There is a certain similarity between going albacore fishing and asking a girl out on a date. Should I go, are the fish going to bite? Boy this is going to cost a lot of money... Well after driving home from San Diego to Santa Barbara Sunday afternoon I stopped by Harbor Tackle to pick up some plastics for the freshwater bite at Margarita and the guy there is saying something about how Merit got some fish today and how he's going out tonight. I chatted with him a bit, bought a pile of green sardine fish traps and mentally started to reschedule my plans to get on the boat at 10pm! At 8:30 I was on the floor in my room with my jigmaster torn apart wiping the grease off the drag washers. By 8:45 it was back together and man that Newell kit sure is sweetness. Jason on the Stardust told me to get rid of the grease and this was obviously how these drags were meant to be. More errands and I get to the landing at 9:15. At first it looked like it was going to be full boat but that was just the other guys getting off from the trip before. The word was good and they said they'd left 'em biting with about 70 fish in the sacks. By 11 we cleared the bait dock with only 14 guys onboard and we were on our way for a long boat ride out to the Rodriguez seamount. Conditions were awesome, barely any wind and a small swell on a long interval. At 5:45am we were on the spot and I soaked a bait in the dark for a bit with everyone else while we waited for enough light to troll. The area seemed fishy with small seabirds wheeling in the darkness but it took until 7:30 to get our first hookup on the troll. I had the first bait in the water but only one bait fish was taken by Chazz who was pinheading on the trip. We didn't waste too much time here and started trolling at 7:45. At 8:30 HOOKUUPPPP!!! A troll rod went off and out flew the baits. I dropped a sardine in on the slide and was bit instantly. The cries of fresh one! went up as rods went bendo everywhere. I had my fish on for about 30 seconds until it came straight up and down and pop it was gone, broken off on 25 pound. I may have gotten sawed off it was hard to tell there were lines everywhere but damn that sucked. Wanting to get another bait in the water I grabbed my 40 pound stick and wound up in a tangle right away. By the time I cut out of that there was only one or two more hookups and the remaining fish were brought to the gaff. That was our best stop of the day with about 15 fish landed. We set out trolling again and saw fish breaking on the sauries here and there but never found the mother lode. On one stop we got another 4 or 5 fish and then a couple 2 fish stops until they stopped biting around 11:30. The same guys seemed to get bit on every stop and it seemed that clear 20 pound was doing was the ticket although one guy had 5 bites on 30 pound, breaking off 2 and landing 3. Guess it's part luck and part skill. What can I say about the conditions? The weather could not have been better. The water was 57 to 58 degrees with fish coming off a subtle temperature break from 14.6 up to 14.8 degrees celsius. There was a lot sauries in the area puddling or breezing along when the albies got under them. As to the gear, like I said 20 pound was about right with either a 3/4oz rubbercore or a 1/2oz slider. One thing I could have really used on this trip was a shorter rod. I was fishing my Calstar 900L with a Newell 332 and it was just too much rod for fishing tuna. No one fished plastics and although a few guys had a go with the chrome colored irons they didn't get any fish. Merit (the captain) got one from the weelhouse the day before on the iron but it strictly a bait affair on this trip. <BR>Still haven't caught my first albie but you learn something every time you go. One of these days I'm due for a trip where they come up and bite the 60 twenty feet from the boat. Until then...