The Excel had a good trip into the hot zone. We had hot fishing at times, and we literally visited the hot zone, off Magdalena Bay and waters just to the south and offshore, where the water temperature was a scorching 87.5 degrees!

I've never seen water so warm above Cabo San Lucas, and neither had anyone else on the 124-foot boat owned by Bill Poole, including skipper Shawn Steward and his crew. We spent a day poking around offshore and inshore at Punta Tosca, at the southern entrance to the bay.

In that water, our sardines came out of the well feeling hot in your hand. As you can imagine, the mortality rate was starting to climb, with some bait showing the dreaded "red blotch." After throwing many scoops on a submerged school of big ???uns that wouldn't even give us a look or a boil, we went back into 82 degrees to the north and out to Alijos Rocks, where the temps were in the 70's and our sardines were much happier.

We began our fishing on this 10-day Braid trip somewhere above the 13 Spot on The Ridge, where we found some dorado and wahoo. There were plenty of dorado on our trip, and some were big, but wahoo were scarce. That seemed unlikely in October to me at the time, so I wasn't upset when I pulled the hook on my first "skin," and then had the next two bite off my 45-pound stranded wire leaders.

As it turned out, wahoo were common as hen's teeth. They may have been affected by the warm water to the south, as were the will ???o the wisp cow tuna.

Tuna, yellowtail and dorado were thick on The Ridge, where the water was in the low 80's. They bit everything. We stopped at the 13 and the 23 Spots and soon had all the smaller fish we needed, fish of 10 to 25 or 30 pounds. Grouper and pargo were also biting on or near the bottom. I got a nice pargo on a 6X Jr. jig. A couple of sizeable grouper came aboard after they took sardines on the dropper loop.

We could have filled our limits at these spots, but Skipper Steward wanted to save some of our fishing for bigger tuna and wahoo, so we motored slowly south, downswell, all one comfortable night.

Tackle sponsors on the trip were very helpful. Their prizes were appreciated by the 24 anglers aboard Excel. Mustad, Salas, Raider jigs, Burns Saltwater Outfitters, Fish Trap, Tady and other manufacturers were very generous. I gave all anglers gift packages, and all won special prizes as well, in a drawing. Everyone got Mustad hooks in two or three sizes.

Joe Pfister of Seeker gave a 670 rod, won and used well by Scott Benson, and Jack Nilsen of Accurate gave a 665 Boss 4.1 reel, won by eventual jackpot winner Craig Arnold. Both men were grateful and offered to write their thanks to the sponsors. One angler told me he caught yellowtail, pargo, tuna and dorado with his new jigs from Matt Salas. Tim Turner said he got one of our six wahoo on a red and gold Raider jig from his goodie bag.

Tim Turner of Northridge was the release king for the trip. He documented by tag the release of 30 game fish. I was second with 29. Chartermistress Jan Howard of Braid Products gave us prizes for our efforts, and said that 156 fish were released. There were no doubt many other fish let go by anglers in too much of a hurry to have a deckhand take a tag to the can next to Jan's tackle box. Braid also provided daily prizes of jigs, shirts and other goodies that Howard gave out at dinner each evening. Every angler got a Braid hat.

After a taste of some sloppy weather down south, we arrived at Alijos Rocks, ready to fish for tusker tuna. To our delight, the weather was down, and seas were pleasant. We fished in a position not already occupied, as the Qualifier 105, Royal Polaris, and Red Rooster were anchored in the upwind spots.

The Alijos tuna were big. Fishing was mostly a slow pick, requiring some finesse. To draw a strike, fishermen had to get a sardine, a scad mackerel or a chunk of squid downwind and out from the Excel at least 100 yards. Only a couple of fish were taken at less distance. One was caught by Jan Howard at 40 yards. Jan got five big tuna to 119 pounds, and she said most came at 200 yards, on sardines.

John Malloy blew us all away on the first afternoon, when he got three fish on chunks. Those were also on long soaks at great distance, not the usual result from the chunk method. Tuna chasing flying fish were seen, but not often. There was very little "show," as they call it. The yellowfin were satisfying, running from 40 to 127 pounds. On the best (and the only full day) of three days we fished the rocks, we got 37.

Fish that size aren't easy to land. Most of us fished with 50-pound line, but after a few breakoffs, many switched to 60-pound. The tuna didn't seem to want to bite anything heavier. I hooked one on a sardine with 50-pound Soft Steel line, an Accurate 665 high speed reel and a short Seeker 6429 rod, and it beat me up for 20 minutes. At last I had it to the side of the boat, coming up. About 20 feet down, the fish began making larger circles, in a big rush.

"Here's the shark!" someone yelled, and I felt the fish come much too easy. No wonder, it was minus its tail.

"What kind of shark was it?" I asked.

"A mako," someone said. It would have been 80 pounds, with the tail. Later, the same shark tried to take another tuna at boatside, but was thwarted by quick work with the gaff. It was about ten feet long, with a wicked smile. My tuna, well-bled, went down into the refrigerated sea water hold.

The fishing kite produced some big tuna at The Rocks. They bit on squid, flying fish and dual sardine rigs. One weighed 127 pounds, but Bill Anderson's tuna wasn't eligible for the jackpot because we didn't complete a full rotation of kite fishing.

