No suggestion here to buy blue chips right now, but it is a good time to be fishing. Jeff DeBuys brought Independence home from a ten-day Kimura's Tackle expedition on October 27. There were 21 passengers.

"Fishing was extremely good," said chartermaster Gary Kimura. "We had a great assortment of yellowfin, dorado, wahoo, yellowtail and three marlin, which we released. The crew was spectacular, especially at Alijos Rocks, where we lost more big fish than we landed. They just broke off."

Skipper DeBuys summed things up. "We had a shark problem at Alijos," he said, "but we did get a dozen good ones through them. The sharks were browns and hammerheads, and the water there has cooled down to 73 degrees after the chubasco rolled through.

"The conditions are good for big fish down below. Maybe the next trips will bring some back. We got limits on everything. We had a special kelp one day. It was holding really a lot of dorado. We got most of our limits on one drift.

"There are more small yellowfin swimming around this year than I've ever seen. The stocks look good. Next season they should weigh 40 or 50 pounds."

The trip's big fish was a 120-pound yellowfin tuna caught by Joe Andrade of Santa Ana on a chunk and a 6/0 Mustad hook. Joe said he used 80-pound Ande line on a Penn VSW 30 reel and a Penn Stroker rod of five and a half feet.

Alex Mobile of Long Beach won second place for a 98.8-pound tuna, and Sam Romero of Santa Ana go third place for a 74-pound tuna. Tony Contreras of Oxnard stood in with the winners with his 44-pound husky yellowtail.