Nor Cal Albacore News

[Crab Pot]

I heard this morning on the Bob Simms Radio Show, KFBK 1530 Sacramento, that a 6-Pack charter with two anglers went 64 miles do west of Fort Bragg and caught two limits of Albacore. A limit here is 25.

That's a poke for most private boats but good news. Two seasons ago we were catching the Long Fins within sign of the Noyo Bridge at approx. 8-10 miles out.

There was also mention that the same boat observed multiple Bluefin boils.

Also good news.

Steve

[Bill B]

 

[Donnyboat]

Got me thinking, 25 per person, is far to high, I would say 5/person, would be plenty, fish for the future, think of the grandchildren, cheers Don.

[Swami805]

25 sounds high but there's not really much sport fishing pressure and it's a very fast growing abundant fishery. They're pretty small as tuna go, most years maybe a 20lb average. Best tasting tuna too to me anyway

[MarkT]

25 sounds high but there's not really much sport fishing pressure and it's a very fast growing abundant fishery. They're pretty small as tuna go, most years maybe a 20lb average. Best tasting tuna too to me anyway

Way better than those BFT that the SoCal guys go nuts over!

[Crab Pot]

Hey Donnyboat,

I have been chasing Long Fin for 40 plus years and never come close to limiting out. I think my best days are 11-13 fish.

To be honest I don't know why there is a limit at all. There is nothing done here to support the breeding like we do with Salmon with revenue taken from our sport fishing licenses, again like the Salmon.

I say that knowing guys like me are the norm and guys like the ones I reported are the exception. THEY FUND THEM AND GOT REWARDED/LUCKY!

I've been to Fremantle and loved every second of it!

Steve

[Maxed Out]

 The albacore follow the Pacific gyre, and are commercially fished in dozens of country's. The population is very abundant and carefully monitored by NOAA. Our state fisheries has in the past, considered daily catch limits, but concluded no limits were necessary, because all sport boats are already limited on how many they can reasonably ice down. Average sport boat is usually plugged with 40-60 albacore. Larger charter boats are plugged at 100-250, depending on size of the refrigerated hold.

 Albacore are warm blooded and require proper cooling, or the histamine buildup will make people sick, and possibly worse. The commercial standard for a 90° albacore, is to cool them down to the core, 50°in 2 hours, and down below 40° in 3 hours. Most sport boats use shaved ice, and can only properly cool the albacore with the amount of ice they have onboard, then they have to stop fishing, which is the same as having a limit on thier daily catch.

 Yes, 5 albacore would work, but 20 takehome is 4 times better, and none gets wasted. Canning them is easy and store in the pantry for couple years, but in my house they get gobbled up before the next summer brings them back to our coast for me to hop on a charter and reload my pantry

[Donnyboat]

Thanks Ted, very informitive, okay sounds good, but I alway think of the future, Steve, did you go South of Fremantle, to Mandurah, or further, South to Bumbury. cheers Don.

[Crab Pot]

DonnyBoat,

I was a young sailor back then, so it's kind of a blur.

I know I went to a open zoo, no cages, and walked around and fed the local animals.

I also went to whatever "bar" the locals recommended. Pinocchio's is a name that comes to mind  .  All I know is your Shela's liked the way we talked and your Blokes liked to fight.

It was in 1986 or 7, you were defending the America's Cup and it was cold! Your winters are opposite of ours. I remember some of the Americas Cup teams breaking masts on there boats it was so windy.

Wonderful country, wonderful people!

Except for those fighting Blokes, could have done without those guys! 

Steve 

[jurelometer]

A bit more on Pacific Albacore migration patterns:

I was in New Caledonia a while back, and at the fish stall in the marketplace, there were stacks of jumbo albacore, nothing looked under 50 lbs. This spurred me to investigate. It turns out there are lots of studies on this topic.

Albacore spawning grounds are in the tropical /subtropical western pacific. The little guys migrate north to the area off the east coast of Japan.  When they reach the juvenile stage (around two years) they move into a large area of the central North Pacific, with most of them seasonally migrating east to feed in the rich California current, and some going west toward Japan.  When the water in the feeding grounds cools, most migrate back to the central Pacific region, with a sub population just hanging out in deeper water off Baja.

The vast majority of the albacore we catch on the west coast of the USA are these two and three year old cycling juveniles.  Once they reach sexual maturity at around six years, they migrate to the spawning grounds in the sub-tropic waters and stay mostly deeper, averaging 200 ft or so.

Albacore are very temperature sensitive when it comes to surface and near surface feeding.  If the sea surface temps are too warm, they will do their surface feeding at night.  There are times when the Albacore are here off the California coast, but we don't see them or catch them because the surface temps are too high for daytime feeding.

The schooling habits of Albacore make it hard to vacuum up large numbers in purse seines as they do with yellowfin and bluefin.  Plus the large migration area makes it difficult to wipe them out with concentrated hook and line effort.  But this also makes it a bit difficult to track the population, so the scientists are not sure how many are out there.

Recreational fishing is estimated to take a low single digit percentage of the overall catch.

Here is one of the more recent papers with tagging data for  horizontal and vertical movement plus water temp.  The fact that they got a pretty high recovery rate on the tags makes me a bit nervous about localized fishing pressure. But I am just a layman...

A really great read:

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/64caa1383d252a3cd984d847/t/6567c8fb2bdf0239665db69c/1701300479260/Childers+et+al+2011.pdf

And to get more exactly on topic- there was a single report last week of albacore caught 80 miles off Half Moon Bay on the Bayside Marine site.  I am not getting my hopes up.  Climate change has made the daytime surface bite a PNW thing for the majority of seasons.  We might get a shot around the SF Bay area now and then, but the SoCal guys are mostly screwed.  They will have to settle for bluefin . 

-J

[Crab Pot]

I knew a guy stationed at Midway Island.

It was good thing he liked to fish because it's a miserable duty station, anyway, the Albacore they caught averaged 70 pounds. The larger ones were in the high 80's and low 90's.

The Eastern Pacific absolutely is the nursery for Long Fins. I'm happy when we get into 20 pound class fish. My PB was a 38 pounder off Santa Cruz.

Steve