ensenada baja california mexico

Written by Steve Ross

For all intents and purposes the albacore are gone from the Ensenada area. I am talking about the traditional schools of fish and volume.   At the tail end of their existance here are a few big boys who have refused to leave their Eastern Pacific migration and typically these are the larger scale models.  The San Diego Sport Fishing fleet has discovered a few of these old guys hanging around the "Hidden Bank" area along with their cousins the yellowfin tuna.  So in dense fog Gail, Juan Lu, Jovan and me braved the limited visibility and darkness of night to depart up to the Hidden Bank and try and catch a Tuna.  We left at 1:00 a.m. this Saturday the 4th of September and found excellent live sardines from Armando at the live bait receiver in Ensenada Harbor.  Then off we went.  We put the jigs in and began trolling at first light just above and outside of the 385 and shortly thereafter we got a jig strike on a 7Strand Tuna Clone Feather daisy chain that I had built.  Precisely 31.45 over 117.16. and so our journey began heading for the Hidden Banks.  As we arrived my radar screen was full of boats.....dozens of them and miraculously we found an unmolested kelp paddy.  I fought an albacore on live sardine to the boat and it weighed 33 pounds......WOW.......a toad.  All the boats were stopped and chumming and soaking live baits which I guess payed off for them but not for us and we came back to the Marina Coral with the two fish....end of story by Bad Dog