I corrected my list to only include Saltwater / Freshwater.  It looks like I only have 333 species which is less than I thought.  I'll post it up here during my downtime after surgery.

In between all the business trying to prepare for my Surgical Downtime (Pulling down X-Mas stuff from attic, yard work, prepping chairs since I'll be living on them for a bit) I decided to start to try and engineer a sling for my trout rod that would let me fight a fish and reel in without using my right arm.

I've come up with a few possible configurations, but that reeling in the handle on the wrong side (affectionately known as "Squatch-Handed" reel) is still a bit tough.  Only have a couple of more days to figure it out, but hope to have a working concept here by Thursday.

I'll post pictures when done.

Man, what a cluster!  They stocked some HUGE Golden and Blue Rubies as well as normal trophy rainbows.  I was amazed watching some of the videos and talking with the Rangers.

On the other note, I'm glad I wasn't fishing.  Fist fights, Kids just disrespecting other anglers, and crowds.... I mean CROWDS!!!! 
Dave is going today so hopefully he gets one of the beasts.  I'll throw up a report for him if he's successful.  I would join him, but I have a 13-hour day ahead of me all week leading up to my surgery because apparently surgery is just unpaid time off and I'm costing the company while I'm gone even though they aren't paying me.

Quote from: jrodda on November 08, 2026, 05:10:36 PMthis guy rolls up in front of me, middle of the ocean, and stops 150 yards in front of me, apparently as the spot he wanted to relax on the boat with his family. I know we were in no danger, but why stop in front of the only boat around? Because you're an idiot.

BTW, there's no shortage of them out there.  Whether it's done on purpose or sheer ignorance, incompetence, Negligence, or Naivety...  The 80% rule works for every facet of life, especially in boating where it's more like 90%.  (That's only my rule I've been running with the last 20 years... thus my boat's name... the Curmudgeon!)  hahaha

Well, I hope you get out Friday. I'm going to need something to read about in my post op drugged up state!

Congratulations on Concolors first ahi!  Hopefully it just gets better. Love the pics and the story.

Sasquatch went out today for nothing and hopefully we see a report from him, but well... you know...

Bravo again!

It was the last weekend before my surgery and I was going to take my boat out one more time by hell or high water.  Friday night, the marine conditions looked good.

Saturday morning ramp... a cluster f@ck...  Ugh...

As usual, the marine weather was way off in both size of the swells (x2) and the wind speeds.  What a washing machine out there!





Warm water everywhere, but not as clean as it used to be.  Also not a single strand of kelp anywhere to be found!

No way I was going to get to the 178 or at least burn up a lot of time getting there and I needed meat for the fridge!  I know the fleet has been fishing the inside dropoff, so I decided to start there.  I had a few buddies out there also we were going to buddy boat and keep all of us informed.  Friday was a great day for the fleet... but you know how that goes... Should have been here yesterday...

My buddy called me on the radio when I get a triple hook up!  Bent butt/Spreader Bar (This one at least sounded right) as well as both my jet head side trollers.  Unfortunately trolling 5 rods takes a bit to set up and to figure out how to fight the fish in without tangle.  I had to do the spreader bar last since it was the furthest out but started with the rods that were not bit and moved up from there.  Lost a football on the bounce and picked up the second.  Now to the bigger one.  Funny how a 20# yellowfin can dwarf the little 5-6# footballs!  LOL... But NOOOOO!  The 20# model pulled the hook 15' from the boat.  ARGH!!!!!!

Well, at least I got one of the 3 of the triple hook up.



Immediately these f@cktards came out of nowhere and started doing circles around me.  Jezus christ I hate Saturdays as well as the "New Money" anglers.



After 4 loops he took off and I commenced trolling.

I picked up another YFT and lost a few more but they were even smaller.  I saw the fleet and decided to do a huge circle around them to get any outer orbit fish that were well away from everyone.



Tons of bullet Tuna...



I caught 5 or 6 and it was just nice catching something.







I was near the ledge and decided to drop for some rockfish before heading in for the day.  The wind got up to 20 knots and I was soaking wet from all of the spray.

No working trolling motor so I had to manually motor in place as best I could.  I made a dozen drops before realizing it was too much as I was taking water over the stern.

