Captain Art's Excellent Adventure - Trip Report!

Hello Searcher friends!

Team Searcher recently returned from an EXCELLENT adventure to the Central Coast! Captain Art piloted the car (with passengers/backseat drivers Captain Ryan, Celia and Jen) as we travelled from San Diego to Camarillo, Port Hueneme, Ventura and Oxnard!

We kicked off our arrival to the Central Coast on May 10 with a visit to the Gold Coast Lady Anglers – a respected organization of women who are as serious about fishing as they are about having fun! As we enjoyed the delicious potluck options (including Captain Art’s ahi poke!) we heard all about local fishing when GCLA member/Seeker pro-staffer Sophia Huynh arrived fresh off of a successful trip. After the captains gave their seminar about offshore live-bait tuna fishing – and a Q&A session with moderator Linda 🙂 – we drew winners for raffle door prizes and for the $250 Searcher gift certificate! GCLA member Babsie was thrilled when her ticket was drawn for the gift certificate – she’ll be joining us for our Lady Angler Special in August!

In Ventura, we visited Hyun’s Tackle Shop, where we surprised long-time Searcher friend Thom Carney as he arrived to do some shopping, and then Thom surprised Captain Art and Captain Ryan with the gift of 4 custom trolling outfits for the boat! Austin, the shop owner, had just finished putting the finishing touches on the custom wraps! Each custom-wrapped Seeker rod has a Penn International reel, and is named after one of our Searcher captains: Aaron, Joe, Kenny and Ryan!

In Ventura, we also stopped in to Eric’s Tackle Shop and enjoyed looking through Eric’s amazing collection of vintage tackle and memorabilia, especially a well preserved Searcher brochure from the 80s!

Our Central Coast trip culminated with our May 11 visit to Turner’s Outdoorsman in Oxnard, where our host Mike Armenta (pictured below with the Searcher captains) greeted us with an impeccably clean and fully-stocked store! The seminar was extremely well-attended – and the anglers had excellent questions for the captains. Bootz sent some Searcher goodies to give out in addition to our door prizes, and Mike also had awesome raffle giveaways for the seminar attendees! Tim, the winner of the Searcher gift certificate, is pictured below shaking hands with Captain Art 🙂

Team Searcher had a blast visiting the Central Coast! We headed back to San Diego looking forward to our upcoming season and seeing all of our friends on board! Our brand-new, custom bait tank will be installed this week!