The Life Aquatic

Last night, I embarked on an overnight fishing trip with my friend, Larry, aboard the Condor, based in San Diego. I had never done such a trip like this, only day trips in such exotic destinations as Hawaii, Alaska, and Vancouver Island. I also had never fished with 29 other people off the same boat, so crossing lines was certainly a concern of mine. My world is still rocking back and forth as I write this.

The boat was quite nice -- 94 feet long with berths for 35 guests. Needless to say, 28 of the other 29 people were male; mostly older, with big stomachs and facial hair. Yeah, you know the type. We took off around 10pm, and after some brief instructions on how it was going to go, I laid down for some (surprisingly good) rest till about 5:30am, when we dropped our lines out for the first time. Albacore tuna was our target fish, and we used live bait (anchovies and sardines). We headed about 40-50 southwest of San Diego, to the open Pacific off the coast of Mexico.

My day got off to an inauspicious start. Two of my first three "casts" resulted in a snake's nest on my reel. Apparently, I had some lessons to learn. Those three attempts lasted a grand total of three minutes, which was a sign of things to come. After those three, we also motored along for another two hours or so before dropping lines again. In that time I got seasick for the first time in my life. Not fun.

The rest of the day consisted of moving from kelp bed to kelp bed, staying at each for maybe 2-5 minutes. All in all, I probably had my line out there for 20 minutes during the whole trip. Here's a good picture of everything I caught:













Most everyone else suffered a similar fate. In all, the boat only caught 8 fish (7 albacore and a yellowtail), so most people went home empty-handed. Was it worth it? Probably, since I always would've been left wondering what might've been had I not gone. I don't think I'll ever choose to go out on a boat with that many other fisherman, though. Besides being overwhelmed at the amount of maneuvering that was necessary to avoid crossing lines, I seem to have been out of my league, since everyone else seemed to know what they were doing. On the positive side, it made me reminisce about that 175 lb. tuna I caught during my Hawaii trip a few years back, and how fun it was. I'm afraid I'm hooked for life.

Next up: sailing this weekend in Seattle. Saturday will mark my third different boat (and third body of water) in the week. Hopefully my world stops rocking before then!