Monterey Bay Aquarium trips on the Shogun...

[cravertosu]

That is pretty neat! Never really thought how the aquariums got their fish!

Thanks for sharing!

[Dave Sikorski]

Keep it coming Mike.

I'm envious of what you must have seen out there on the many trips.

-D

[Captain Michael Buffington]

but until I get home and scan them in the states all I got is several more non aquarium pics. You want to hear the ones with pics?

Mike

[Captain Michael Buffington]

These are some hookless poppers we used to tease yna and trevally up to within range of the flycasters from Thomas and Thomas fly rods in England. They went all the way to the most isolated island in the world. Its a 27 to 30 day trip depending on weather. The island is Clipperton Atoll and the trip is the Clipperton adventure...It lives up to the hype I assure you.

Once we arrived it was about 4 pm and too late to put the guys ashore. We just tooled around sightseeing massive bird schools with 200lbers just flying everywhere. Remember these fellas are "PURIST". They could have cared less. Snapped some pics but thats it. The only other people for many, many miles was this australian family on a medium sized sailboat A mother and father, their 16year old son, and the most beautiful 18yr old daughter in a skinny bikini this 23 year old fisherman had ever seen. Their watermaker wasn't makin' and we delivered this family water and fixed their watermaker everyday for about ten days. Wow she was smokin'. Something about a deserted island and a beautiful chick kept running through my head Thats all the happenings of the day except a fine meal and a good sleep.

At 5am we started getting everything ready for the shorelanding. We had a five man crew for this operation. The reef around CA is dangerous as hell(their are at least three smuggler boats on the reef). It only has one break big enough for a zodiac. Two guys stand chest deep at the channel about 50' off the beach and try not to get eaten by the 15' tiger sharks and mark the channel. Two more stand in the surf to catch and spin the boat and one guy runs the zodiac to and from the Shogun. Sounds simple right?It is most of the time. Everything went off without a hitch and we had 15 "purist" running around like schoolkids catching rainbow runners and small trevally with 6 weights We broke out the 50's and started killin some tuna and wahoo We cleaned up the evidence of slaughter and picked up the stiffs. Time for dinner and off to bed.

The next day everything went off fine with the shorelanding and we start hammerin away on some big tuna. It was forecasted to blow pretty good that night so we cleaned up early and headed in to get the anglers. It was a little rough with the first group of 3 but gottem off. Second group almost didn't make it over the first breaker but got luckyThird group we dropped down to two and did allright. Fourth was a replay...Then all hell broke loose, the wind kicked up and the waves, well lets just say they got bigger, considerably biggerThe first try was a disaster, me and reese are holding on to the straps in the bow holding the bow into the waves. Whitey would be at the wheel and customers were in the bow scared shitless...We timed it and start chaching out as he guns the engine and i remember me and Reese getting jerked up and out of the water and into white water, skiff flipped one bloke got launched up on the beach. Broke like a zillion dollars worth of over priced bamboo and we did it again and again and again...They finally floated us in a big bag of supplies. There was basically a four course meal, ciggarettes, beer, playboys, newspaper, ect. One other thing about CR. when you see it from a distance it shimmers red, that aint sand it land crabs. Trillions of them Well we set up a rock perimeterfor the earls to put their tent in and we crashed on the zodiac. I remember laying there looking up at the moon and stars and thinking how many other people have slept here? The next day everything went fine except for the fact that the land crabs had eaten the fabric of the tent and all the cork off their rods that had survive the waves

Mike

Ill post the pic now, sorry.

[Captain Michael Buffington]

pic.....

[Captain Michael Buffington]

Do I look happy? We I wasn'tI was pissed. That day that is the one and only yellowtail that made it to the boat. The olbvious response is why didn't you hook more...

See thats the problem, we hooked over 150 And like Quinn would have put it "the sea lions took the rest"...It was retarded. You got fish all over biting pretty good. Guy hooks up on a surface iron and he's got him and then crappolaSea lions gottemAll day long they chased us from one kelp bed to another.

We get to one about midafternoon and they are foamin on sardines and dude wings a skip jig up in the middle of it and comes tight. Well I am on Richard from the start, wind, wind, wind...Fish comes up at the bow and I stick him. Well we walk fish to the stern when the action is slow enough so I'm walking it back the starbord side with my left arm. When I get to about midships something just about rips my arm offI look down to see a big old nasty bull sea lion making off with dudes yellowtail

Well I stretch my arm and make sure it still works and get my man Rich back up to the bow with the 100j calstar flingin' iron. Hookup!! I run back and coacin' as much as I could and stick himWell this time I'm walkin' and lookin'We get to about the same spot and out from under he comes. Well I poke and he grabs at the same time and I ended up with 500+pounds of bull sea lion on my calcutta gaff. Well he was not happy to say the least, but was smart enough not to try to run. He just laid there glaring and grunt/howling at meWell Norm Kagawa walks up and nonchalantly ask me "whatcha got there?"...Well we talked it over rationally and decided to release himWell the first try it went a little deeper and so on and so forth. The end of the story looks like a submarine descending with periscope up...

Got the yellowtail thoughThats what they want is the belly...

Mike

[Captain Michael Buffington]

well I think it was the very next trip to the same area. We set up and started smokin' big yellows. I mean no 90lbers but good ones like 30 to 70. We got like 50 that afternoon all that class and then this big bearded fella pulls out the biggest iron I ever saw. It was like 1.5 feet long and 4 inches wide. It had to weigh 3 poundsHe puts it on a high speed 50 and goes to workSecond drop Grizzly Adams scores with this beauty

Mike

[Captain Michael Buffington]

I am not exactly sure how this works. I have ben told by marine biologist this fish is a hermafrodite. The way I remember it is the california sheepshead starts as a female and becomes a male after realizing what a stupid ***** she was...No, thats the story the fish docs told me

Mike

[lpf]

He wasnt lying,

A large percentage of marine fish are, espcially those inhabiting coral reefs. Some are protogynous start out as female and end as male and some are protandrous start as male end as female. Most of the fish I breed are hermaphrodites. Some of the shrimp I breed are simultaneous hermaphrodite meaning they hold both sperm and egg but cannot fertilize themselves, we like to say any two will do.

lpf