The Humboldt Tuna Club is a site dedicated to the offshore bluewater anglers of Humboldt County to the free exchange of information between fishermen who love their sport and will do what is necessary to protect it and our environment. Most of us are located near or in Eureka CA, Humboldt County. Though our love is for the Albacore tuna that makes its way off our coast in the summer and fall months, we fish for king salmon, silver salmon, halibut, and rockfish including the prized lingcod. Our membership outside of the Humboldt area also fish for striped bass, white sea bass, and others found farther south. Of course, during the season and if weather permits the Dungenous crab is our winter delicacy.

You will also see reports about yellowfin tun, blufin tuna, yellowtail, dorado, and marlin.

Read our forums about reel repair, boating tips, the best rods, rigging feathers, plugs, and the politics of fishing.

Lessons Learned
It started a long, long, l-o-n-g time ago. My Dad came home with huge barracuda, 8-10 lbs each, in the days when that was a common school quality. I must have been 12 years old then and had only dabbled around in the freshwater streams in the San Gabriel canyons of Southern California (told you it was a long time ago). I told him then that I wanted to catch those fish too. But being a “kid” of the pre-teen age, you were mostly in the way or told to be quiet to let the adults’ converse.

Well I got lucky. My Dad decided I was old enough and had decent manners to be with some adults on the party boats. Well I cannot remember my first trip, though I know that I did learn a lesson those first years on the Pier Point Landing or 22nd Street boats. Stay out of the way, do what the deckhand says, don’t overhead cast and by all means, follow your fish!

Those were the days when Bonita and Mackerel were so thick you couldn’t get down to the Yellowtail, which you could see swimming 20 ft below the boat.

When I hit 14, my Dad joined the Glendale Angler’s Club. I was the first teenager to go on their trips. By then if he fished, I fished. If he didn’t have the money for the $10 all day charters (16 guys on a 40 ft boat) or $16 for the albacore trips, we didn’t go. Some way he was always able to get the cash together.

So now with a group a “real fishermen” I earned how to fly line anchovies, throw candy bar jigs or spoons, and really follow your fish! Wow, everybody was hooked up on Yellowtail, “outa my way I have a fresh one!” I still watched in amazement though how one guy seemed to always be hooked up on Yellows when many of us weren’t getting bit. I watch and listened, but never realized the secret, which hit me many years later when I went into tournament bass fishing. He was using 12-15 lb mono when the rest of us where peeling out 25-30 line. Lesson learned about using light line. It paid off big on the bass circuit for me years later.

Now my big break was just ahead of me, the first albacore trips out of Newport Beach and eventually San Diego. I was sixteen when I caught my first (six) albacore, the biggest going 26 lbs. What a trip, everybody hooked up, going both ways around the boat. Follow your fish the guys would say, let the deckhand untangle the fish, and by all means DO NOT back off your drag or free spool when in a tangle. I never did! So that was a lesson learned without learning it the hard way. When I was a teenager, I listened to the adults and learned.

OK, so here I am now, many years later, only bass fishing occasionally since my old love has come back to me, the ocean. Once again my eyes and ears are wide open, learning from the pros on the North Coast. I read posts, listen to people talk and try the things that I have learned over the many years. After all, I am now my own Captain and control my own destiny.

It’s too bad Dad is no longer around to enjoy these trips now. He would be up half the night steaking fish, while I was sawing logs. All those 6-10 hour boat rides out of San Diego, then driving three hours back home afterwards. We were all blown out after bringing home six to ten fish (eventually we learned about the dockside canners; what a deal at 50 cents per can). Yes, Dad would be proud if not amazed after some of the trips that happened this last year (2007) where every cubby hole of the boat was stuffed with tuna.

Unfortunately I lost him when I was 18, a week after I graduated from high school in 1966. But I know that everything that I first learned was from him. He taught me to watch, listen and ask a question only when I have to. So I watched, I listened and I learned important lessons from him and the people around me.

It continues today as I still watch, listen and ask the necessary questions, for that is how I learned my lessons. I then can share my knowledge if someone wants to watch and listen, because others are trying to learn. It has come down to having more fun sharing ideas, techniques to help others than to benefit myself. That’s the biggest lesson I have learned.