This was the best year ever for the Harvester Albacore fishing. We landed 4600 fish in 36 days on the ocean averaging 16lbs each for nearly 47,000 lbs. Pretty incredible for our small boat since last year we only landed 1600 fish for the whole season. What made the difference?
The Weather!
Short Video of Jumper School
Video: Landing Two Albacore
This July was the clear and calm nearly all month. It was an amazing month with very little wind so it was no problem fishing so we got a lot more days on the Ocean than we did last year and we found the tuna big time. As you get later into the season you have to change your strategy to find the tuna. In the early part of the Summer, when the tuna are moving in they follow the warm currents so you can have a pretty good idea where they will be. They’re here in the summer to put on weight so early on they’re always biting so its just a matter of finding the warm waters and trolling a pattern through it.
The 10 hour Halibut Season this year was a struggle for us on the Harvester. We stayed up the night before baiting with octopus, squid and herring. We set 30 tubs of gear (each tub with about 180 hooks) off Cape Arago with the hopes of catching 70 – 100 fish to fill our quota. Weather was great. It was blowing like crazy the day before but it was flat calm on the opening. This time of year our spot is usually pretty good since the Halibut spawn shallower in the spring and move out to deeper water later on. We’re pretty sure the halibut moved out deeper than we figured, since we know some boats who did better out there, so we basically got skunked catching only 10 fish at 230 pounds. That’s one fish an hour plus all the prep time it was pretty dire. Since you only get 10 hours you basically have make an educated (or not so educated) guess where they’ll be for those few hours when you are allowed to catch them. We guessed wrong
Video One of the Few to hit the deck
Now its 2 days of going through the gear and fixing hooks checking the gangion, cleaning the gear really good with soap and bleach and putting it in the barn for the rest of the year. There may be other openings but its too much work for too little fish with the prices being down. We’re moving on to the Tuna which are coming closer in with the warm summer waters.
