Cowboy 7 day journal
June 25 to July 2, 2011

Keeper Dave here.  I'm the guy who manages the website and photo pages for the Qualifier 105.  Once in a while I get to go on a trip too.  We thought it might be a good idea if I were to write up a journal of my time on the Cowboy/Hoag/Cobb 7 Day trip so folks who never have been on a Long Range trip could get a first hand taste of what it's like to spend seven days on the Q. 

Departure day:

We meet at the docks at Point Loma Sportfishing early Saturday.  Everyone unloads their sacks of gear and almost everyone says:  "Wow.  I thought I was over packing until I saw what these other guys are bringing."  Yeah, it's going to be seven days at sea and a trip to Walmart is not an option.  After evaluating everyone elses' gear, our attention turns to our shipmates.  There's Cowboy!  He's one of the chartermasters and will be my roommate.  There's Murph!  At 84 years young, Dennis Murphy is a legend on this trip and we're all happy to see him looking great.  At the other end of the age spectrum, there's nine year old  T.J. Ponder, here with his father, Ty.  T.J. is a very accomplished Long Range fisherman.  I see Dave (Boss) Hoag and Hugh Cobb, the other two chartermasters, also Hoss, Bert, Tom, and a couple others I've shared trips with on the Q.  I know this will be a good time. 

When the Qualifier 105's office opens, we dutifully go up to sign in.  Signing in is mandatory, you can't get on the boat without a boarding pass.  This trip there is a fuel surcharge, a nasty fact of life necessitated by the fluctuating price of fuel.  Because the Q uses an average of 800 gallons of fuel a day, that cost is a major variable that can't be predicted when trip prices are set.  We get our boarding passes and room assignments and head back down to load our gear into the provided carts and await boarding.

Once the gates open up, our identification is checked (you must have a passport) and we head out to the boat.  As soon as I step aboard, everything changes for me.  Work is gone, the mortgage is gone, the lawn is gone, the wife is, um, at home... all that matters is settling into the boat for the next seven days.  I find a place for my tackle box, rods, and the gear I'll need topside, and take the rest of my stuff below to stateroom "O."  The staterooms have quite a bit of storage.  It takes a bit of arranging, but it's fairly easy to organize your gear, especially if you've done a good job of organizing as you pack.  Each room has a sink, an air conditioner, a DVD player and from one to three bunks.  The bunks are a little over six feet long and wide enough to be comfortable (for me anyway).  They have a good pad, covers, and a pillow.  Some folks bring additional bedding but I don't need it and I usually sleep well.

Surprisingly quickly, we're under way.  The bait stop is always fun.  Everyone watches the bait come aboard and into the tanks with great interest.  Bait is key.  Several of the guys cast jigs into the water for sand bass and such and the rest of us ooh and aah over the shimmering sardines in the nets.

And then, it's out into the open ocean and we head south.  The trip has truly begun.  After wandering around the boat to get my sea legs, I like to start setting up my gear now.  We have an idea of what we will be fishing for this trip (yellowtail and tuna in the 30-100 lb. range) so we can set up rigs that we think will work for the conditions we might encounter.  This also is a great time to get to know the other passengers and to share knowledge.  Almost everyone on a Long Range trip is an experienced fisherman.  The amount of accumulated knowledge on this trip is amazing and every fisherman has something to teach and something to learn.  "How do you tie that knot?"  "Where'd you get that screwdriver?"  "When do you use that jig?"  On and on.  It's one of my favorite aspects of the trip and the sharing never stops.

Just for reference, I brought:

A 60 lb. rig.                              Never used it.
A 50 lb. YoYo rig.                    Used it during a wide open yellowtail bite.
A virgin 40 lb. bait rig.            Caught my only tuna and a few yellowtail with it.
A 40 lb. jig rig.                         My favorite.  It got a lot of use both for YoYo and casting.
A 30 lb. jig rig.                         Also got a lot of use when the fish were slower to bite.
A virgin 20 lb. spinning rig.    Caught a couple yellowtail on it.  For casting light baits.
A 20 lb. conventional rig.       Never used it but it might have come in handy for skittish tuna.