I got a red...



As well as 4 or 5 sculpin.





Turned around and two douche bags started trolling circles around me.  My god....



I picked up an few more whitefish and called it the day. 



Not what I had in mind for the last ride of 2026, but not too bad coming home with some tuna and groceries.

Now it's time to prep the house before going under the knife again.

Thanks for reading and until next tide!

"'Bring a dropper loop rod...'
Translation: Go catch white seabass, yellowtail, barracuda, bonito, and yellowfin tuna in depths where none of them are supposed to be. Totally normal day. Nothing weird about that at all.  I think the baits been deeper to keep cooler.  My yellowfin were plugged with squid and that yellow I caught 400'+ deep is just more evidence.

Also, congratulations on accidentally becoming Southern California's largest private barracuda processing facility." 😆

Hell yeah Clan Timmy!  And HEY JERRY!

Nicely done down at the bat cave and those are some nice leopards to boot!

So much fun and no boat to "Gas Up"!

Awesome trip guys!  Nothing like some big bats to put smiles on everyone's faces!

Thank goodness for the cart!

I was supposed to fly out for Dad's 80th birthday, but then my surgery got scheduled and the planets just never seemed to align.

There was only one thing Dad wanted for his birthday, though, and it was something he wanted me to make.

Twenty-six years ago, I built him a wooden sign for their house up in the hills. Somehow that sign survived 26 years of snow, ice, rain, sun, and everything else Mother Nature could throw at it. Back then, I shipped it out for what felt like pocket change compared to today's shipping costs.

When Dad asked for a replacement, I told him I'd build something he'd love.

The original sign used real antlers, which seemed like a great idea at the time. Unfortunately, the local rodents thought they were a snack, and the neighborhood kids apparently viewed them as souvenirs because they kept trying to steal them off the sign.

So with that in mind, I got to work on version 2.0.

I also built the shipping crate like a tank because there was no way I was trusting this project to make the trip unprotected.

Here's the progression from start to finish:

I went resin this time.



PNW Redwood.



Rounded edges and smoothed out.



Honey stain and nautical rope trim.















Arrived today and the shipping is 5x as much as the last time I shipped one to him.





He was really happy with it and was as stoked as I've heard him in years.  Last time I saw him this happy he had a hole in one!  Okay, well he was happier over the hole in one.  hahahah

I need to get the rail mount for my camera. Probably could use a remote control to start recording also.

Great stuff Tim!

BTW, the tuna are 7 miles off Delmar

I assume my shoulder will probably be getting "Plan B".

I really want a hoo but I'm getting sick and tired of running offshore when sometimes all I want is to just fish locally.  Having this super El Nino has me really wanting a Hoo (Top 10 fish on my bucket list), especially a local one.

My buddy Scott went on his boat but travelled outside the islands where the fleet has been churning the water with their trolling.  I opted for the close local banks as the amount of high speed trolling really messes with my gas milage. 

Conditions looked good before the storm so my fingers were crossed.



Even a sailboat was headed out the inlet with two 50 wide trollers on the back!



I wired up one of my Mad Macs just in case.  I was ready for my Hoo!



My plan was to only troll 4 rods this time and have the Mad Mac on my electric reel so I can reel up quickly if one of the other rods get hit. 



I passed a bunch of birds and dolphin but didn't see much on the meter and it was right on the shelf drop off.  I didn't see any fish, but those annoying birds that kept grabbing my micro jig I planned on using to catch little yellows for bait with.  I should have tried around a bit more, but I was already hearing wahoo being caught and knew I had to get to the outside of the banks that were still 7 miles to go.



The life around the ocean was non-existent out here and hardly any sword guys also anchored up.  I was only trolling for 45 minutes when I thought I saw two birds floating on the water and realized it was a fish.  I started trolling over to it thinking it was a marlin but NOPE!  It was probably a 9-10 foot Mako!  Holy sh!t it was huge and I wanted it!  I trolled right past it and it came over looking at my trolling spread but didn't attack.  I reeled up my trolling gear while keeping an eye on it and put on some wire leader to a big circle hook.  I brought some Big squid in case I deep dropped for swords while I was out there.
The minute I was all baited up I looked up and he was gone.  No where to be found...  Jeezus!!!
(I actually have some video on my action camera, but I need to figure out how to post video's here.)
I searched and search but no love so I put the trollers back out.  About 20 minutes later and I get a screamer on the marlin jig!  A decent marlin (probably 90ish pounds) jumping and doing marlin things.  I kept the boat in gear and reeled up my trollers.  By the time I started to crank on him, I only got a few minutes of fight before it threw the hook and gone...  Ugh... This was going to be one of those mornings.

