Geoff Halpern and I were invited to fish with Ian Orr and his wife Gail on their new Parker 25' courtesy of Friends of Rollo. Ian was the big winner and has a boat the same as ours with only the inside controls and the same twin 150 Yamahas. His "free" boat cost him about $70K with income taxes, sales taxes and addition of electronics. Fortunately, they are able to borrow a truck for hauling it around. They do have a slip up in Long Beach area for 6 months and will pull it out for the off season. They have a few inovations that I picked up on. But they have Raymarine electronics and their autopilot works flawlessly as compared to our Simrad which, supposedly is being addressed tomorrow. And his steering is snug when turning the wheel both ways as compared to our good to the left and weak to the right. steering.  They also have the Raymarine 3-way (Radar, GPS plotter, and depth/fish finder). We, even Ian, had problems with it and the GPS part was worthless and the depth part hard to figure out.  Stick with Furuno. I also don't trust the sea temp readings on either instrument and I may have to put in a dedicated sea temp. Temp breaks are important and these current readings are weird (i.e. "not to be trusted").

The weather forecast was for 10 kts of wind and, again, this was correct with 10 kts going out, 10 kts all day, and 10 kts coming back. There was little swell and the wind chop was quite acceptable and fishable. In the last couple of days there has been spotty fishing at the 371-302 with spotty activity at the 182 and 181-209 areas. So we headed for the mid to upper part of the Ridge, worked down to the 182 - back and forth - and then back up towards the 181. There was one report of a boat out of Oceanside just inside the 181 who had a double. They never said what, but this was apparently albies. We worked around the 181  and then up to the 312 (SE of the 209) and then back to the 181. The only exciting thing we saw was a group of 1-200 of the small black "tuna" birds sitting in the water near the 181 with lots flying around, but nothing came of our efforts in the area. Later in the day we heard of one albie caught in this area and also reports of a 35 pdish YFT on a cedar plug just outside of the 224. I talked to Bob Vanian during the day and he related that Bob Woodard, Jr. had hooked a Marlin at the 302, but we never heard the result of that. There was also talk of bonita down in the 302-371 area.

There were a fair number of boats working the 182 area  and up the Ridge, but the only 4 fish we heard of were those above. At the end of our travels we crossed over the 181, aimed towards Mission Bay, and, after a couple miles, headed for home. Tonight we read on Vanian's report that someone coming up from Ensenada caught 3 albies near the 475 knuckle which is below and outside the bottom of the upper finger bank. We also read that the "evening" bite at the 181 turned up 3 albies for someone (2 jig and 1 bait) and they also reported seeing a couple of Marlin in the area.  (As Daniel might say: "That's just great!.") There are NO reports of WFO YFT bite at the 302 or anyone limiting out. We can't find any report of a sportboat limiting out on YFT tjhere or anywhere. There is an awful lot of radio crap going on these days. 

Kenneth, Dennis Albert & I were planning to go Friday. The weather report seems acceptable, as long as we don't think about going the 60-70 mile route where the sporties have been working. So,, unless there is something positive in tomorrow's activities, we will probably stay home and rest - and save a lot of $$$$. In the past I always enjoyed going exploring and, occasionally, finding the fish. But times have changed. And we don't know if Sundance has been or will be able to resolve the autopilot issue by tomorrow. Anyone want to buy a boat?

Marty