By: Rob Whittaker – Charter Master One
Prior to the trip the FIB’ers were contacted by text and email to bring a 30lb setup with 30lb fluorocarbon and 50-60lb setup with #2 circle hooks for bait. Captain Jim Hughes, of The Cortez out of Seaforth Landing in San Diego was preparing to leave at 5:00PM in the afternoon on October 2nd. Some of the FIB’ers began gathering at the landing at 3:30PM. Val Handzus and I met with Captain Jim “Rambo” at 4:00PM who said that the boat would be ready for us to board earlier than our expected departure time.
Those who had not arrived were contacted and told “Capt is ready to load” and at 4:20PM Captain Jim called from the back deck of the Cortez to those waiting at the top of the landing ramp for us to start boarding. When all 18 passengers were on board, we launched from the dock shortly after 5:00PM. We loaded up with bait and Captain Jim gave his safety speech and also said that we will need to be prepared for 24 hours of fishing as we were hunting Bluefin. We prayed for the trip and headed out to calm seas under the cool marine layer over the bay.
The next morning, we were out somewhere near Tanner Bank searching for Bluefin Tuna. Captain Jim searched all morning and spotted some fish on the finder at 9:45AM. We sent our lines in with baitfish and 30 to 40lb setups and did not get any bites. The search continued but unfortunately, Rambo was not able to locate any Bluefin. After a good Italian lunch Captain Jim had us change to dropper loop and jig setups for Rockfish. After arriving at the 300’ spot we all dropped down and Jean Mark Yan was the first to pull up a nice size Red Rockfish. Soon, almost everyone had landed at least one nice Red. We drifted off the “hot spot” and the captain realigned the boat for a second drop. Soon everyone had limits of Rockfish with 58 total on board.
The search continued for the elusive Bluefin Tuna and somehow, they avoided our experienced Captain Jim and our fish finder. We enjoyed some of the calmest seas with little wind, a slight cool breeze and warm afternoon sun. Once the sun went down, we enjoyed a steak dinner while continuing to look for fish. It was recommended by Tom Handzus to donate the collected jackpot money to support the FIB’ers Kids trips, with an option of a refund since we did not land any prize sportfish worthy of winning the jackpot. Charter Master Two, JR Banda announced this and all agreed. The search continued and later that evening we started the long trip back to San Diego. We had been to Tanner, all-around Tanner, and covered a lot of the Pacific on our search for the elusive Bluefin Tuna.









