July 8

Written by Shogun

Wednesday, 09 July 2008 11:58

July 8 We’ve had an exciting day aboard the Shogun. We’ve been in an area that has some very spectacular schools of small bluefin- exactly what we’re looking for. Today was an Audobon special with whales, albatross, jumping bluefin- and albacore- sometimes all around the boat. The bluefin are two year old bluefin- about 15-18 lb fish- perfect for collecting- and placing in wells flowing with seawater below the deck. The bluefin made some spectacular shows- at the surface- aggressively feeding, jumping and exciting all of us. We have not seen such intense surface action in two years. Sure enough we slid in on the fish and both crew and scientists hooked up with live sardines. Our first priority was to fill the wells so that we could transport the bluefin back to Monterey for our Tuna Research and Conservation Center program. Here the bluefin will be put through a variety of programs including having a new heart rate tag implanted inside the body cavity. Eventually some might make it to the “show” the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s outer bay waters tank where today, bluefin as large as 500 lbs collected 8 years ago by the Shogun are swimming gracefully. Once we collected fish and filled the wells- the archival tagging began. We were able to get out about 8 tags, a great start, all programmed to take high resolution data- at 4 second intervals. Imagine this- every 4 seconds we get ambient light, temperature, pressure and internal body temperature. The data allows us to “see” what a bluefin does from the second he or she leaves the boat. We’re hoping the tagged fish will remain in the Ocean for years- with the tag capable of over 5 years or more of data logging. To date, our TOPP research team has collected with our archival tags over 50,000 days of Pacific bluefin tuna data, and our research will provide scientists and fisheries managers the basic information required to build models of how the bluefin use the California Current waters. It has been a super day- with inspiring shows from juvenile bluefin- with a scattered albacore bite mixed in later in the day. We’re headed in to San Diego with the load of fish and our team could not be happier. –Dr Barbara Block

July 6

Written by Shogun

Monday, 07 July 2008 04:12

Our Stanford University and Monterey Bay Aquarium annual tuna tagging and collecting trip has begun aboard the F/V Shogun with Captains Norm & Bruce. We left San Diego on a hot and sunny Saturday afternoon, loaded up with live bait, electronic tags, and sampling gear to study tunas for the next 9 days. Our objectives are to collect small bluefin to bring back to our lab- and to continue the archival tagging of live fish with implantable tags. Our trip is part of the Tagging of Pacific Pelagics program (www.topp.org). Together the tuna team at TOPP has deployed over 1000 electronic tags in bluefin, yellowfin and albacore tunas. The team has focused implanting tags in bluefin, with over 430 thus far. In addition we’ve put in over 239 tags in albacore tuna. Our first day out we headed toward San Clemente Island where there had been a sighting of bluefin tuna in the past week. The Sea surface temperature charts looked interesting to the south of the island and we worked a frontal area from the 43 bank up toward the island. Water temperatures were in the range one would expect for bluefin. We were greeted by fin whales and blue whales, as well as schools of bonitos. Our Ph.D students, Dan and Nishad, sampled the bonitos to compare their physiology and ecology with tunas as we continued looking for bluefin to collect or tag. Sure enough on the first day late in the afternoon, Mr. Chuck Farwell sighted some jumpers that turned out to be the one show of bluefin all day. The fish went down and sunk out of sight when we approached the school but our spirits were high having seen the right size for collecting so quickly. Seas were calm, food was terrific and the entire team looked forward to having a bite. Word of bluefin to the south of us was solid- so we’re hoping to head in this direction in the coming days.

July 4

Written by Shogun

Monday, 07 July 2008 02:46

Happy Independence day to all, We here aboard Shogun celebrated in grand style with flat calm weather and limit style fishing in the albacore area. Our thirteen passengers had there hands full with multiple double digit stops of 18 to 35 pound longfins. The weather couldn't be better, good visibility and most of us actually had shorts on, for those of you that don't fish out here in the summer time wearing shorts is a novelty, June gloom is still holding tough. Big Fish Happen, Bruce A. Smith Allan Chen(Owner of the open party boat Tigerfish in the bay area) and brother Burton holding a couple of fine specimens.

July 5

Written by Shogun

Monday, 07 July 2008 03:05

We left today on the annual Monteray Bay Aquerium/Stanford University tagging and collection trip. The weather is good and the fishing is improving. Fishing for a living, M/V Shogun

July 3

Written by Shogun

Thursday, 03 July 2008 13:32

It was a good day, or half a day I should say, on the cod grounds. Our group here is extremely talented at fishing for these shallow water reds, which took alot of the pressure off of the guy upstairs. The hot ticket is spectra with a short top shot of mono, a single dropper which has a sparse tied shrimp fly attached and a diamond bar on the bottom for weight. For our afternoon we looked offshore for not too much action. Big Fish Happen, Bruce A. Smith

July 2

Written by Shogun

Wednesday, 02 July 2008 23:33

Willies trip is on par after today. Par, for this group of anglers means excellent fishing by any standards. Yellowtail were biting from the surface iron on down to the bottom for the guys who wanted to "take a break" and use a dropper loop(since their arms were tired from cranking jigs or pulling on fish!) Before we pulled anchor this morning we had a dozen 28 to 35 pound yellowtail and three 30 to 45 pound white sea bass laying on the deck. From there out for the remainder of the day we hit spot after spot of willing fish, most being that famous "Benitos" grade of 16 to 22 pounds. The weather has come down quite a bit from yesterday and we are hopeing it will hold while we make our way back to the albacore grounds. Big Fish Happen, Bruce A. Smith

July 1

Written by Shogun

Wednesday, 02 July 2008 23:33

For the most part, today we spent traveling to points south. Once we arrrived to the area, we finally got onto a spot of biting yellowtail and we had smiles all around. Sort of pulling it out at the last minute, right before it got too dark to see. Never say die! Big Fish Happen, Bruce A. Smith

June 29

Written by Shogun

Monday, 30 June 2008 10:18

It was a tough day on the albacore grounds. The wind was up and for whatever reason it seemed to put the fish down. We did manage our best score this year on the longfins, and overall we are seeing more and more signs of fish. Hopefully in a short time things will shape up and start rocking and rolling. Well, never mind that rolling part we got in on enough of that today. Big Fish Happen, Bruce A. Smith

<< 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 >>