elgatoloco
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Can you say "Sashimi"?
http://www.signonsandiego.com/sports/outdoors/20040731-839-9...
By Ed Zieralski
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
8:39 a.m. 0,
Phillip Colla
Craig O'Connor in the waters of Guadalupe Island off Baja California with his 77-pound, 4-ounce yellowtail, taken while spearfishing.
Craig O'Connor took up spearfishing as a way to put food on the galley table of his sailboat when he and his wife sailed the Pacific on a two-year
cruise in the 1990s.
"It got to where I became a pretty good spearfisherman," said O'Connor, who lives in Mill Valley, just north of San Francisco.
How good? Good enough to be invited on an exclusive 10-day free-diving trip aboard the Horizon out of Point Loma-based H&M Landing. And good enough to
spear a potential world-record yellowtail on that elite trip.
Pending approval by spearfishing authorities, O'Connor's 77-pound, 4-ounce North American yellowtail, which he speared off Guadalupe Island on July
21, will top the 77-pounder shot by Doug Kuczkowski off Guadalupe Island on the Horizon in 1999.
O'Connor plans to submit the fish for consideration as a record by both the International Underwater Spearfishing Association and the International
Bluewater Spearfishing Records Committee.
"I went on the trip with the anticipation of shooting a tuna and really didn't think about getting a world-record yellowtail," said O'Connor, 50, an
engineer for high-rise buildings. "Some of the guys with records have all the forms and everything and are ready for it. But I just enjoy all the
aspects of spearfishing, being in the water, getting to spear fish and being able to bring fish home for the freezer. Those are the highlights for me.
Don't get me wrong. Shooting big fish is always a thrill, but this trip had some of the best free divers in the world on it."
Captain Ron Martin, second skipper on the Horizon, said O'Connor was on a 10-day trip when he captured the huge forktail. This was the 12th straight
year that this particular group of experienced free divers (breath-hold only) chartered the boat for Guadalupe Island, 210 miles south of San Diego
and 150 miles west of the Baja coast.
"We go to Guadalupe first, but if the white sharks are a problem, we go to San Benitos," said Martin, who ran the boat with first skipper, Greg
Grivetto. "This year and last year we had shark encounters."
Martin said one great white shark swam to within five feet of one of the divers.
"They had just speared and landed three yellowtail, and it came in on two different divers," Martin said. "It got to within five feet away and turned
as one diver jumped into the skiff. Then it circled around and then got to within seven feet of another diver before turning. It gets very exciting."
It was into those conditions that O'Connor set his record.
O'Connor, who was making his sixth trip with the free-diving group, said he was having a slow day before getting his shot at the monster yellowtail.
When the current slacked and he lost sight of a school of bait, O'Connor said he found a "promising point" that featured a steep dropoff to 50 to 75
feet. He then found an eddy where the current slowed.
"When I got there I noticed a huge school of bait and a couple of fur seals working it," O'Connor said. "It looked like a perfect spot for yellowtail
to come through. So I hung there for a while and watched some smaller fish swim by me."
O'Connor said when big fish swim near a school of bait, the baitfish will part or ball up, do something different that will alert a free diver that a
bigger fish is near.
"You have to be stealthy and work hard to get big fish," he said. "It's like hunting, but you're diving in cold water, so you have to wear a hood that
makes it hard to hear. And you're wearing a mask, so you can't see that well, either."
He said it's different than hunting on land because you can't rely on any sounds at all.
"When you hunt, you can hear birds, squirrels, twigs snapping, things like that," he said. "You don't get any of that when spearfishing. It takes a
while to see what's happening, and there are times when it gets really exciting. Other times it takes a lot of patience and a lot of looking."
All of O'Connor's patience paid off on his record-setting dive. It all came together for him, he said. The bait began acting "strange," so he slid
into the water and went down 25 to 30 feet.
"As I was going down, I saw two yellowtail out of the corner of my eye," he said. "I swam away from them so I didn't alarm them, and they got curious
and came closer. Then I saw two great fish coming toward me. I veered away to make them more curious, and when they cruised by me, with the one in the
back offering me the best shot. I was pretty excited, but I was calm and relaxed enough to take the shot."
Shooting from an estimated 25 feet, O'Connor hit the big yellowtail behind the gill plate, and the dance was on.
"It was just about a perfect shot," O'Connor said. "It was stunned at first, and then it started moving toward the bottom. I was in danger of losing
him in the rocks, so I swam for the float line and grabbed it and started swimming the fish to deeper water. I got him in deeper water even though he
was kicking for the bottom and I was kicking for the surface."
