HALIBUT LIMITS ON THE ENDEAVOR!

Thursday, August 8th I hitched a ride with Steve and Jeff to Ventura to fish on Whitney Uyeda’s charter on the Endeavor.  After a 3-hour, traffic-laden drive, we met Cathy at Andrea’s for a fish and chips dinner.  When we finished, we made the short drive around the bay to Ventura Sportfishing.

Our trip was on the Endeavor, owned and operated by Tucker McCombs.  Whitney’s passenger list included Fumio Ogashi, Butch Brown, Rodney Aota, Jason Uyeda, Kief Adler, Dan Clause, Shannon Gallagher, Jeff Chuang, Steve Chuang, Cathy Needleman and me.  It’s a great group to fish with.  Experienced anglers, friendly and fun to fish with. 

We unloaded our gear and signed in at the office.  It was much colder up there than the weather we had left in Orange County.  The crew finished cleaning up the boat early and welcomed us on board.  After selecting a bunk, we set up our tackle.  Crew assisted us in setting up our outfits.  Marcus set mine up for me.  That was fortunate for me since dropper Loops are set up differently than we’ve been doing.  They have good fishing on 30-pound fluorocarbon dropper-loop with a shorter loop for the hook.  This setup is used for both halibut and seabass.  We’d been using a 50- or 60-pound mono dropper-loop, with a long loop and free-swinging hook for seabass and a reverse dropper-loop for halibut when fishing around Catalina and San Clemente Islands. We also set up another outfit with a quarter ounce slider or a leadhead with a fluke. 

After Tucker gave the Safety Speech, he said we would be fishing halibut in the morning then chasing the seabass the rest of the day. We made a quick stop at the bait receiver for live anchovies then we were off to Santa Rosa Island. I was tired since the kittens had kept me up the previous night, so I hit the bunk.  

I got up around 5 the next morning.  The crew must have had good luck making squid since two of the tanks contained lots of live squid.  About the same time, Tucker found our spot and put the anchor down. He advised us to grab our dropper-loop outfits and bait up. As soon as the boat settled on the anchor, he said to put our dropper-loops down.  I downed my morning meds, brushed my teeth, grabbed a cup of coffee and a breakfast cookie.  Before I could finish the cookie, someone hooked a fish.  I dropped the cookie, put the coffee down and grabbed my rod. 

That was the beginning of a long day on the anchor catching trophy halibut.  It was like fishing in Alaska.  I fished in the bow so I missed seeing all the action but I was able to hear cheers when a fish was landed.  News traveled angler to angler from stern to bow with the good news and details of the catch.  Shannon caught all his fish on the Fluke - eleven of them! Jeff and Steve caught their fish on both dropper-loops and flukes and Steve’s big rug was caught on the fluke (with extra jewelry).  Fumio caught fish on flukes and various other eye-catching jigs.

I couldn’t get the correct action down to entice a halibut bite on the fluke.  I think my spectra was the wrong size or weight because the fluke floated instead of sinking.  I did manage to catch two halibut on the same squid – twice.  I found dead squid worked better than live ones too.  Tucker said it was because the halibut were swimming around the bottom slurping up dead squid.

There were a few incidental catches as well.  Steve caught a black seabass, Jeff caught a barracuda and I caught a soupfin shark.

Everyone caught at least one halibut.  Steve and Cathy caught 4 each; I caught 6 and Jeff caught 7.  I don’t know how many fish Whitney caught but I know he caught a nice 31-pound halibut that ended up taking jackpot.  

Around noon, Tucker let us know we were working toward boat limits of halibut (5 fish per person) and we only had 5 to go.  Once we reached boat limits, Tucker moved the boat closer to the island to fish for seabass and calicos using #2 hooks with 2 to 3 anchovies on the hook.  No seabass were caught but I did catch a sheepshead (and released it).  It was late and the crew had 60 halibut to filet so we headed for home.

Thanks, Whitney, for including me on your charter with this wonderful group of anglers.  And thanks too for the great goodie bag of flukes and Dinoheads (which are priceless). 

This was a once in a lifetime trip!  Everyone caught fish; the boat limited out on halibut for the first time and our Chartermaster won jackpot. 

After we offloaded and put our gear in our vehicles, the crew handed out the fish.  That’s when we realized we had a problem.  Three of us with limits of halibut in one car.  Too many filets to fit into our two ice chests.  Steve had to make a quick trip to Target to get a fish box to put the filets in.  We never expected that.

I’m including Fumio’s trip report posted on Instagram.  I love his rendition of the trip.   I’ll let the following photos tell the rest of the story.