Welcome to the most exciting fishing in the Pacific! Bill Roecker gives you the latest reports, photos, news and information on long range trips, aboard the world's largest sportboat fleet, in San Diego. FishingVideos.com offers offshore and inshore fishing DVD's from Panama to Alaska enjoying the most extreme fishing! Join Bill Roecker at exotic fishing spots like Guadalupe Island, Benitos and Cedros Islands, the Revillagigedos archipelago, East Cape, Magdalena Bay, Baja's Southern Banks and Cabo San Lucas! Jump aboard!
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Bill Roecker's Fishing The Avalanche
Now Available at FishingVideos.com!
A five-day trip can offer more than you bargained for! Join Bill Roecker and the Excel crew on an amazing adventure!On the way down and back from Guadalupe Island, Excel finds hot fishing in open water. No one aboard could remember seeing such large yellowfin tuna biting close to San Diego in June.The 30 to 50-pound tuna are mixed with some huge bonito to 20 pounds and paddy yellowtail. Bluefin and albacore are there, too. That’s just for starters!At the island huge homeguard yellowtail over 40 pounds are biting jigs and the dropper loop on the weather side.You won't believe your eyes, when you see a 1,000-foot rockfall crashing into the ocean near the Excel's stern!
Bill Roecker's Fishing The Avalanche is bound to be a Long-Range DVD Classic!
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Hurricane Bank & Clarion Island
300-Pound Tuna Adventure Aboard Qualifier 105
The Hurricane Bank is about 1125 miles south from San Diego, and with a northwest breeze and swell quartering off her 30-foot beam, Qualifier 105 took about three and a half days to make the journey. The 'Cane is 180 miles southwest of Clarion Island and over 400 miles southwest of Cabo San Lucas, making it the most offshore spot ordinarily fished by the San Diego long range fleet. On most maps it's called the Shimada Seamount, and the map on the back wall in Qualifier's galley makes the depth on the high spot to be 28 fathoms.
Discovered by commercial tuna fishermen half a century ago, Hurricane Bank has become a prime focus of winter and spring long range trips after the closure of fishing near the Revillagigedos Islands since San Benedicto, Socorro, Roca Partida and Clarion were made a preserve in 2002.
Sport fishing is still permitted there outside the 12-mile limit by boats with Mexican permits and anglers wearing daily permits in the form of paper bracelets issued by the Comision Nacional De Areas Naturales Protegidas, which cost four dollars a day. We stopped at Clarion Island and checked in with the Comandante of the naval base there, as required, when we left the bank.
Three days of fishing the bank with live sardines and jigs produced tuna of five to 190 pounds, and wahoo of up to 60 pounds. Small yellowfin were so numerous as to be pests at times, prompting skipper Brian Sims to move the boat to another position or to try trolling for wahoo.
We kept no tuna of less than 20 pounds and very few of less than 30 pounds. Rainbow runners and skipjack tuna also found the boat often, and were released.
The weather varied during our trip from breezy, heavy overcast to bright sunny days, but all days were quite fishable, and most were downright pleasant, as expected during early May.
We shared the bank with Royal Polaris , captained by skipper Roy Rose, for two days. Roy took his anglers to Clarion ahead of us, and it was his report of fishing for 100 to 200-pound yellowfin there that prompted our move, especially after we caught no large tuna on our third day.
The wahoo fishing also slowed right after the full moon, with most of our 'hoos biting on sardines rather than jigs and bombs. Two of our anglers had the rare experience of catching three wahoo on 'dines and straight monofilament line on the same day! Most of us got our skinnies on 2/0 to 4/0 hooks with wire leaders of 40 to 65 pounds breaking strength. Single and multi-strand wire leaders both worked well.
Because many wahoo strikes are missed, wire leaders often return to the angler kinked or mangled by the razor-edged tiny triangles edging the jaws of the striped sprinters.
I had great success straightening multi-strand leaders with a nifty tool made by John Pandeles of Walnut. Pandeles was a pioneer in fishing big tuna with small international reels and Spectra line, and he specializes in building nifty Corvettes. A couple of passes along the brutalized wire with the tool restored the wire to a usable condition.
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