With Guadalupe fur seals gathering and showing interest, O'Connor felt the added pressure to get the fish to the surface.
"I finally wore him out after nearly 30 minutes," O'Connor said. "I got him close enough that I could get a good hold through the gill plate, and then
I wrapped my legs around him. That's when I realized it was the biggest fish I'd ever speared and I hung for all it was worth until the skiff reached
me."
Like all his catches in the past, this big yellowtail was filletted and packaged and given to family, friends, the folks who watched his and Lori's
cat and neighbors. But there is one big difference.
"We're getting a mount of the fish," O'Connor said. This one's going on the wall."
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Sallysouth
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Good Lordy!
I didn't know they got that big! Great story and pic! Thanks Elgato, Sally
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fishinrich
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114lb
Sally! The world record for yellowtail is 114lbs, now thats a lot of sashimi!!!! fishin rich
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jrbaja
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The 20 year skipper
of our panga out of Erendira caught a 50# Jurel and he was hangin on by his kneecaps. But he got it. Awesome fish. We even let him keep it.
I had no idea it was barely a "keeper".
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Sallysouth
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Hey Rich!
Now that is truely a monster! Any idea how that one was caught? I loved the part in the story above where he "wrapped his legs around the fish!" I would sure like to see of pic of the 114#!!! Sally
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fishinrich
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big tail
Saly---that is the rod and reel world record set over in new zealand where the big boys hang out. Since they are closer to japan I would imagine they
have lots of wasabi on hand. fishin rich
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jrbaja
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Isla Guadalupe
Is supposed to be one of the best places on earth to film and see great white sharks.
I just watched a special about some silly girl who wanted to ride one. She never succeeded with her attempts but they did get some incredible
footage and no one was chomped on or eaten.
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elgatoloco
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Breaking News 2:00PM
A friend of mine who works near the docks (H&M Landing) in San Diego just saw a 'world record' yellowtail.....93 lbs and about 5 feet long. Caught at
Isla Guadelupe.
Details to follow.
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PabloS
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Check it out! Caught on the Shogun
[Edited on 8-6-2004 by PabloS]
[Edited on 8-6-2004 by PabloS]
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Sallysouth
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Whoa!
O.K Pablo, You can call me stupid, but what is a "Shogun"?
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Sallysouth
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Elgato
Pics? details? Imho, the funnest and fiestiest fish around!(yummy too!)
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David K
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I think that Shogun is the name of the charter boat.
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elgatoloco
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The rest of the story
http://www.signonsandiego.com/sports/outdoors/20040807-9999-...
Tale of a yellowtail
This whopper, a 92.1-pounder, is the biggest ever caught
By Ed Zieralski
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
August 7, 2004
Sitting in the passenger seat and motoring up Interstate 5 on his way home to Costa Mesa yesterday morning, Kevin Pfeif said the magnitude of what
he'd done finally hit him.
"Know what, that's the biggest yellowtail ever caught Pfeif said to his buddy, Frank Royce, who picked him up and was driving him home from San Diego
after Pfeif returned from a five-day fishing trip aboard the Shogun out of Fisherman's Landing.
That yellowtail would be the 92.1-pound beauty that Pfeif had just weighed in at Fisherman's Landing's big-fish scale in front of a spirited gathering
of anglers. Everyone cheered when the scale's numbers quit flashing and settled in at what could be, if approved by the International Game Fish
Association, an all-tackle world record for California yellowtail.
The current all-tackle mark for yellowtail, still pending but about to be approved, according to the IGFA, is the 91.6-pound yellowtail caught by
deckhand Tom Lambert aboard the Qualifier 105 last November. This yellowtail was caught exactly two weeks after breath-hold diver Craig O'Connor of
Mill Valley speared a pending world-record 77.4-pound yellowtail with a band-power speargun near Abalone Point off Guadalupe Island.
Pfeif was fishing aboard Norm Kagawa's 92-foot Shogun at Guadalupe Island Wednesday when he made history. Pfeif was at the rail with many of the other
passengers, fly-lining a sardine on a 2/0 Mustad hook tied to 25-pound test line, when the fish bit and rapidly stripped his line.
"I got bit and almost spooled right away," said Pfeif, 43, who owns a plexiglass fabrication business in Costa Mesa. "I was down to three wraps on the
spool. I know, because we counted them."
