ALBACORE ADVENTURE : There Are Few Things as Exciting as Being Out There on the Sunny Ocean When This Kind of Fishing Is This Good

“Hookup!”

“Boil, over there!”

“Get those trolling lines in!”

“There’s another boil!”

“Throw out some bait!”

“Hookup!’

“Gaff!”

It’s called albacore pandemonium. At 6:20 a.m., six fishermen had just had their first hookup, about 20 miles off Ensenada, Mexico.

Gary Tsukamoto happened to be standing nearest the trolling rod when a 20-pound albacore tuna hit a trolled lure. He yanked the rod from its holder and began battling the fish, which had just been suckered by a blue-chartreuse Tuna-Clone lure, one of five being trolled.

Few activities in the world of sport fishing generate the instant commotion as that first albacore. In the 30 seconds after Tsukamoto’s fish hit, a blind man might have thought six men were trying to escape a burning boat.

Under cool and gray dawn skies, barefoot men in T-shirts and shorts were running and jumping in every direction, shouting.

First, Charlie Davis, owner of The Honker, stopped the boat and then practically jumped down to the deck from the wheelhouse, jammed a dip net into the bait tank and threw out a fistful of anchovies, to keep the albacore near the boat. His son, Mark Davis, frantically reeled in the trolling lures, to avoid tangles.

Al Couch grabbed a smaller casting rod with 20-pound-test line, stuck a wiggling anchovy on its hook, dropped it over the side and let it swim away, in free spool. Couch had to wait forever--it must’ve been at least a full minute--before an albacore inhaled the struggling anchovy and line began peeling off Couch’s reel. He dropped his reel into gear, set the hook, and a second angler was hooked up.

Then Mark Davis turned an anchovy loose at the stern and in seconds he, too, was hooked up.

More boils. More hookups. More cries for the gaff. Then, 10 minutes into the riot, the ultimate albacore fishing experience--everyone on board, six fishermen, hooked up simultaneously:

“Gaff!”

“Gaff it yourself--everyone’s hooked up!”

“Coming through, look out!”

“Don’t let him swim under the prop!”

“Aw, he broke me off!”

“Someone pick up that rod before we step on it!”

“Bait up another anchovy!”

“Hookup!”

Frank LoPreste has seen it all before. He’s 41 and has been working on fishing boats since he was 8. He’d just backed his Royal Polaris into its slip at Fisherman’s Landing in Point Loma. He was returning 36 fishermen--all fathers and sons--from a four-day albacore trip. The deck was knee-deep albacore ranging from 18 to 30 pounds.

He talked about this summer’s run of albacore, compared to last summer’s, which, for fishermen, topped the Olympic Games. No one had ever seen an albacore season like the summer of ’84. The fish were bigger, more numerous, stayed close to the coast and stayed around longer than anyone could remember.

On good days in ‘84, Point Loma party boats were bringing in 4,000 albacore a day. For everyone, it was the good ol’ days now. For weeks last summer and fall, anglers fishing just a few miles outside of harbors were catching albacore in the 40- to 75-pound range. In one season, half a dozen catches were submitted to the International Game Fish Association for world-record consideration.

But the summer of ’85 may be one to remember, too, LoPreste predicts. The season is about five weeks old and shows no signs of slowing down. Every day last week, the Point Loma party boat fleet brought in more than 2,000 albacore.

“So far, for our three- to five-day trips, it’s been better than last year at this time,” LoPreste said. “From what I’ve seen so far, there’s more volume than last year. But in ‘84, in terms of size of the fish and the length of the season, it was an absolute bonanza. The fish were close and people were getting literally tons of albacore on three- and four-hour trips.

“One unusual part of the run this summer is that a lot of fishermen are having good results throwing iron (metal lures). Generally speaking, live bait is by far the most effective way to fish albacore, but these fish so far are hitting iron, too.”

