Anglers Find a Lot of Albacore

In case albacore fishermen haven’t noticed, the summer bite is finally in full swing.

In fact, some of the veteran day-boat skippers out of San Diego say they haven’t seen such a large body of fish in 20 years or more. Most of the albacore are 15 to 25 pounds and being caught 60 to 80 miles southwest of Point Loma.

The northbound movement of fish, to within range of the 24-hour boats, is something fishermen have been anticipating for weeks.

“It broke loose last Saturday and hasn’t stopped yet,” Martin Pena, spokesman for Fisherman’s Landing, said Thursday. “On Monday we had multiple boats reporting in with limits or near-limits by the time I walked into the office at 7 a.m.”

Since then, the bite has mostly remained just as steady, although at times it’s been sporadic. Pena said the public too is finally biting and added that boats leaving Friday night and fishing Saturday are sold out for the remainder of July.

Farther south, the multiday boats are finding another bonanza in the form of unusually large bluefin tuna.

Tommy Rothery, skipper of the Polaris Supreme, on Tuesday turned in one of the most impressive counts of big fish: 44 bluefin, 42 of which weighed more than 100 pounds. And many more lost.

“It’s full-speed, so I gotta go,” he said during a live report on www.976tuna.com. “Fifty- to 100-pound test is what it takes to get these things. Any knucklehead that puts out 40-pound line doesn’t get one and fights it for four hours.”

A bonus catch aboard Rothery’s boat was that of a 52-pound bull dorado.

“That thing was cruising along with about six females and had a good thing going, but we put an end to that,” the skipper said.

Meanwhile, anglers aboard boats from Newport Beach to Los Angeles have experienced a few albacore flurries in U.S. waters but are still waiting for the bigger bodies of fish to arrive.