This was no laughing matter today as we set out to catch albacore and/or tuna or bust and narrowly missed a complete skunk late in the evening with a merciful double jig strike on ten pound albacore. Wow! What a long day of looking in excellent conditions across a broad, historically productive area that was full of life and bait but zero sign of tuna. We get the A for effort - again, but ultimately took one for the team in prospecting offshore the entire day. With one RSW tank laden with beautiful yellowtail, this was really our only choice that we gladly accepted. But, the gladly part of the effort was definitely waning by the mid afternoon as the perfect conditions continued to yield nothing in the way of offshore tuna. Such is fishing.

Overall, other than the obvious fact that the offshore tuna are down and off the bite, I can't even begin to offer an opinion or venture any guess as to what is in store offshore for us during the next few weeks. There are certainly enough fish around but the inconsistency of just about everything on the outside so far this season has us guessing and using little more than hunches to plan our daily moves let alone predict a few days or weeks in advance.

Tomorrow's plan is set however as we are turning around in the a.m. departing on Steve Kimbrough's annual five day voyage by the early afternoon. Captain Toussaint and I will be teaming up on this next voyage so we will see what our combined efforts can produce. At the very least we hope that good luck is on our side.

Tim Ekstrom