I tried fishing with large scad mackerel on a 6/0 Demon hook. The first scad swam down. I had a hard take in short order, not far from the boat. This time, I was fishing with my Accurate 12, a two-speed reel and a Seeker Black Steel 655 XH rod. That rig cranked the fish to the boat so quickly my camerman barely got to the rail in time to shoot a decent yellowtail. Crewman Oscar Marroquin gaffed it aboard. It didn't look big enough to eat a three-pound mackerel, but yellows are famous for taking large baits.

One more mackerel went out to the 100-yard bite zone, and then another 100 yards. It was nose-hooked, so I let it hang out there in the current for a long time. When I started to reel it in, I had one of the hardest takes I ever felt. Hookset was instantly performed by the fish, and the 5/0 Mustad Demon went in solid and I lifted the rod. The tuna must have hit the bait going the opposite way. It bent my Seeker 6455 XH Black Steel rod violently. Spectra peeled off the 12, and then the line popped where I had spliced a fluorocarbon leader.

The next day, when I had another hookup on the short rod, I passed it to Scott Benson, a new Yorker and former east coast deckhand. Scott was reluctant to take a handoff at first, but he hadn't got a big one yet, and our time was getting short. He took the fish, brought the 75-pounder boatside shortly, and thanked me.

"That's some nice gear you've got," he said.

"Thanks! I'm glad you got to pull on one," I replied.

"The reel was smooth," he remarked, "and that short rod is something new to me. It works real good."

There were two more anglers aboard who hadn't connected yet, but I couldn't come up with another tuna before we left. That's when we went down south, and found the hot water. We got a couple of big dorado trolling for wahoo with Marauder jigs, and a lot of small fish at Punta Tosca on the inside, and that was it.

Running out of time, Skipper Shawn Steward took us back to the north. We tried one more pocket of warm water to see if there were wahoo there, but no dice. Steward got some information from another boat about some paddies holding wahoo and dorado, so we went up north of The Ridge.

We found three or four paddies holding dorado, and saw one or two wahoo, but got no skinnies. On the last paddy, we found the mother lode. There were large dorado with a strong yen for sardines nearby, and they stayed with the boat until we were limited out. These fish were worthy, 15 to 35 pounds, and they were serious biters. Cameraman Paul Sweeney finally took a rod in hand and caught ???em with the best of us. When we left, second skipper Justin Fleck marked the paddy with balloons so the next boat could find it again.

We spent some of our remaining fishing time at skipper Steward's secret honey hole between Geronimo and San Martin on our way home. Those who fished the dropper loop on the bottom in 240 feet were rewarded with plenty of large red rockfish, salmon grouper and ling cod. When we got to San Martin the cold green water seemed to put the calico bass off, and we couldn't get much there.

"Wind ???em up," said Steward. "We're gonna call it a trip, and head for home. Break down your gear, put your rods in the well with the others, and sit back and relax. We'll be at the dock at 7:30. The water is grease calm all the way home."

And it was. I offer my thanks to Bill Poole, Dennis Braid, Jan Howard and all the generous sponsors who contributed gear on our ten-day adventure. Thanks also to Shawn Steward, second skipper Justin Fleck, deckhands Mike Ramirez, Jordan Richards, Oscar Marroquin, Kevin Rohodes and chefs Jason Fleck and Ryan O'Connor for good food, good fishing and a good time.

Shawn served us our last dinner, a tradition for many years in the San Diego fleet. He brought out large portions of prime rib with carrots and baked potato. We had a fine green salad and sour cream with the main dish, and cheesecake with strawberries for dessert. All our meals were very good. The fresh-cut fruit served before breakfast each day was sweet and ripe: honeydew melon, cantaloupe, grapes and pineapple. Each meal was different, and there was always coffee, tea, hot chocolate, milk and other drinks. We had mid-meal snacks offered to us as well, including sashimi.

At the dock, the jackpot winners posed for a photo. Craig Arnold of Bonsall got a 121.6-pounder on a sardine and a 4/0 ringed Super Mutu hook, 50-pound fluorocarbon and 50-pound P-Line, on a TLD 30 reel and a Seeker 6470 H Black Steel rod.

Tim Turner of Northridge was second, for a 103-pound tuna, and Tom Kelly of Rancho Palos Verdes was third, for a 97.1-pound Alijos Rocks yellowfin tuna.

Though I don't do much with hunting, I'd like to offer this as a sidebar. Just before we left, Bill Poole bagged the biggest elk I've ever seen. He was hunting about an hour and a half from Grand Junction, CO, he said, and got a bull that scored 451 points under Safari Club rules. It was a 10 x 8 non-typical bull, said Bill, and weighed about 1000 pounds. He gave me a photo on the day our trip departed from Fisherman's Landing to print here. The bull looks bigger than a horse.

Where are the cows? That question remains open for now. On our trip we encountered one bunch of big tuna on porpoise off Mag Bay. Shawn said they were 100-pounders and larger as they showed on his instruments. We baited them hard and couldn't draw a sniff, a boil or a good look from them. The same thing has happened to several other boats.

It's too early to say they're not going to show up off southern Baja this year. That hot water paralyzing southern Baja must to cool down before we can expect the really big tuna to go on the bite. It will cool off in the next few weeks, no doubt about that. Meanwhile, the ten-day trips are producing what they always have; big numbers and an unbeatable variety of tuna, dorado, yellowtail grouper, snapper. Stay tuned and keep your heavy gear ready. As the monkey said when he got his tail in the lawn mower; it won't be long now.