"Before I say any thing else I must make an addendum to last nights report. About 30 minutes after I filed it, Walt Howard landed a bait caught 145 tuna that won him a prize of an Accurate rod. Now I can begin. The fishing is officially over and we are traveling in reasonably calm seas to Cabo. We finished today very strong. Funny how the best is usually the last. Things are definitely changing here and soon it's going to go off big time with cows a plenty. If we only had a few more days. Actually as exhausted as we are we might not be able to handle a few days. The dark bite started back up to some degree this morning and we saw a trend that continued as the day wore on. The fish were getting bigger! There was a fairly steady pick at fish all day long right up until around 4:30 when we had to leave, and at times the bite was even better. The average fish today stepped quite a bit up in class and was in the 60 to 80-pound range, but there were many exceptions that went a lot higher. A good number of fish were 90 to 120, and a fair number were 140 to 185.

"The French connection (Francois and Claude Mangeot) who are regulars on this trip were on fire hooking up fish right and left. Dennis Ludington knew something that most of us didn't and was rapidly hooking fish and handing them off to his wife Tammie. The only problem was with the size of the fish, she couldn't land them fast enough to keep up with him. For others of us, as always, the bite was a "character builder" and left us scratching our heads wondering what we were doing wrong. Since this will probably be my last report (Frank will take over from here), I need to sum the trip us as best I can. No, it was probably not the big fish trip of a lifetime, but every trip is an adventure, and they each have their own personality.

"There was a ton of action on this one. I'd speculate that almost every one caught a wahoo or a tuna every full day of fishing, and speaking from lots of personal experience, that is by far not always the case. There was lots of excitement, and lots of things to see including a couple of sea turtles, a few Manta Rays, striped marlin (we hooked and released around a dozen), birds of all sorts (a.k.a. bait stealers), sharks (thankfully very few), red pelagic crabs, dolphins, many breaching immense hump back whales, flying fish (a.k.a. kite bait), ocean freighters, private yachts, Mexican Naval ships and I could go on, but you get the picture. There's more to these trips than fishing alone, and although it was tough, and there are some on the boat that never topped the 100 mark, we all had a wonderful time and when we get home will get busy consulting the schedule to figure out our next trip, or just telling Scotty to go ahead and put us down for next year.

"All this success and great times does not come by accident, and there are two entities that deserve special mention. First off the crew: I've learned from earlier reporting experiences, that no matter how much I write, no matter how I spin it, there's just no way to describe the job this crew does. If I heard it from one passenger, I heard it from ten, you ride the Royal Polaris because you can be sure the crew will take care of your every need, and every precaution possible will be taken to provide you a safe and enjoyable trip. The food has been incredible both in quality and presentation, and deserts have been "off the hook". Now as to all these fish we've been catching. Much of that credit has to go to the Accurate reels we were all using. I saw no malfunctions of any kind from any of the loaner equipment. Some of the guys toward the end of the trip switched to lighter line and were landing fish of a size they had no business landing. Some credit goes to the angler but again much goes to the reel. You're starting to see more and more guys on the boat who don't need the loaners because they've got their own Accurate reels. Once you've used one you'll understand why. Ok, that's it, in Dec. I'm aboard again and for now I'm looking forward to joining my lovely wife for some relaxation in Cabo, then back to the no doubt frigid Midwest."