I was on the annual Harry Yamada/Roger Kuramoto 5-day trip (July 27 – Aug 1, 2009) on the American Angler, skippered by co-owner Brian Kiyohara. This trip is made up mostly of passengers from a charter group that formed many years ago. These guys really know how to fish and the results reflects the skill of the anglers combined with the skill of the American Angler crew to locate the fish.
We went straight to the southern end of Guadalupe Island and fished for the larger yellowfin tuna. We were able to put 100 of the 40# to 70# YFT in the RSW that first afternoon. Pretty good for a half day of fishing. Each of these large YFT were gutted and gilled before being placed into the 29 deg. RSW. My parents, family, and friends continue to comment on how Sushi quality the tuna was.
On the second day at Lupe we put another 100 YFT on the boat by noon. With plenty of the big YFT in the RSW we left the southern end and fished for yellowtail near Latitude bay. We were able to land 100 yellowtails in under 2 hours. The biggest yellowtail was 34# and landed by our chef Paul.
On the way to the southern end of Guadalupe, Kub Ito was trolling with the right stuff (wired mediun black and purple Yo Zuri). Kub landed a big wahoo (60# class) and graciously donated it to the galley for dinner. Thanks Kub, it was delicious.
After the successful YFT and yellowtail catching at Guadalupe, we wanted to try for bluefin tuna. At our evening family meeting we found out that we were going to fish off-shore tomorrow for bluefin and albacore.
Andy Cates (Red Rooster3) shared a school of YFT and BFT with us. We landed around 20 of the 30# - 40# BFT. On the last day of fishing, most of us were not looking to keepanything, but you know how that goes. We had a mix of small YFT, good size BFT, small yellows, and some dorados. (Photos of Roger in the orange slickers with his BFT; Dr. Ben Kawata, John Liu and Dr. Mike Uyeki with nice tuna.)
The jackpot fish were all caught at Lupe. I was fortunate to have a 105# YFT bite my bait while using the newest Accurate boss reel (BX2-500). I used 65# Izorline spectra and 25 ft of Izroline 40# fluorocarbon. Tony (the Harley ridding big boy) Contreras had a 71# YFT for second and John Liu was a close third with a 70# YFT.
This annual trip is always fun to be on due to the fishermen playing jokes on each other but always working together to land every fish hooked. We had very few hooked fish lost due to tangles and attribute this to the effectiveness of the “controlled free spool” that is used on the American Angler (no tension, no cut off lines). The crew has always been very good at locating fish so it is not surprising that we had such a great fish count. This trip is on the American Angler schedule next year at the end of July 2010. Thank you to Harry Yamada and Roger Kuramoto for doing a great job organizing this trip every year (All photos were taken by the American Angler camera.)
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