Mike Ramirez tied the Excel to the dock at Fisherman's Landing October 25 after an eight-day trip with 30 anglers. "We fished on The Ridge about halfway down," he said, "for some good yellowtail. We tried Alijos Rocks, where we saw good sign of tuna and wahoo. We got no big tuna on the boat, but we did manage some yellows and wahoo. One of the wahoo came on the dropper loop!"

Tom Wright of Bishop was the fortunate angler who caught that wahoo. "He bit about 30 or 40 feet down on the drop," he told Roecker, "and we thought at first it was a shark, the way it was pulling off line. I got it to the boat in about ten minutes, and the crew was real helpful in getting it around the anchor line." Wright's wahoo weighed 67 pounds, and it won him first place in the jackpot. He said he baited a sardine on a 6/0 Mustad hook tied to 125-pound Big Game fluorocarbon and 80-pound Line One spectra. He used a Penn 15 KG reel and a Daiwa five and a half-foot rod.

Randy Isogawa of Fresno won second place for a 60-pound wahoo and Chris Natividad of San Jose won third place for his 58.8-pound skinny. Bill Sandborn of Carson City, NV had the trip's best yellowtail, a 38.2-pounder, and he stood in the lineup with the wahoo catchers. His fish also came on the dropper loop.