With warming waters, recent good offshore fishing and Tuna on the mind, this year’s trip left the dock at 6:00am on Sunday 9/8 with 26 Alumni and friends ready to haul in the “big one.” We trolled southwest past the Coronado Islands to the 302, the 371 and eventually the 425 in search of Yellowfin Tuna (YFT).

While this was a long haul (about a 3 hour steam) it allowed for alums from many different classes and generations to get to know one another, talk about old Saints stories of yesteryear, the administration, sports teams and how nice the campus is now. Many wished they had the opportunity to attend Saints now! Maybe there will be some continuing ed classes offered soon 😉

We made it down to the 302 and Captain Chris (Seawatch out of Seaforth) ran right up on a private boater so I knew 2 things immediately. 1 – He must know the boater as there is no way a commercial captain would do that and 2. The boat was on Tuna. Both of which were true. The private boat had about 5 guys on it, with 2 bent poles the whole 30 or so minutes were there. The deck hands chummed with sardines as the sonar was showing big schools of fish. Most of us were using live fin bait, a few were throwing colt snipers and the boat next to us had fish on – not even a bite for the Saintsmen! That’s how it is with YFT – they might be right under you boat but you gotta get em to come up and stay up – we just couldn’t. Someone still had a banana on the boat at this point right Dennis and Kenzo?

So as a good captain does, he goes and finds the next school. We motored about an hour south to the 371 and ended up in the parking lot – as they call it. However, for today there were not that many boats out as it was snotty with cross chop – a few had lost their morning meals on the way down if you know what I mean!

El Capitan made a good decision. He got us on a school, the deck hands got em up to the boat and your Saintsmen and Friends brought em in! We sat on the school for a few hours bringing about 60 YFT – blood decks abound! Many on the trip had never caught a YFT before so they were like little kids in a candy store, also laboring over the hard work it is to even bring a 20lb speed demon of the sea on board!

We perused south to the 425 for one last look but it was dry so we motored north with the trollers out for the ride home. One of the clickers went off, it was another YFT – this time a lone breezer. Something of a rarity this summer as there have been very few blind strikes on the jig – actually the first one on this boat all summer.

More stories, libations food and snoozing ensued as we headed back to the dock with another year in the books.

A special shout out to the special 5 – Dave Knoll, Justin Williams, John Sweetman, Gene Bianchi and Troy Gorostiza – They have been on all 10 Alumni Fishing Trips.