BY MICHAEL SCHWEIT
SAN DIEGO— If you have fished for bluefin, you are aware of how hard it is to get them eat a live bait. Techniques have changed that allow fast-falling specialty jigs to increase your rate of success but even then, it can be hours and hours of dropping and winding, dropping and winding until either your arm wants to fall off or the jig stops suddenly and you might be latched onto the fish of a lifetime.
But, let’s make it a bit more difficult and add fly fishing to the mix. While we have fly rods, reels and lines that can handle just about anything, the angler still must balance on a pitching boat —a recreational sport boat no less— and fire out a 60- to 70-foot cast and get the fish to eat. My friend, Steve Petit, had all of that come together on a recent trip and if confirmed, will be the new 20-pound class tippet world record on the fly at 25.9 pounds. But this did not happen in a vacuum and actually came about from one very enthusiastic captain, Max Neue of the Highliner out of Seaforth Sportfishing. He went so far beyond any captain I have fished with in 40-plus years of doing charters that I would name him Captain of the Year.
Fly Fishing on a sportboat is tough enough as there is really no place to have a backcast. Max got very intrigued with the fly-fishing aspect, and when we started to spot foaming fish in the late afternoon, he worked with Colin Waters, a very experienced fly angler (and holder of two fly records, albacore and bluefin) to figure out how to position the boat with the wind and waves. This is something that is done regularly with pangas but a 70-foot boat is a whole different game. But he worked the Highliner into a massive foamer of crashing bluefin until we were within 50 feet of the main body (what a ruckus they were making!) and Colin made the first cast from the bow and hooked up!
Unfortunately, the fish ran under the boat and cut off his line. Not being the type to give up, Max put us in position again and Steve made his cast into the maelstrom and BAM!, he was on! 15 minutes later, thanks to one-to-one direct drive reels, Steve has first fly caught Pacific bluefin on the boat and preliminary scales show it will eclipse Colin’s record.
The rest of the trip was your typical bluefin with some on bait and others on Flat-falls, along with some decent nighttime fishing. But this trip will stick in all of our memory banks for a very long time. I cannot recommend the Highliner any more than the five stars it deserves. From Max and co-captain Mike Stroppel, to deckhands Matt Lee and Joseph Hernandez and Alex Perez, a boat chef that should get a Michelin star just for his boat bacon burgers, it cannot get any better.