I decided to switch things up and throw on the Kogahead as a troller and pulled out the McRib for good luck!



Next 30 minutes not a thing so I took off the Kogahead and put the other Marlin Jig on.  I loved the spread I was trolling but just needed to find some fish.
Soon as I switched the lures, I saw a couple of fins out of the water and trolled by.  It was another marlin but made a few turns and just disappeared.  I boxed the area for a bit for nothing. 

I kept trolling (zig zagging from the outside ridge, over the high point to the inside ridge and back.  I saw a few more fins and cruised over to see a baby swordfish!  Well, it was probably 50-60 pounds so just the size I wanted!  I cast the big squid out to it, but it literally just sounded and I saw on the sonar it heading to the bottom. 
I decided at this point I was going to drop for swords.  I went on a drift from 650' to 1100'.    I actually made a test drop to see if I would get any tangles and soon as it hit bottom I was on!  Finally a fish in the bag, but it messed up my squid...  Good thing I had a second.



I reused the bait and caught a couple for the bag.  By far the deepest rockfish I have caught.  I was at least hoping for a black gill!





They were puking up a bunch of tuna crab!



I decided to reset and really drop for swords.  I set it at 800' and made a killer drift but to no avail.



It was getting late and I made the call to run and gun looking for a paddy or any sign of fish.  I heard they were crushing the YFT off LJ but I wanted to look for my hoo.  As I was running, the water erupted in front of my boat and a HUGE Marlin jumped!  It had a sharp dorsal fin and was probably 400+ pounds!  I put out the two big marlin jigs and trolled for a half hour in the zone for nothing.  Now I am way later than I was expecting, especially being on Halloween that I have to get back to the house.

During my troll, I had two screaming rippers on the smaller chrome jet head, but neither stuck.  They were screamers so I had no idea what they were.

I ran to the inside ledge and saw absolutely nothing.  No boats, no fish, no nothing... but I did see some stuff on the sonar as I was coming up so I dropped the electric for sharks/swords and also the bass rod since it was only 450'.

Then out of the blue, a boat starts running right towards me and set up about 200' away.  WTF were they doing?  They had no clue and just wanted to have another boat around, but it really irked me they did this.  It was almost worse than stealing a paddy since there was no reason I should be there so definitely even worse than why they shadowed me. (I took the picture but decided not to post it)

I could see my big squid getting smashed by smaller fish and I couldn't hook them on that big squid/hook combo.  I dropped my bass gear and put on a 250-gram pink ball jig with a strip of big squid strip on it.  I hit the bottom and made a few bounces when WHAM!!!!!  I knew it was big right away!  I took my time, but man, I could barely gain any ground on him.  Every time I got 20 yards, he took 20 yards or more.  Then I noticed him getting wrapped in my electric line so now the panic started setting in.  I kept thinking it was a shark this deep, but it would have definitely bit through that line holding the proportionally smaller hooks.

Finally, I get it to color and HOLY CRAP!  A Yellow from 450+ feet down!  Unfriggin real!



I made one more drop as I was already 2 hours behind schedule and nothing so I packed up and headed to the barn.

What started out as a promising trip, turned south pretty quick, but literally the last cast saved the day!

It was an easy ride back and the boat was cleaned and covered up for the storm.  Today was not what I was dreaming about, but that last second win sure was sweet.

Thanks for reading!

Hahahaha, pretty fun story.  Well, not you dropping the phone in the water, but the "state-of-the-art-from-2001 fish finder" had me laugh out loud a bit.

Nice bowtie! (That's what we called little dolphin out east)

Seriously though, at least you caught something.  Catching nothing is WAY worse.  You could have used one of Koga's lures and claimed that is the reason for the lack of catching.  His big black cloud following you about.  lol