Art Taylor docked his Searcher October 6 after a seven-day trip with 19 anglers. He was thwarted in reaching Alijos Rocks by tropical depression Julia,, so he fished offshore kelps, The Ridge and Cedros Island, where his anglers got over five dozen big yellowtail.
He also found some wahoo and dorado, and wrote this on October 3:
“We decided to stay on the Ridge today. We figured since we came all this way to try for wahoo we might as well put in the time to try and catch a few. We got lucky and caught 12 wahoo before we had to leave. For most everyone that caught one, it was their first wahoo. Even though we didn’t get everyone a wahoo we were at least in the right zone and had opportunity to catch one.”
We traveled north the rest of the day with no luck finding something floating, so we are in position to be at Cedros Island tomorrow morning to try for those nice, big yellowtail to finish the trip.”
At the Fisherman’s Landing dock, Art weighed the biggest wahoo caught on bait or cast jigs. Trolled fish are not eligible. Two brothers took both ends of the jackpot.
Ballanti Brothers Score: Don and Bob Ballanti have Mike Jimenez bookended in the Searcher jackpot.
Don Ballanti of El Cerrito won first place for a 46.8-pound wahoo. Hed said the ‘skin took his Burns Bomb in blue and silver. He fished 50-pound Big Game line, a Tiburon ST 12-2 reel and a Calstar 700 M rod.
Mike Jimenez of LA won second place for a 44.4-pounder, and Don’s brother Bob Ballanti won third place for a 41.8-pound wahoo.
Art Taylor docked his Searcher July 22 after a five-day trip with 20 anglers, many from Idaho. 