In retrospect, I think this was a very good choice of gear.  Even though I didn't use some pieces, I was prepared for most anything we might have come up against on this trip.  A longer trip would necessitate some heavier gear for bigger fish.  If we had gotten into a hot bite with a lot of sea lions, I might have tried the 60, but that never happened.  I also brought several extra reels "just in case," extra spools of line (there is also line on the boat) and enough jigs, hooks, sinkers and other stuff to stock a small tackle shop.  For more info on tackle and gear, visit the Qualifier's Trip Information page.

Eventually we all settle down to the next order of business which is eating.  Chef Brett and his sidekick Jordan kept us supplied with snacks, breakfast, lunch and dinner fit for a king.  After dinner, lead deckhand Tim gave a tackle seminar and Captain Joe did the safety talk and tentative plan.  Then socializing in the galley or on the deck, maybe a beer, and off to bed.

Day two:

Day two was a travel day down to Cedros Island.  We stopped on a couple of kelp paddies for not much and then just booked it south.   Travel days can get a little long but there's always something to do.  The boat has a pretty spacious galley with an HD TV and tons of every kind of DVD.  There's plenty of snack food, endless coffee, and of course the five meals a day.  There's also the best part; getting acquainted and re-acquainted with the other folks on the boat.  These aren't your run of the mill workday Johns and Janes.  These folks are adventurers and have really done things with their lives and have stories to tell.  There's a lot of really great conversation on these trips and I find myself telling my onshore friends about the people I meet as much as the fishing I did.  There also are the sights of the sea.  We saw endless pods of dolphin, off shore seabirds like albatross and petrels, whales, even a small pod of sperm whales, a first for me.  Even the ubiquitous gulls are beautiful if they're not directly overhead.

Day three: 

Arrival at Cedros.  We started fishing first thing in the morning, and started to get bit right away.  Very good action on the yellowtail for those using live bait.  I started off with a favorite blue and white Tady, a go-to jig in anyone's book.  Seemed like everyone around me was getting bit on bait, but I couldn't buy a bite on the jig.  I don't like bait fishing but I finally relented and got a very nice yellow to get the skunk off my shoulder.  Then I went back to the jig.  That's when things got REALLY frustrating.  I was getting bit but the fish were shaking off the hook at color (close to the boat).  So much work just to lose them like that really hurts.  The deckhands were in no way to blame, I just wasn't sticking the fish well enough.  Maybe they were biting short, not committing to the jig as they were to bait, maybe I wasn't setting the hook hard enough.  It's fishing and sometimes it just sucks.  Of course, we all were having a blast, lots of appreciation for every fish landed and commiseration for every one lost.  Later in the day, my luck turned around and I finished with four nice yellows in the RSW (Refrigerated Sea Water) tank.  A fellow named Ross had the hot stick today among the jig guys.  He was fishing a mackerel pattern jig and seemed to be hooked up all day.  Boss Hoag's daughter, Suzanne, had a good day too, as did her friend Terry Beam.  Both landed a few nice yellows.

Day Four:

Still at Cedros.  Started fishing early and to my delight, the tables had turned and the yellowtail wanted to bite jigs.  I'm off to the races!  Other fishermen seem to have an instinctive knack with bait but I'm not one of them.  When I fish bait, it's often at the peril of the other fishermen as my bait gets into their lines so I prefer to stick with artificials that I have more control over.  Anyway, today was my day.  It was a pretty steady bite and there were a couple of folks hooked up at all times.  Seemed like every time we were about to make a move, someone would get bit and then there would be another flurry of activity.  It's really funny the way a fisherman's luck will run.  Ty Ponder, a very good fisherman, was the sea lion magnet today.  He got bit off by "dogs" FOUR times.  There should be no reason why they would focus on him but there were maybe only three or four other dog bites on the whole boat that day.  Hmmm.  Ty can cast a jig a mile, maybe it was because he was getting bit so far from the boat???