Pfeif looked down at his nearly spooled Newell 235 reel, mounted to a Graftech GS 180M rod, and figured the end of the line, so to speak, was near.
"We thought it was a 30-to 35-pound yellowtail, maybe, or a yellowtail that I tail-wrapped," Pfeif said. "I figured if it broke me off, I'd just go
get another rod and reel and keep fishing. No big deal, really. We had no idea it was as big as it was."
Billy Casper Jr. of Rancho Penasquitos, whose son, Colin, 12, set a potential IGFA junior world record for yellowtail on the trip with a 30.4-pounder,
joked with Pfeif that he looked overmatched.
"I remember going by him and saying, 'Boy, you hooked that on the wrong gear,' " Casper told Pfeif. "But he sure proved me wrong."
Pfeif fought the fish for an estimated 45 minutes (Casper estimated it was more like an hour) before deckhand Kevin Osborne could get a gaff into it.
All the theories about the fish being tail-wrapped, or it being a big tuna were wiped away when the fish came to color.
"Kevin (Osborne) saw how big it was at color, and everyone at the rail who could see it started getting excited," said Casper Jr., the son of
legendary San Diego golfer Billy Casper. "But (Osborne) told everyone to keep quiet because he didn't want (Pfeif) to change the way he was fighting
it."
Pfeif watched as Osborne muscled the giant mossback over the rail single-handedly.
"It just kept coming over the rail, coming over the rail, coming over the rail, and finally, there was its head, just huge," Pfeif said. "I've caught
quite a few yellowtail in my life, but this thing was unbelievable."
Pfeif was lucky that the fish struck his bait, but that's where his good fortune ended and his great angling began.
Bill Roecker of Oceanic Productions asked Bruce Smith, the captain, how Pfeif could land such a monster yellowfin.
"Were you in deep water," Roecker asked.
"No," Smith answered, "he just didn't pull on it real hard."
That took plenty of skill, and Pfeif has it.
Pfeif has fished on long-range boats since the mid-1980s. His best yellowtail before this was a 38-pounder, but he once landed a 226-pound striped
marlin off Santa Barbara Island. And he worked for eight years at Newport Landing Sportfishing.
At the IGFA's headquarters in Dania Beach, Fla., Doug Blodgett, the IGFA's world-record administrator, said yesterday he was awaiting one more letter
from a witness to Tom Lambert's record yellowtail catch last November on the Qualifier 105 before he can approve it as an all-tackle record at 91.6
pounds. It will be approved, Blodgett said.
"(Lambert) will have the record for a time," Blodgett said. "The thing that holds these up is there are a lot of witnesses on these sport boats that
we like to hear from, and because it's such a popular, common fish, and an important record, we want to make sure everything is done right."
Actually, the listed IGFA all-
tackle mark for California yellowtail in the 2004 IGFA record book is 88 pounds, 3 ounces and belongs to the late Ronald Tadashi Fujii, who, sadly,
died on the very trip he caught the record on in June of 2000, also aboard the Shogun.
Word spread quickly in the fishing community yesterday about the huge yellowtail. The allcoastsportfishing.com message board for long-rangers already
had a picture of the fish taken on the Shogun and comments. One post said, "AWESOME!!! Looks like it just ate a seal!!"
Roecker, who put the word out on the Internet shortly after the historic weigh-in at Fisherman's Landing, said: "I was flabbergasted. Fujii broke a
mark that had stood for a couple of years, and then to see Lambert come in with one and it hasn't even been a year and here comes another one. Makes
me think we're going to see a 100-pound yellowtail, maybe tomorrow."
At Lyons & O'Haver Taxidermy, Mike Butler had already checked in Pfeif's record fish and had measured it by 2 p.m. The unofficial measurements were
63.75 inches from its nose to the end of its tail, 58.50 inches from the nose to the fork and 32.75 inches in girth.
Now the catch will be preserved, forever.
Artist-designer Marshall Madruga, who does fish prints (the art of gyotaku), also will prepare a print for Pfeif. And Roecker, whose yearly calendars
have become a big hit in the angling community, told Pfeif that the record yellowtail may grace the cover of Roecker's 2005 Sportfishing Calendar.
"It's still new, but it's all pretty exciting," Pfeif said. "I'm already hearing from a lot of people about it. That's the neat thing. I know a lot of
deckhands and captains from my days working at Newport, and I'm sure I'll be hearing from more of them once the word gets out."
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