As Christmas approaches, the long range fleet remains fishing hard on the southern banks and the Hurricane Bank, far to the west of the southern tip of Baja. Big tuna angling is like all fishing in that it's not always wide open. Sometimes many hours of standing at the rail is needed to get a hookup on a monster yellowfin, and of course, there are no guarantees such a connection will occur.

It helps to know what you're doing, make use of the proper gear, to be aware of what's going on in the water around the boat and to listen to what the skippers and crews are saying about how to get hooked up. That's why we see top anglers like Tim Turis and Ken Cirks coming home with five and four cows respectively, on the Excel yesterday.

Right now the boats are finding mixed action, depending on the time of day and their location. They're all getting some cows, and it looks like the Royal Polaris will bring home a boatload of biggies when she docks at Fisherman's landing December 22. Here's the latest from the fleet.