Standing at the Fisherman’s Landing dock, watching wheelbarrows full of albacore being rolled to the scales, was one of Southern California’s legendary fishermen, Ralph Mikkelsen, still searching for that first 400-pound yellowfin tuna.

Generally, Mikkelsen sticks to the ultralong-range trips in search of giant yellowfins, the 17- and 23-day sojourns to the Revillagigedo Islands and Costa Rica. But on this day he was waiting to board a boat for a four-day albacore trip. He talked about live bait vs. iron.

“On albacore trips, I’m sometimes the only guy on board using jigs. I use lead-headed jigs with gray scampi skirts, or Tuna-Clones, on 50-pound test line. When the bite is light and only the guys using 15-pound test are getting bit, I’ll still stick with my 50 outfit because you never know when big bigeye tuna are running with albacore.

“And if I do get hooked up with a 15-pound albacore, I don’t want to be hooked up to him any longer than is necessary. If I’m using light line, chances are greater that if I do hook up with, say, an 80-pound bigeye, he’ll break me off.”

Mikkelsen was on a recent four-day trip on the Polaris Supreme. The boat’s 25 fishermen returned with 922 albacore.

Fares vary for long range albacore trips. LoPreste charges $580 per person for four-day trips, $425 for three-day trips.

One-day trips vary from $64 to $105, and landing operators recommend weekday trips, which are less crowded.

Albacore tuna are trans-Pacific migrators that normally are found moving northward along the Mexican and United States west coasts in early to mid-summer. Their counterclockwise Pacific migration takes them 12,000 to 15,000 miles, to Japanese waters and back again.

In 1952, the Department of Fish and Game tagged 215 albacore off San Pedro. Eleven months later, one was caught 550 miles southeast of Tokyo, 4,900 miles away. Other tagged albacore have traveled more than 9,800 miles.

Marathon fish. Not only are they considered among the sea’s greatest fighters by sport fishermen, they’re also tops as table fare. Canners label them “Chicken of the Sea.” Off Southern California, albacore range in size from about 6 to 30 pounds. Larger fish, biologists believe, don’t migrate, but are termed home guards by biologists, and remain near eastern Pacific islands.

Albacore are one of four tuna species caught at least occasionally off Southern California. Others are bluefin, yellowfin and bigeye tuna. The others, however, do not create the excitement albacore do, simply because albacore appear in such enormous numbers. Up to a quarter of a million have been caught in some sport seasons.

They’re distinguished from other tuna species by long, sickle-like, black pectoral fins. Japanese fishermen call them “dragonfly tuna.”

Albacore are solid, football-shaped fish, packed with muscle. A 20-pound albacore, an average size, will yield 20 inch-thick steaks.

Charlie Davis had eased his 38-foot Honker out of the marina in front of the Hotel Continental at 12:05 a.m. His intention was to make a straight run to the same general area off Ensenada where he and five others had caught 26 albacore the previous day.

The Honker’s twin diesels hummed softly as it made its way out of San Diego Bay. The lighted Coronado Bridge began to fade, as did the glass-steel towers of the downtown skyline. Cars could barely be seen on the 5 Freeway and Harbor Drive.

Davis stopped at the bait dock, not far from the harbor entrance, to buy anchovies. He winced. The bait fish were unusually small.

Other boats were waiting for bait, also. Several dozen boats, both private and party boats, were also on midnight runs to albacore waters. Leaving the harbor, The Honker began riding heavier swells and Davis eased his throttles ahead, and turned south, over a dark sea, in search of a magnificent fighting fish.

At 5:35 a.m., Davis’ passengers awakened in their bunks the instant Davis shut off the engines. Sleepily, they stumbled out on deck. A soft, gray light was illuminating gray skies overhead.

“This where I wanted to start trolling, 42 miles and 155 degrees from Point Loma,” Davis said. “We’ll wait about 15 minutes for a little more light, and start trolling.”

