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January 2007

Jan. 1st

    Good evening folks, here is a recap of our annual New Years 8-Day trip.  Day-1 we started our trip down on the ridge but our conditions and weather were not good at all.  We had strong winds and a very big swell. It was almost too dangerous to turn the boat, but we managed to anchored twice for not very much. It was very roily on the anchored and the fish were not biting so we decided to leave and start at the big fish area. 
    Day-2 early in the morning when we got to the big fish grounds, we had twenty plus knots of wind. But there were no seas to go with it, so it was plenty workable. We still had hope. As it turned out, we caught nothing. But not because we didn't find fish, but because we had fish that would not bite. We actually had them boil around, but they just would not take a hooked bait. 
    Day-3 We started with very good weather. We were very exited because we stood a chance at finding more porpoise than the day before. We were wrong. It was very hard to find them because there's just not very many around the bank. The porpoise that we did find were off the edge on north end of the bank. It was a very good bunch of porpoise and they had a big school of tuna with them. We got on them and it came under the boat, around the boat, and behind the boat. The fish were on us. They boiled around and put on a good show. I thought "Here we go. We are going to get a shot at some big fish". But I was wrong. All they did was just boil around and left. I could not figure out why we could not hook one. I guess that's the way it goes. Nobody had a good day. There were a total of seven boats looking for the same thing and only three got lucky there late. Needless to say we did not. So after two day of looking, I decided to go back to the ridge. 
    Day-4 We got to the ridge at 0530 hrs.  We had very good fishing on a variety of fish. We had tuna, yellowtail, grouper and a couple of pargo. We had a day of action. 
    Day-5 We got to San Pablo at 0600 hrs. We did not fish there very long. It was not clean fishing. It was all mixed yellowtail, bonito, and skipjack. We worked our way up to Clam Bay and we had a very good day of yellowtail fishing. The grade of yellowtail was fourteen to eighteen pounds with a few fish eighteen to twenty-five pounds.  We finished our trip at Clam Bay ridge and are now heading for San Diego.
    We will arrive on January 3rd at 0900 hrs. That's all we have to report. Happy New Year and have a good evening. We will report again with Capt Andy Cates running the next trip, departing January 4th, on a 15-day.  

CAPTAIN:                   JULIO OCHOA

DATE OF TRIP:        TUESDAY, DECEMBER 26, WEDNESDAY JANUARY 3, 2007

LENGTH OF TRIP:    8 DAYS

PASSENGERS:            21

AREA FISHED:        OUTSIDE  MAG BAY, LOWER RIDGE AREA

FISH COUNT:           133 YELLOWFIN TUNA, 280 YELLOWTAIL, 11  DORADO & 3  GROUPER                                                                           

1ST PLACE                  31.9 LB  DORADO caught by, PETER JANG OF NEWPORT BCH

2ND PLACE                 31 LB YELLOWFIN caught by, VICTOR ARMENDARIZ OF SAN JOSE

3RD PLACE                 29.7 LB DORADO caught by; GARY THOMPSON OF RANCHO SANTA MARGARITA

 

Jan. 7th, 2007

Good morning folks. We are finally getting reception and are able to send messages. After 2 days of rough weather today is a welcome, with 12 knots of wind and small seas. We are starting fishing today and will be in the grounds below Mag Bay at 1100 this morning. With the interest of the big fish grounds we couldn't just drive right by it.
Hopefully we at least see sign of big fish here today and give us hope for the week to come. The Hurricane bank sounded like a nice option and if this fails we may head out there. Hopefully not the case.
Andy Cates
 
Jan. 9th, 2007

Good morning folks. We did see sign below but only caught one fish. A 140 pound tuna. Saw a few boils and finners and jumpers just no response. A report last night brought us back up and we will be in the Mag Bay area again today. Hopefully with better results than the first day.

Andy Cates

Jan. 11th, 2007

Good morning folks. After 3 days up on the beach area with almost nothing for our efforts. The next practical move was to head down to P.V.
 
