super cow – Syndication Server

Giant yellowfin tuna puts anglers at tipping point

A 365-pound yellowfin tuna was landed after a marathon struggle Tuesday off Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, but the real battle was wrestling the massive fish onto the 22-foot skiff.

“I actually told the guys to make sure the bilge pump is on,” Eduardo Aripez, captain of the vessel Nicole, told Rebecca Ehrenberg of Pisces Sportfishing. “When we started pulling it onboard the boat almost tipped over and took on a lot of water, but we managed.”

Aripez and two other locals, Franciso Beltran and Inocencio Pina, landed the tuna after a 3.5-hour battle that lasted into the darkness at Outer Gordo Banks, north of Cabo San Lucas in the Sea of Cortez.

It’s at least the third “super cow” yellowfin tuna – weighing 300 pounds or more – caught at Gordo Banks in the past three weeks.

On Nov. 9, a 310-pound yellowfin tuna was landed just days after the end of the prestigious Los Cabos Tuna Jackpot competition, which produced only three fish topping 200 pounds.

On Nov. 12, a 370-pound yellowfin tuna was caught at Gordo Banks after a 60-minute fight aboard the vessel Hard Efforts.

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All three fish were caught on live skipjack tuna.

For the sake of comparison, the all-tackle world record for the yellowfin tuna stands at 427 pounds. That fish was caught by Southern California angler Guy Yocom in 2012, 180 miles south of Cabo San Lucas.

The 365-pound tuna, caught on 80-pound-test line with a 130-pound-test leader, was weighed at La Playita, which provides close access to Gordo Banks.

Eric Brictson, owner of Gordo Banks Pangas, told For The Win Outdoors that the same fishermen have been targeting giant tuna in late afternoon, often returning in the dark. They also caught two black marlin this past week.

“I think we’re going to have a good December, with warmer conditions than usual,” Brictson said. “We had that about 10 years ago, when the cows bit all through December.”

–Image showing Eduardo Aripez, Franciso Beltran and Inocencio Pina posing with the 365-pound yellowfin tuna is courtesy of Pisces Sportfishing

Fisherman catches rare ‘super cow’ using a balloon

A fisherman caught a rare and record-size 364.5-pound bluefin tuna off Southern California on a charter boat using a unique technique.

Fishermen seeking to catch a fish of a lifetime or personal best on a charter boat off Orange County, Calif., appeared to hit the jackpot last week, especially Adonis Soriano, who landed a record-size 364.5-pound bluefin tuna—known as a super cow in sportfishing lingo.

Adonis Soriano, right, with his 364.5-pound bluefin tuna, along with deckhand.

A super cow is one that weighs 300 pounds or more, and it is rare to catch one off Southern California as fishermen there typically take long-range trips from San Diego well into Mexican waters to catch these behemoths.

Soriano’s catch would have shattered the California state record had he not used the rail for leverage. Also, it wasn’t weighed on a certified scale but taped out at 81 inches in length with a 61-inch girth, thus producing the estimated weight.

The state record is 245 pounds caught in 2016, or about when big bluefin tuna started showing up in Southern California waters. As it was, Soriano’s catch was a record among the Newport Beach sportfishing fleet.

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Soriano was one of 18 anglers aboard the Thunderbird out of Davey’s Locker in Newport Beach that fished on a two-day trip behind San Clemente Island, and they caught loads of big bluefin tuna.

Charter master Jeff Price told USA Today/For The Win Outdoors that all the anglers were going after the fish of a lifetime or personal record, and several succeeded. They totaled 65 bluefin tuna with seven of them weighing over 100 pounds, four over 200 pounds (known as a cow), and the one over 300.

Adonis Soriano with his 364.5-pound bluefin tuna.

“We use 200-pound test and dangle a flying fish from a helium balloon to catch these monsters,” Price told For The Win Outdoors, describing a method that gets a bait dangling on the surface away from the boat. “On this trip, we saw literally thousands of fish jumping out of the water feeding on small anchovies, although there are so many fish, they’re not easy to get to bite your bait. When they’re feeding on the small anchovies and Shelbys that’s usually all they want so you need to be very lucky for them to bite your bait.”

