Red Rooster III’s Yellowfin Haul Was Something to Crow About

SAN DIEGO — If you’ve ever wondered how it feels to catch a 250-pound yellowfin tuna, tie on your favorite lure, go to the nearest freeway overpass, cast over the rail and snag yourself a semi.

If you merely want to know a little more about the multiday trips that produce such enormous and powerful fish, just drive to the landing when one of the boats is coming in. You’ll get a pretty good idea.

I got a call from Linda Palm-Halpain at Lee Palm Sportfishing the other day. She told me I might want to be there when the Red Rooster III pulled into port Tuesday morning.

“They caught a lot of really big fish,” she said.

Her husband, Guy Halpain, went one step further.

He said, “It’s probably the best long-range trip that’s ever been run, for the amount of passengers we had. All 14 passengers caught 200-pounders, and that has never happened before.”

Persuasion enough.

I arrived just as the Red Rooster III was backing in, after 18 days at sea, several of which were spent fishing at or near the Revillagigedo Islands south of Baja.

It didn’t take an expert to realize that, although the islands regularly produce excellent catches of tuna and wahoo, this was a special trip. The crew had stood the largest tuna on their noses and lined the rail with them. Their tails reached into the bluish-gray sky like giant, two-pronged forks.

It was a colossal display, obviously meant to draw attention to the boat.

And it worked.

A deserted waterfront soon became a bustling one, with well-dressed businessmen on their lunch breaks mingling with gruff-looking fishermen and crewmen as they hauled cartload after cartload of tuna up the ramps, dumping them on the concrete to be sorted and weighed.

Fish processors--who fillet, smoke and can the anglers’ catch--stood by their trucks, waiting for the long unloading process to be finished.

San Diego TV anchorman Doug Curlee drew laughter from some onlookers as he stood knee-deep in whole tuna while conducting interviews on the deck of the boat in a suit and tie.

He didn’t seem to find the situation the least bit amusing.

One of his subjects, Jenny Jones, was one of the few anglers who chose to ride back on the boat instead of flying back from Cabo San Lucas a few days earlier. She was slightly sunburned and obviously ready to get off the boat.

“Last night was a nightmare, it was so rough,” she said, stepping onto solid ground for the first time in nearly three weeks. “It was an E-ticket ride.”

Jones, a sergeant with the Laguna Beach Police Department, was the only woman aboard. Asked how she liked that aspect of the trip, she said, smiling, “It was great. Awesome.”

It was awesome in another respect too. Jones outfished everybody else, becoming the first woman--according to the Lee Palm office--to catch three tuna topping 200 pounds on one trip.

On the waterfront scale, before dozens of curious onlookers, her top three fish weighed in at 204 pounds, 214.3 pounds and 264.3 pounds.

“I did very well,” she acknowledged, saying she will donate a large portion of her catch to charity.

Only a 271 1/2-pounder caught by Ben Kita of Los Angeles was bigger. In all, there were 22 tuna weighing 200 pounds or more. Coronado’s Ross Wheeler was the only fisherman who failed to catch one, though he came close. (Halpain’s claim that everybody had caught one was based on crew estimates.)

Stepping down from the bridge was Andy Cates, 27, a former deckhand in his second season as skipper of the 105-foot vessel. Cates seemed a little in awe of all the attention he was about to get, but he handled himself as well in the spotlight as he apparently had 1,000 miles south of the border in what seemed the middle of the ocean.

He hugged his mother and grandmother, who were waiting to greet him, then explained that he really didn’t have to do much other than drop anchor at a high spot called the Hurricane Bank.

“It started on Day 1, right when we dropped it,” he said. “We started catching 50- to 80-pounders, we got 35 of those, then all of a sudden we started hooking the bigger ones. Then, as it started to get light, we started hooking the real big ones. We had 14 passengers. At one time we had 10 fish around the 200-pound range going at one time. Oh, man. It was fabulous.”

Hooking into a giant tuna is like setting off a powder keg. There are few game fish as strong or as stubborn as a tuna, and catching one requires rod belts and harnesses, as well as the stoutest tackle and often the heaviest line available.

Even with all this, the fish often get the best of the battle.

That’s what had charter master Ernie Wirth worried the minute he hooked into his first big fish.

“I had been a little sick; I had pneumonia recently so I kind of took it easy,” the 72-year-old Bonsall resident said, stepping out of the way of a cartload of tuna being pushed up the dock.

“I hooked one of those big ones and had it on for about an hour and I didn’t want to ruin my whole trip, so I asked one of the crew members to take over and they landed it for me.

“I didn’t want to have a heart attack out there and screw the trip up for everybody, much less myself. So I approached it a little slow.”

Up at the landing office, Wirth’s son, Bill, was chatting with Guy Halpain, praising the efforts of the captain and crew but letting Halpain know that had the point of one of the gaffs been sharper, they would have had a 300-pounder to show off as well.

“I hooked him in the afternoon on 60-pound test and we chased him for three hours in the skiff,” Wirth told the landing operator. “We finally got him right up to the skiff, we grabbed a flying gaff, and it was so dull that it just hit him in the head and bounced off.

“He spit the hook out and swam away.”

ADD TUNA

The Excel, out of Fishermen’s Landing, also deserves mention, since it was alongside the Red Rooster III for much of the time and its anglers also had a phenomenal trip.

The boat was on a 16-day excursion and returned last Sunday. Skippered by Pat Cavanaugh, the Excel also had 22 fish weighing more than 200 pounds--there were 28 anglers--and several topping 100 pounds in an overall haul of 305 tuna.

LAST ADD TUNA

This item has nothing to do with giant yellowfin, but a lot to do with a smaller, tastier brand of tuna called albacore.

Remember those? They kicked off the Southland tuna season in early summer before heading north. And remarkably enough, there are still plenty of the longfins around.

Trouble is, nobody is used to them being around in late December and thus there is hardly anybody fishing for them.

Darby Neil, co-owner of Virg’s Landing in Morro Bay, planned a trip for Tuesday, based on observations of commercial fishermen. Nobody showed, so he and captains John Rowley and Dennis Lucenbach, and Bill Weintraub from the rental rod shop went fishing anyway.

They found a school of hungry albacore only 12 miles out and boated 20 fish weighing up to 45 pounds by 10 a.m. At noon, they found a school of bigger fish and found themselves in utter chaos.

“[The fish] were crashing [the surface] all around the boat,” Neil said. “We had nobody to gaff the fish, so we’re out there swinging away with the gaffs in one hand and the rods in the other. We broke a lot off trying to get them this way or we could have caught more.”

They were back at port at 3:30 p.m. with 40 albacore among them, the largest about 60 pounds.

Virg’s will run daily 12-hour albacore trips leaving at 5 a.m. as long there is any demand. Details: (800) 762-5263.