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2001 Marlin Weighed in and Releases

Sunday KENDAN Fish Report   -  Marty Morris      5/27/02
Hello again to everyone. It's THAT time of the year - "A" time. It is also "W" (as in Wednesday Report) time. Yes, the Albacore have arrived, but the weather and Memorial Day week-end conspired to get us started on Sunday. So maybe we should be calling this the W-S report.
Last week saw such bad weather on Monday and Tuesday that the sport boats didn't even make it out of the harbors. The stormy weather "turned" the water over so that even Wednesday was a poor day for those who ventured out. But things picked up (despite the full moon) at week-end and Saturday saw some excellent fishing for both the sporties and yachties. So - Sunday was the day.
With a little help from Mark Henwood, ye olde (29th season) "Ken-Dan" fired them up and, with Kenneth and Daniel together (and not argueing for a change) and an out-of-town visitor from Tennessee (very poor albacore fishing back there) here for a two week Navy reserve stint and out we went - in the general direction of Bob Vanian's always accurate numbers (just above the top of the "1010 Trench").
The weather? It was one of those nights AND days that should be bottled, patented, preserved and at least remembered that are few and far between. That is, not a drop of water hit the bow railing until we hit Point Loma - on the way BACK! Flat? Perfect? Ideal? - take your pick. One of the benefits of such weather is when you are bringing a fish up in the glassy water you can look down and see them 30? 40? 50? feet down all silver, circling with wings out, etc, etc.
Water temp was 60.7+/- . Not a lot of bird life, but virtually no fish where where there were no birds (you know, the little black "tuna" birds). We caught all our fish in that 47-49 up and 40-41 out area just above the top of the "trench" - just where Bob Vanian's 976BITE report had them the day before. We started with a quadruple and actually had only 4 jig stops for the morning - but all multiples - two triples. That helps raise the count in a hurry. 11 by 6:45. And porpoise all over the place. Lots of small kelp patties, but we found little under them.
I then decided to keep going - down the trench to find the sporties - where the previous day's action had been - at the bottom of the trench, perhaps just west of the outside edge. They were report to have been at 77 miles. But at 65 we hadn't seen any life for a few miles and nothing to show for it. As it turned out I believe "the Beak" on the HanaPa found them at about 70 miles (the fish seem to be moving northward at a healthy clip), but the action not as good as the previous day, but with better quality fish (I assume that meant "larger").
But we decided not to go farther and circled around the outside edge of the trench and back to where we had been. Within a couple of miles of where the small boats where still working we started to pick up the birds and soon thereafter had a triple. We had excellent bait - mixed larger anchovies with the smaller sardines. As you know - the albies seem to prefer the anchovies and we had a couple of excellent bait stops so that our final count was about 50-50 jig vs bait. By 9:30 we had 19 - one short of what is affectionately called "limits." So started heading back up the line and shorly after got another fish to call it a day. Unfortunately, several bait fish follwed that last fellow in and we seem to have miscounted, winding up with 25.
The fish were mainly in the 12-16 pd size with maybe a couple a tad under 10. At the start of the season they always seem to look a little larger - takes a few trips to get your "guesstimates" more accurate.
So back to the point by 2:15 - not bad having been to 65 miles and caught some fish. And driving past the Marlin Club on the way home we were, as usual, startled to see that life sized Marlin hanging there. NO - NO - no one killed it - HONEST! It was the Marlin Club's "hang-for-a-picture" mount that, from a moving car out on the street, sure looks real. For reasons best not explained - he has affectionately been named: "Rich!" (and I am not referring to the skipper of the "Mil-So-Mar.") M