I just wanted to say to thanks to everyone for another great trip on the Topgun 80. The crew was once again very pleased at the way everyone worked together to get the job done. Bob, Scott and the crew worked hard. Bruce and Jerry cooked us up some fine meals, we even had steak and lobster one night. The food was highlighted by an incredible sushi spread for the Sunday afternoon "snack time". I still am in total awe of Guadalupe Island. What a place! It looks like Jurassic Park and is loaded with size large fish and Great White Sharks.

We left Thursday night, loaded 300 scoops of prime time dines and worked our way down south to an area where the Bigeyes and fatso albies had been caught earlier in the week. We shut down at about 95 miles and loaded up on the giant squid to use for bait at Guadalupe. At greylight the fatso albies made a mini charge and we hooked 5, landing 4. Unfortunately, that was pretty much our day. We metered a few more schools of albies that just did not want to play. We found lots of kelps. But, nobody wanted to play. We did scratch a couple of smaller yellowfin as we headed to Guad. We arrived at Guad around 10 pm and were able to put a couple of nice sized yellowtail on the deck during the night bite.

The next morning brought nice weather and lots of yellowfin. What a great grade of fish. Most of the fish we landed were between 40 and 70 pounds. However, Mr. Great White Shark had other ideas about who got the fish. The G.W’s were like fleas. Watching a couple of 15 to 18 foot sharks swim around the boat is pretty cool for the first five minutes. Then it gets a little old as they eat all the large fish right next to the boat. Talk about heartbreaks! Everywhere we went, we always had a couple of them on us. We would head to a new spot, start a chum circle, look in the water and low and behold there is a great white in the chum circle. It was crazy! We literally lost 40 percent of our fish, including all of the size large ones (100+_pounders) to the "tax collector." Some people were on fish for close to an hour only to lose em to "Uncle Charlie".

Day 2 at Guad brought more quality yellowfin, less sharks and a chance to fish "Heartbreak Ridge." H.R is a spot on the front side of the island where the size large yellowtail live. It was a pretty incredible bite with yellowtail eating and breaking off people on the 60 pound test line. All of the yellows we landed were in the 30- 45 pound class. Boy were they mean!

At dark we headed into the beach and worked our way up the line to an area about 85 miles from San Diego where we found a kelp patty loaded with the smaller grade of yellowfin. We experienced wide open fishing and put the hurt to em and then headed for the barn.

All in all we landed over 200 y.f.t’s, 55+ yellowtail, 4 albacore, a handful of calico’s, lots of gnarly whitefish and one monster 4 inch sculpin that ate a six inch sardine caught by yours truly. We definitely had lots of fun on the trip! I am already looking forward to doing it again next year!

It looks like next years trips will be in late July (2.5 day) and late Sept./early Oct for the 4 day.

Wes
 - Wes, Sun, 3 Oct 2004 11:35PM