So far this morning things look promising with our first fish a 199 caught by Sonny Jones.  We all were happy to see we had something to work with. Since then we have another 7 fish 170 being the biggest and the others 100 pounds or better. We seem to keep something hooked her and are hoping for a good day. At this point its just nice to be anchored with fish around the boat.
We will report again tomorrow
Andy Cates

Jan. 12th, 2007

Good morning folks. Yesterday ended up good with 48 tuna for the day. The only big ones were in the morning and big ones being fish in the high 100's. The rest of the day was good action up until dark on 80 to 120 pound fish with a little better fish once in a while. So far this morning we have 12 fish, biggest about 150.
We will report again tomorrow.
Andy Cates

Jan. 13th, 2007

Good morning folks. Another nice day with action until dark. Biggest fish were up in the mid hundreds with really no sign of fish over 200. Maybe a few around but no chances for us.
Things were really moving along and today seems to be a bit on the down side. With only one 80 pound tuna we are very concerned. Hopefully it is an afternoon thing. We will report again tomorrow
Andy Cates

Jan. 15th, 2007

Good morning folks. The wind came up and the fish went down. After two great days and one scratch fishing day , yesterday it fell on its face. We got blown off the bank by the heavy winds and left at 4:00 in the afternoon after only 3 tuna and a few exotics on the bottom.
The weather is awful coming across and we are looking for a break. Soon we will be by Cabo and it should calm down. Tomorrow we will be in the Mag Bay area in hopes of a couple of trophies to settle the Jack Pot. Hopefully it works out and we have good luck with the hit and miss fishing that is available. We will report again tomorrow.
Andy Cates

 

Jan. 17th, 2007

Good morning folks. Yesterday was another bust in the big fish grounds. After anchoring all day for one 80 pound tuna and watching some boil around the boat we picked it up and spent the rest of the evening driving around. No sign of fish after pulling the anchor. One nice thing is the weather was and still is nice.

This morning we found action on small tuna and some dorado to finish the trip. Not all that great but something for the fresh fish tank. We are now finally on our way home with good weather Be home on Friday, See you then.
Andy Cates

CAPTAIN:                   ANDY CATES

DATE OF TRIP:          THURSDAY, JANUARY 4, FRIDAY JANUARY 19TH, 2007

LENGTH OF TRIP:    15 DAYS

AREA FISHED:        OUTSIDE  MAG BAY, LOWER RIDGE AREA

FISH COUNT:          135 YELLOWFIN TUNA, 5 PARGO & 5 CUBERA

1ST PLACE                  212.7 LB  YELLOWFIN caught by, SONY JONES OF SANTA ANA, CA

2ND PLACE                 180.3 LB YELLOWFIN caught by, BOB MITCHENER OF OXNARD, CA

3RD PLACE                 168.9 LB YELLOWFIN caught by, DAVID MALBERG OF ENCINITAS, CA

90 FISH OVER 100 LBS, GREAT CATCH, BUT HAD TO WORK  FOR IT THOUGH SOME ROUGH WEATHER

 

Jan. 22nd, 2007

We cleared Point Loma at 1300 hrs. on our annual Seeker Rod charter on Saturday with what appears to be a very good load of live bait, sardine and a green mackerel mix is what we took and everything looks very healthy. This is a very good group of well seasoned long range fisherman and everyone onboard is looking forward to the adventure ahead.

Today we had our first seminar and discussed all the Jackpot rules as well as kite and trolling rotation along with general safety aspects for this type long range trip. We covered the correct top shots for specific tuna gear and spent the rest of the putting top shot on for those who needed them as well as making kite and balloon leaders for the trip. At the end of the seminar today we raffled off the first of three Seeker Black Steel tuna rods and today's lucky winner was Archie Irons, congratulations to Archie and a big thank you to Joe Pfister and Seeker Rods.

I would also like to mention we have Brian Porter and David Choate on board representing Seeker Rods. David who is also an Accurate Pro staffer has brought along compliments of Jack Nilsen of Accurate Fishing Products eight Accurate 50 twin drag two speed reels to be used by the group as needed, thanks to  Jack, David and Douglas Nilsen for loaning us this great gear. We will continue to do our tackle seminars each day as we travel to our fishing destination, the weather is 12-15 knots of wind out of the west with a slight trace of a following sea. We will continue to report as the trip begins to develop in the day's to come, thanks for following our reports.

 
                                    John Grabowski and Crew of the Red Rooster III

Jan. 24th, 2007

We arrived in the fishing grounds this morning and so far have had fair action on smaller tuna and eight Wahoo. the weather is 20 knots of wind and workable, actually it's nice on the anchor for fishing. We will report in again later hopefully with a better fishing report. We had phone problems on the way down but as long as we can send reports we will keep you updated.

Jan. 25th, 2007

Our first day fishing ended up pretty good with an evening rally to encourage are interest for the week to come. We ended the day with 16 fish 100 to 140 pounds and a 256 pound beauty for Steve Morse that came on the kite to start are evening bite which lasted into the dark. With this late rally we have high hopes for things to come. Our weather continues to hold and the short term forecast is favorable. We will report again tomorrow, thanks for following the fishing reports from the Red Rooster III.
 