In the growing light, three other boats could be seen nearby. Davis started trolling shortly, and The Honker soon passed a small private boat with an angler already hooked up to an albacore. Pinpoints of boat lights could be seen on the dark horizon for 360 degrees.

When the sun rose, it revealed a gray, gently rolling sea. And at 6:20 a.m., Tsukamoto grabbed the trolling rod when its clicker shrieked to life. That touched of an albacore riot, which lasted for about an hour. In that time, about a dozen albacore were brought aboard.

Soon thereafter, there were other stops atop hungry albacore, each stop precipitated by a strike on a trolled lure.

At 9:50 a.m., another strike precipitated a two-hour stop in which there was another sextuple hookup. Thirty minutes later, there was a quintuple.

During the quintuple, Davis wore a wide grin. He slapped each angler on the shoulder and said: “You have no idea how good this makes a skipper feel, to see everyone on his boat hooked up to these magnificent fish.”

Couch brought an albacore aboard, about a 25-pounder. Davis looked at the sleek fish and said: “You know what really thrills me about all this? It’s the fact that these fish have come here, to this very spot on the Pacific, from Japan. Think about that. Do you know how far that is?”

At just before 11 a.m., Davis looked inside the two inboard fish boxes in the stern. They were practically full, with 29 albacore. His son, Mark, was finishing up a long struggle with a 22-pounder on eight-pound test.

“Mark, we’re just about plugged,” Davis said. “If you can ever get that fish aboard, that’ll just about do it.”

Davis’ son finally brought his fish to the gaff, and a memorable albacore trip was brought to a close. A cleanup ensued, since the deck had been awash with fish blood. Then the Tuna-Clone lures were put out again, to troll on the way back to San Diego.

At exactly 12:15 p.m., a spectacular windup to a perfect day of fishing--a marlin strike. Tsukamoto happened to see the corner rod take a big dip, and he yelled: “Hookup!” But there was no strike. He’d seen the marlin’s bill come out of the water and take a whack at the jig.

Then the rod tip bent again, for good this time.

“Look, it’s a marlin!”

The fish jumped once, then made a run of several hundred yards. From far away, he jumped half a dozen times, leaping free of the water and crashing back to the surface. Twenty-two minutes later, Tsukamoto brought in a striped marlin that later, at the San Diego Marlin Club, was weighed at 110 pounds. Tsukamoto was told that it was only the sixth marlin brought into San Diego this season.

“Frosting on the cake, gentlemen, frosting on the cake,” said Davis, clapping his hands.

On the ride back to San Diego, Davis, in the wheelhouse, talked about the electronics involved in contemporary salt-water sport fishing.

“It’s just incredible, the stuff that’s available to us today,” said Davis, 56. “This boat right now has more electronics on board than any U.S. Navy vessel had at the outbreak of World War II.”

He punched out a code on a small dashboard computer that showed The Honker to be 80.5 miles from its home port, Huntington Harbour.

“I’ve been on sport and commercial fishing boats since 1945 and for most of that time, I was lost. I navigated with a compass and watch. Now, I can travel to any point on the ocean and not be off by more than 50 feet.”

Basic fishing skills still apply, however.

“You still need to look for birds (diving on baitfish), listen to people talk on the radio, and watch other boats with your binoculars,” Davis said. The main body of albacore in any area can move 10 to 20 miles in one night. You still need to find them.”

Then he laughed. He’d just thought of something that topped modern electronics. He remembered days at sea in his youth, in the late 1940s, when the luxury of a hot shower on a boat was a distant dream, one he could barely bring into focus.

“After long hours in the sun, fighting a lot of albacore, the luxury of having a hot shower on a boat is a luxury I’ll never get used to. The boats I used to work on . . . well, it was just something I dreamed about.

“Now, look at me. Six hours of albacore fishing in the hot sun, I’ve got fish blood and scales all over me and I’m about to climb into my hot shower downstairs. Every time I do it, I say to the world: ‘Aw, the heck with you, world--I’m taking a hot shower in my own boat!’ ”