"I fought my fish for over an hour," said first-place winner Bob Thayer of Nuevo about his 128-pounder. "It doesn't get any better than that." He added that he used a sardine on a 7/0 Gorilla hook, with 60-pound clear Izorline and 80-pound Brown Spectra on a TLD 20-2 reel and a Calstar 765L rod.

Mike Kruger of Cherry Valley was second, for a 122.5-pound tuna, and Karl Thaning of Hemet was third, for a 122.1-pound yellowfin tuna.

Plentiful tuna schools
Billy Santiago worked hard for his Royal Polaris anglers on a ten-day trip that returned Dec 2, and the reward was limits of yellowfin tuna, and a good catch of yellowtail.

"We had planned on leaving the fishing ground around noon," said the boat's report for Nov 26, " to head for the bait grounds, but the yellowfin tuna had other plans. The morning started off with the smaller fish biting, but then those 30 to 50-pound fish just moved the little guys out of the way. It was steady fishing, and our passenger just had a ball. We did mange to muster up some wahoo today, but they are still on strike. So we departed for the bait grounds around 15:00 hours. The weather is getting better each day. We arrived at Mag bay around 23:30 hours, and the bait didn't take long. We filled 3 tanks in no time. Once we departed Mag Bay, we headed southwest."

Scott Christensen of Anaheim won first place, for a 57-pound tuna he bagged with a mackerel on a 6/0 Gorilla hook, with 40-pound blue Izorline, a Penn 12T reel and a Calstar 65L rod. Peter Iosifidis of Redlands was second, for a 54-pounder, and Gilbert Ayuyao of LA was third, for a 52-pound yellowfin tuna.