BY CAPT. DAVID BACON
HALF MOON BAY – Huli Cat went out to Deep Reef for a rockfish/salmon combo trip. While fishing 7 miles from Pillar Point Harbor, Capt. Tom and Capt Mike Cabanas noticed some big splashes which wound up being bluefin tuna up to roughly 150 pounds. Tuna fever got too hot to bear so they stopped rockfishing, ran out three 2-speed rods and reels and dropped lines back. The lines got hopelessly tangled, so it was back to rockfish to finish limits. Many folks heard about the bluefin including Darrell Ticehurst who said “let’s go tomorrow!” on his boat Noosa Cat.
Out on the grounds at the crack of 9:00a.m., tuna were jumping and lines went in 4 to 5 miles from Pillar Point Harbor. Ticehurst throttled back to 6.7 knots and a hook-up was almost instantaneous on a plain cedar plug in the short rigger position, about 80 feet back. There were 5 people on board: Darrell Ticehurst of Hillsborough, Paul Peoples of San Bruno, Dean Hafeman of Hillsborough, Michael Maulick of Pacifica and Capt. Tom Mattusch of El Granada.
Paul pulled on the fish until his arms were hurting, handed off to Darrell, who handed off to Capt. Tom, who handed off to Dean, who handed off to Michael. There were multiple rounds of handoffs until finally the bluefin came to gaff after 1 hour and 32 minutes of sheer battle on 50-pound test mono, a Penn International 30 reel set to 14 pounds of drag and CalStar 6455 XH A/R rod. Two gaffs, a line on the tail and the fish came on board for pictures. Numerous private boaters went out for a crash course on bluefin fishing, but sadly many were totally undergunned and many fish were lost.
