There were a lot of boats on the water over Labor Day weekend. Phoenix weatherman Chris Dunn (and the announcer's voice on Bill Roecker's DVDs) was aboard one of them, the Grande out of Pt. Loma Sportfishing. His report and photos follow.

With two possible areas to fish and 2  ? days to get it done, Grande owner/operator James McDaniels was faced with a decision: Run 150 miles down the coast to an area that until recently was producing some pretty good fishing or show up at first light near the floating tuna pens at 50 miles and compete with nearly every offshore boat along the Southern California coast on a holiday weekend. With the weather up and bite slowing to a crawl down below, the decision was made to be at the pens at first light to take advantage of the early bite. It had been a time of day thing with early and late hours of daylight producing the best catches. The boat circus began as the sky turned a faint shade of grey. Boats of all shapes and sizes jockeyed for position to take advantage of the apparent fish-attracting properties of the large net enclosures.

"There's a biter!" "Fresh one!" It was on. Bluefin tuna of 16 to 20 pounds started coming over the rail. For about an hour that first morning on the tuna grounds the Grande was getting bit. A lively sardine pinned onto a 1/0 or 2/0 hook and 25-pound fluorocarbon leader was the hot ticket. It was all over by 9 a.m. A steady 15-knot breeze made for choppy conditions, but easily fishable.

With not much action reported during the middle part of the day, Captain McDaniels ventured away from the tuna pens, scouting the outer perimeter of the tuna zone, hoping to make a discovery nobody else had yet to make. It was not to be, however, and he positioned the boat back at the slow-moving tugs towing the floating pens, ready for the afternoon bite. A few more flurries of fish and we were done; 50-plus fish for the 28 passengers on their first full day of fishing. With the reports from down below still looking bleak at best, we would stay here to fish our second and final day. Different day, same routine. Pull up to the pens at first light and take advantage of the early morning bite. This morning would see two dozen or so footballs with fins fly over the rail. Not the ripper, wide-open bite we were looking for, but we did have some fish in the RSW hold for our efforts. The rest of the day was spent scratching around, metering spots of fish and waiting for them to respond to our chum and baited hooks. An occasional flurry of biters had two or three rods bent at a time. As the sun, obscured behind the nearly constant overcast, dropped closer to the horizon, our trip was coming to a close. As was the case the day before, there would be no wide-open evening bite. We called it a trip, having decked 96 beautiful bluefin tuna that all came from the same mold except for two that appeared to push the 40-pound mark. A constant theme aboard the boat was what a great time everyone had on the 2  ? day fishing adventure. Comments like "I like that the boat is so big, lots of room to move around!" and "Boy this crew is always right there when you have a fish. They're very attentive and really good" were common. Captain James, "Coach" Bill, Charlie, Steve, Oscar, Georgie and Jason in the galley all did their best to ensure we had a great time, fish or no fish. On this trip, every angler went home with at least one. Some had plenty more than that.