Day five:

Today we went off shore in search of tuna.  We put out the trolling jigs early but when we did stop, it was on fish that Captain Joe found on the meter.  Bluefin tuna are notoriously skittish and as soon as we got close to them, they would disperse.  We finally did find a school that cooperated a little.  I was lucky enough to land a nice fatty on my new 40 lb. bait rig.  All in all, I think we landed 12 fish and probably lost as many.  Nine year old T.J. Ponder hooked one and did a great job of bringing it to the gaff after maybe 20 minutes of hard work, only to have it pop off at the last instant.  Sometimes the fish wins, and T.J. handled his disappointment better than many adults I've seen on these trips. 

After that early flurry of activity, we set off trolling with a lot of optimism, only to be disappointed for the rest of the day.  We found a few schools of fish, but they didn't want to play.  The weather off shore was a little nasty and the sea was rough but we all put in our time on the trolling rotation, we just never got another bite.  We decided to head back to Cedros for the rest of the trip.

Day six:

Back at Cedros.  Today started with a bang and just kept going 'till we were full.  It was pretty much wide open for nice yellowtail, all we wanted.  By this time, all the folks on the boat knew each other very well and it was a real treat to see how well we all worked together.   It was like a country hoedown, a bunch of people all hooked into a bunch of powerful fish all at once.  "Over you!"  "Under you!"  "Hot rail inside!"  It was really thrilling.  I finally caught my fill and traded my rod for my camera.  I took a bunch of pictures of happy anglers and then handed the camera to Tim so he could take pictures in his own style.  True story:  I had a jig fish on.  I got him to color and when the deckhand gaffed him the jig fell out of his mouth.  As soon as it hit the water, the jig was swallowed by another yellow.  Since I had disengaged the reel for the gaff, I was lucky to have seen what happened or I would have had a real mess on my hands.  Yep, I landed the second fish too.

Whether the WFO bite died down or if we finally just reached exhaustion I'm not sure but around midday, we went over to the lee side of the island for some bottom fishing and some casting into the kelp for bass.  Cedros is a major calico bass destination and we weren't disappointed.  There was lots of catch and release action on the bass.  We also had some great work by Jay Archer who landed THREE very nice halibut.  A beautiful sunset put the finishing touches on a perfect day of Long Range Sportfishing. 

Before the traditional Thanksgiving style turkey dinner, Captain Joe Crici collects the tab for drinks, gear and such, and also the tips for the crew.  Tips mean a lot to the crew and I try to take good care of them.  And then we head north, back to San Diego, the job, the mortgage, the lawn... and the wife.  It'll be nice to see her.

Day 7.  Arrival:

I awake at the grey light and look out the window to see the lights of Point Loma.  We're home.  I fire up my cell phone, blessedly idle for these seven days, and call home to roust my wife and give her my ETA, about 6:00.  There's a lot to do after the boat docks so I ask her to meet me at the landing around 7:00.  Joe somehow manages to pull the 105 foot Q perfectly into her slip.  Geez.  I have enough trouble parking my Miata!  The dock carts are rolled up to the boat and we load all of our gear onto the carts.  It takes a bit of co-operation and it's a good idea for buddies to share carts.  It's pretty easy to get confused and someone else could go home with the wrong stuff purely by mistake, so be sure to keep track of your gear.  The carts are pushed up to the landing where we unload, then they go back down to the boat to receive the real bounty:  Our fish.  The guys at the landing will set numbered cones out on the slab.  As the full carts are pushed back up to the landing (any help pushing is much appreciated) the fish are taken from the carts and placed around the cones corresponding to their tag numbers.  #16, those are MY fish!  After all the fish are unloaded, Captain Joe conducts the weigh in for the jackpot.  There are usually three places in the jackpot so if you think you might have a contender, be sure to bring your fish to the scales.  My Bluefin missed the jackpot by TWO ounces!

A nicety at the landing is the services of the Fish Processing companies.  There are three and all provide excellent service.  You can give them your fish and they will process them to your specifications.  Each offers different services so make your choice based on how you want your fish handled.  If you've never tried to clean a bunch of big fish and dispose of the remains, believe me, these folks are well worth the price and do a great job.

The parking lot allows cars to spend 30 minutes for free.  My wife Tylene had parked across the street to meet me at the landing.  I introduced her to all my new friends and it was time for me to return to my daily life.  She got the car and we loaded up all my stuff and set off back home.  Can't wait 'till next June to go out with these guys again.

Click here to see the photos from the trip.