Jan 26th, 2007

We finished our second day of fishing and things where definitely slow. Pretty good sign of fish around the area but very reluctant to bite, we will be here another day to see if anything changes for the better. One major plus is the weather does not get any better, it's just perfect.

Jan. 27th, 2007

We spent another day looking at pretty fair sign of fish, there is good life around the area but the grade of fish we are looking for is very reluctant to bite. Our evening went similar to the first afternoon of fishing with Wayne Prescott starting off the sundown hit with a nice 220 pound yellowfin tuna, we had another four fish in the 100 to 165 pound range and a fair amount of the 35-60 pound fish mixed in at dark. The rest of the day is spent scratching away at the 35-60 pound fish and catching plenty of small fish to keep the chunk bucket full all day long. The weather is holding with 10-12 knots of breeze and sunny skies, the forecast for the near future is calling for more of the same weather pattern. We are taking the fishing one day at a time and for now plan to stay put and keep scratching away in hopes of a big day.

Jan. 28th, 2007

We continue to see the same type sign around the area with the exception of maybe a few more of the 100 to 130 pound class fish showing throughout the day today. Our day pretty much went the same as two out of the last three day's with the exception of a 200 pound fish, no cows for us today. We had eight of the 100 to 130 pound class yellowfin tuna and pretty good scratching on the 35-60 pound fish from day light to dark. There has been no big hits anywhere that our code group has been in the last week and so far this area is the best for fairly consistent scratch fishing with the occasional cow. Once again we are going to stay put and keep putting something aboard each day with the hope that we can get one or two banner days before our fishing time runs out. As I have said in previous posts we will take this thing one day at a time and make our moves accordingly, wish us luck and we will report back tomorrow. The forecasts for the weather in this region have been right on the mark with light and variable winds and no seas, we are enjoying that aspect of the trip immensely

Jan. 29th, 2007

We left the bank yesterday around lunch time with very little to show for our morning, very tough fishing and running short on time from that distance influenced our decision to make a move. We are currently headed back up towards the coast praying that something will change in the Big Fish Zone on the coast, we will be looking as we go and report our findings as they happen. Wish us luck and please say a prayer for things to turn around for us and the entire fleet.

                     Red Rooster III

 

 
 
Jan. 30th, 2007

For those of you out their who said a prayer for us last night thank you, it worked. We changed our plan last night and tried a different area than we had originally started for when we left the bank yesterday, we had a very nice day of fishing. Bill Brandstetter lead the way on big fish with a very tough 219 pound Yellowfin off of a school of black porpoise, Jeff Brunner on the same stop had an equally as tough 183 pound yellowfin. We captured 17 fish today 100 to 219 pounds and another 9 in the 40 to 70 pound class, a very fine day of angling. Our weather continues to be excellent and very conducive for this type of offshore fishing. We will continue to send our reports as things develop, thanks again for following our reports.

                                                      Red Rooster III
 

 

Jan. 31st, 2007

Good afternoon folks.

After talking to the boat the topic of 6 miles from the Islands is not surprisingly becoming reality.
I don't have all the numbers and quotes from the Rooster but the fishing around the Islands sounds very much like what we were hoping for. With all the work getting the permits our latest option is now a reality.
With the efforts of our fleet I'm excited for upcoming trips and waiting for a report that includes the 300 pound fish. We can only sit back and hold our breath for the upcoming reports.
How about fishing offshore style all day in the middle of the tropics and then at the end of the day anchoring with the permission of the camp in the lee of the Island for a flat calm night of rest . Well that is what the format of these Island trips sounds like.
We will have more information as this fishery continues to develop and are scheduled for a 16 day ride down ride back on March 9 2007 . Accurate reels and Calstar will be available if requested before the trip.
Don't miss a chance to be part of the latest developments in Long Range sportfishing
We will see you in March
Andy Cates

Jan 31st, 2007

The last two day's have been really fun fishing, lots of visual sign on top and good fast paced action when we got on a school. We had 120 Yellowfin tuna in the past two day's with 21 of that being 100 to 170 pounds and the remainder in the 30 to 70 pound range. We are currently running up in flat calm weather and will be arriving at Alijos Rocks Friday morning around 0430, we will fish Alijos until around lunch time and call it a trip. Everyone on board is very pleased with the outcome of the past three day's of fishing accompanied by the outstanding weather, it truly made our trip. We will report back and keep everyone at home informed as to the progress of our northerly trek towards home.

                                             John G. and the crew of Red Rooster III