The Albacore Watch: It’s an Anxious Time on Coast

About a year ago, on a gray summer morning somewhere off the coast of Baja California, Charlie Davis held up an 18-pound fish he had just caught and said: “Just think, this fish has come from Japan, and we’ve intercepted him right here, at this tiny spot on the Pacific Ocean.”

Davis, a long time saltwater fisherman from Huntington Beach, was echoing a certain feeling toward a certain fish experienced by many summer saltwater fishermen. The fish Davis was holding up and admiring was an albacore, the tuna that kicks like a mule and tastes like a sweet chicken on the dinner table.

When millions of albacore silently make their way up the Baja and California coasts each summer, it represents just one portion of one of the most prodigious migrations on earth. After albacore reach the Cape Mendocino area, about 200 miles north of San Francisco, they split into two groups.

One group turns left at that point and heads for waters at roughly the International Dateline, not far from Midway Island. The second group continues up the North American coast to waters off Oregon, then heads west all the way to the coast of Japan.

Along the way, albacore are believed to spawn in very deep water, although biologists know less about the first year of an albacore’s life than any other time.

From Japan and the Central Pacific, albacore head back across the Pacific, on a heading to Baja California.

Their eastward migration ends roughly two-thirds of the way up the Baja California coast. There, albacore begin again the northward journey that takes them within, in most years, small-boat distance of Southern California harbors.

Right now, the albacore watch is on. It’s nervous time for Southern California sportfishermen. They’re watching the catch counts closely, looking for triple-digit albacore counts on San Diego-based boats.

Early-season results have been disappointing. Compared to recent summers, it’s a slow-starting season. Since the first albacore were caught on June 25, catches have been sparse or not at all. The Royal Polaris out of Fisherman’s Landing in San Diego returned to port Wednesday after a five-day albacore trip with 36 fishermen who had disappointing results. “We had no albacore the first two days, 8 the third day and 65 the fourth day,” said skipper Steve Loomis, who was fishing an area approximately 120 to 150 miles out of San Diego.

“We found virtually nothing until that one spot on the fourth day, and even that wasn’t very big. It was very thin, very scattered. There were four San Diego commercial tuna boats out there and they were fishing right where we were.”

And so the watch continues. The fishermen wait. The phones keep ringing.

All four of San Diego’s major sportfishing landings--H&M; Landing, Fisherman’s Landing, Point Loma Sportfishing, Lee Palm Sportfishing--are located within a few hundred feet of each other on Scott Street, along San Diego Bay.

Said Carol Sandner, of Point Loma Sportfishing: “I worked 13 hours Wednesday and I was on the phone all day long, with calls backed up most of the time. People wanted to know how close the albacore are, or what the weather was like where the fish are or how long it will be until the fish are within one-day range, which no one knows, of course.”

The lure of albacore isn’t a local phenomenon.

Sandner: “There’s a professor from New York who fishes with us every summer; a group of men from Denver come out each summer, and a group of people from Scottsdale, Ariz., rent a house near here and fish with us for a month every summer.”

When reports go out that the albacore are here, it touches off the closest thing to pandemonium that exists on the Southern California Sportfishing scene. Fishermen plead for reservations on San Diego boats. The boats fill up. Arguments break out in the parking lot over the limited number of parking spaces.

For operators of about 60 bigger party boats and 70 smaller charter boats it’s get-serious time. For some, most of their year’s business will occur during the July-August albacore season.

But the real bedlam occurs when a skipper puts his passengers on top of a mass of speeding albacore, slashing through the water at breakneck speed and attacking anything that looks like a small baitfish. Hearts flutter when the first, “Hookup!” shout is heard. Fishermen using gill-hooked anchovies or lures experience almost instant hookups. At times, 20 to 40 fishermen can be hooked up simultaneously.

Some lines get tangled. More arguments.

In a banner albacore summer, catch counts on San Diego party boats can hold up at 1,500 to 2,000 fish per day. But some years, albacore will unexplainably head for deeper waters farther off the California coast.

In other summers, albacore pass extremely close to the coast. In the summer of 1962, for example, it was said with only some exaggeration there were so many small fishing boats in the Catalina Channel that you could walk from Newport Beach to Avalon on them.

In 1962, the all-time record year, 229,314 albacore were caught in Southern California waters. By contrast, in 1959, the low year, 39 were caught.

And the watch continues. . . .

Mike Laurs, a fishery oceanographer who keeps tabs on albacore for the National Marine Fisheries Service in La Jolla, says it’s still too early to forecast the season.

“The albacore catch for the season can vary wildly,” he said. “For most years, the sport catch count has ranged from 20,000 to 200,000 in California. The last two years have been banner years, up around 200,000. My guess is it won’t be that high this season.

“For one thing, we think the (main body of) albacore will be arriving later this year. We base that on tag returns from the Central Pacific, where Japanese and Korean longline fishermen caught tagged fish farther out in the Pacific than is normal. So, for that reason alone, they should arrive later here.”

The life cycle of the albacore, like the patterns of some migrating waterfowl and salmon, almost defies belief. Albacore cover up to 12,000 miles annually on their transpacific journeys. (Biologists believe they make the transpacific migration two to four times, then stop migrating in their declining years. An albacore may live to be 10 years old.) In 1952, the California Department of Fish and Game tagged 215 albacore off Los Angeles. Eleven months later, one was caught 550 miles southwest of Tokyo, 4,900 miles away.

They’re incredibly powerful fish. A fisherman hooked up to a 20-pound albacore on light tackle can be occupied for 30 to 40 minutes, and be taken on maybe a half-dozen trips around the boat.

Combining the categories of fighting qualities and table fare, the albacore (the Japanese call it “dragonfly tuna” because of its distinctive, long pectoral fins) is an incomparable package.

Barbecued, fried, baked, steamed or broiled, its white meat ranks with the most delicious of all fish. An albacore with the girth of a football can yield 20 steaks.

A sometimes bonus with banner albacore seasons is the bigeye tuna, a jumbo-size cousin of albacore. Bigeyes, nicknamed “gorillas” by albacore fishermen, sometimes swim with albacore up the coast, and commonly weigh more than 100 pounds. Albacore average between 12 and 20 pounds.