fish. Pacific Mackerel work well for the larger ones, while the biggest ones can be targeted with large live Skipjack Tuna in the 2-5lb size. Many baitfish work; just try whatever is in the area that the tuna might be feeding on. They also eat squid if those are around.
Very large Yellowfin Tuna can be caught fishing baits below a kite. The kite keeps the baits right at the surface. The baitfish splashing on the surface often works when nothing else will. I believe this works because the splashing attracts them and they can’ t see the line because it’ s out of the water.
Goggle eyes work well for kite fishing; you rig a three-way swivel and fish two at once and that really gets the tuna going. If you are trying for giants you can try slow-trolling a live Skipjack.
If live bait is not available you can try ìchunking. î This entails cutting chunks of a large bait fish( perhaps a Skipjack) and then tossing them over the side like chum. In one of the chunks hide a circle hook and let it drift down naturally with the rest of the chunks. Make sure you let out a lot of line so that the chunk can drift without any drag. If something picks it up it will take off and you will know right away. Tuna don’ t nibble.
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SALTWATER
BERKELEY & EMERYVILLE
Charter Boat Trollers Round Up Quality Kings
BERKELEY- Guys trolling from charter boats have been catching some very nice salmon beyond the Golden Gate. The average king goes 8 to 9 pounds and there have been a lot of 15 to 25 pound fish in the mix. The only downside to the salmon fishing at this time is that the success rate fluctuates quite a bit from day to day. Some days it’ s limits and near limits, other days it’ s well under a fish per rod.
Captains Joe and Joey Gallia of the New Easy Rider out of Berkeley have been riding the salmon roller coaster recently. For example, on their last trip they had 15 salmon to 13 pounds for 23 anglers.
A few days before their last trip they rounded up 31 salmon to 20 pounds for their 25 anglers. Most of the fish landed were pretty husky on this trip.
If salmon fishing isn’ t your cup of tea, outstanding live bait potluck action continues to take place on San Francisco Bay.
On the Happy Hooker’ s last trip, Captain Chris and Jonathan Smith put their anglers on 9 halibut to 25 pounds, 27 stripers to 15 pounds and a pair of keeper leopard sharks.
Captain James Smith of the California Dawn reports that his anglers have been averaging better than a fish per rod while potluck fishing. On Captain Smith’ s last trip, a 12 man charter hooked up with 17 halibut to 12 pounds and 6 stripers to 9 pounds.
Ay, way back in a time before graphite rods, CD players, MAC computers, and microwave ovens, people did something called“ reading a book.” Books were made with lots of sheets of something called“ paper” and had words and pictures printed on them.
They didn’ t run on batteries so you never had to plug them in to recharge. Amazingly, people would read the
SALTY TIPS by Steve“ Hippo” Lau words on the pages and actually learned stuff instead of looking it up on Google or YouTube. One of the books I read over and over again was Jason Lucas’ s wonderful tome on bass fishing. One of the chapters listed ten representative artificial baits that he thought were most productive. One lure in particular I remember him writing about was the famous Helin’ s Flatfish.
Helin’ s Flatfish was one of the biggest selling, fish catchingest lures ever produced, although you would probably have to go to an antique bass lure museum to find one nowadays.
This banana shaped lure( a modern day equivalent would be the Kwikfish or Flatfish of river salmon trolling fame) had a crazy wild wiggle that attracted all sorts of fish, but Mr. Lucas’ s biggest complaints was that it was a“ cussed thing to cast.”
July 7- 21, 2017
SALTWATER REPORTS
Berkeley’ s Goldeneye 2000 with Captain Quang Vo at the wheel has been achieving a fish per rod on a 50 / 50 mix of halibut and stripers.
In Emeryville, the New Salmon Queen pounded the kings on June 24, with 16 anglers taking home full limits of salmon.
Emeryville’ s Sea Wolf has been taking anglers to the Farallon Islands in search of bottomfish and they’ ve been coming home with limits of quality rockfish. On the best day’ s limits of lingcod to about 20 pounds are boated as well.
BODEGA BAY
Rockfish, Lingcod Are Biting North And South Of Harbor
BODEGA BAY- Salmon fishing had been slow since the opener out of Bodega Bay, but there is renewed optimism with the arrival of decent salmon scores within the past week. Rockfish and lingcod fishing remains outstanding, but July is go time for salmon out of
GLIDING TO SUCCESS
What brought this to mind was an incident the other day when I took out a number of lures to the casting pools to work on their retrieves.( What? You don’ t work on your lures’ actions to see how they swim with various retrieves? Shame on you!) The one I was most interested in was River2Seas’ s S-Waver.
I have had limited time throwing this lure, but the times I was able to throw it have been rewarded with better than average success. More importantly, a number of good anglers I have spoken with have had good success with it, oftentimes producing that oversized fish that put them into the money in some tournament or other.
If you ever talk with the new fangled bass folks, you will find they have more categories of lures than Carter had liver pills. You will hear about prop baits, swim baits, jerk baits, vibe baits, square bills, round bills, searcher baits, spy baits, poppers, floater / divers, neutral buoyants, twitch baits, and maybe another dozen or so families of lures. In the old days, we just called them all“ plugs.”
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Bodega Bay, and it looks like the fish are willing to cooperate. Captain Rick Powers of Bodega Bay Sport Fishing and the New Sea Angler was able to
CONTINUED ON PAGE 30
Big S. F. Bay halibut and big smiles. That’ s been the scene from the decks of Berkeley’ s Happy Hooker recently. Photo courtesy of HAPPY HOOKER SPORTFISHING,
Berkeley.
Anyway, the S-Waver is in the new hot category of baits called“ glide baits” because their action is primarily that of gliding along. No crazy wiggling, no pushing water, no sending out vibrations, just a nice easy side to side gliding motion through the water.
The action reminds me of when the ol’ trout truck backs up to the lake and dumps its load of trout into the lake. The trout, having spent several hours penned up in a dark tank, are now out into a strange environment, in the bright light, and are meandering around trying to get its bearing. These very trout, having been raised in runs and totally unaware of predator fish like bass and stripers, become easy pickings.
It is my belief, that when a predator fish, like a striper, encounters a baitfish moseying around like it doesn’ t have a care in the world, it brings out a primitive instinct to attack, much like a mugger is drawn to a drunk stumbling out on the sidewalk. This is evidenced by how vicious the strikes are when using this lure.
So what’ s the problem? For me, like the Helin’ s Flatfish, this lure is a cussed thing to cast!
NEXT TIME: Can anything be done to improve the castability of the S-Waver? I call River2Sea to find out!