Then there were several lucky anglers, Soriano among the luckiest.

“The 364.5-pound bluefin took just under one hour to land,” Price said. “The fight was intense. He peeled off hundreds of feet of line on his first run. The large fishing reel was actually very warm from all of the tension.

“He laid the rod on the rail and put one knee down on the deck and started cranking the handle as hard as he could. It gets to be exhausting, but the longer you have the fish on, the higher the chance you will lose it. He did an excellent job landing this fish.”

Soriano told For The Win Outdoors the fight was “intense” and “like no other fight I had fought before.”

“[The fish took] long runs that almost took all the line off my reel,” Soriano said.

It wasn’t the only fish he caught; he landed another in the 35-40-pound range. The other was his biggest ever, surpassing a 90-pounder he had caught previously.”

Photos courtesy of Davey’s Locker and Adonis Soriano.

Anglers on skiff land rare ‘super cow’ tuna

A 367-pound yellowfin tuna was caught last Friday in the Los Cabos region of Baja California Sur, Mexico, after the massive fish devoured a smaller tuna used as bait.

The rare “super cow,” a reference to yellowfin tuna weighing 300 pounds or more, was caught aboard a 23-foot panga, or skiff, by brothers Jesus and Gerardo Banaga out of La Playita near San Jose del Cabo.

According to Eric Brictson of Gordo Banks Pangas, the fish was hooked on a medium-size skipjack tuna that was trolled near Inner Gordo Banks in the Sea of Cortez. The fight lasted 2.5 hours.

A Pisces Sportfishing Facebook post provides more detail:

“They looped around the area only once when this Super Cow Yellowfin torpedoed out of the water after their bait. The fish ran for an hour straight, with the guys in hot pursuit, trying to avoid getting spooled.

“After the run it headed down deep and the hard work began. Two-and-a-half hours after the hookup they had the fish at the gaff.”

Brictson said Jesus Banaga is a longtime captain in his panga fleet, and that the tuna was weighed by another local, who purchased the fish afterward.

Tracy Ehrenberg, who runs Pisces Sportfishing in Cabo San Lucas, told For The Win Outdoors that only a handful of “super cow” tuna are caught in area waters each year.

“With more sophisticated boats, new techniques such as kites, balloons, 360-degree radar, and boats being able to travel further, I do believe catches of these big fish has gone up,” Ehrenberg said.

“On the other hand, nothing can beat good old-fashioned skill. A lot of the panga guys out of La Playita are commercial tuna fishermen that also like to sportfish, so they know where they are and how to catch them – hence monster fish on tiny boats.”

Brictson said that on Saturday, Inner Gordo Banks was crowded with anglers hoping to latch onto a giant tuna, but there were no significant hookups.

“Still hit or miss,” he said.

While catches of super cow yellowfin tuna are rare, catches topping 400 pounds are exceedingly rare.

According to the International Game Fish Assn., the all-tackle world record stands at 427 pounds. The fish was caught south of Cabo San Lucas by Guy Yocom in September 2012.

–Images are courtesy of Gordo Banks Pangas and Pisces Sportfishing

Rare ‘super cow’ tuna caught off Cabo San Lucas

After hooking two enormous yellowfin tuna and losing both, a group of anglers out of Cabo San Lucas boated the fish of a lifetime.

After hooking two enormous yellowfin tuna and losing both – one after a 4-hour fight – a group of anglers out of Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, boated the fish of a lifetime.

Steve Hammerschmidt, of Huntington Beach, landed the 365-pound ‘super cow’ after a battle of 2-plus hours last Tuesday in the Pacific, 30 miles north of the resort city on Baja California’s tip.

Veteran anglers often refer to yellowfin tuna topping 200 pounds as “cows.” Tuna topping 300 pounds are “super cows,” and catches of these giants are quite rare.

However, even larger yellowfin tuna exist within their range in the eastern Pacific. The world record yellowfin – caught south of Cabo San Lucas in 2012 – stands at 427 pounds.

Hammerschmidt was fishing aboard Castigo with owner Larry Jacinto, Capt. Sean Sadler, and mate Adam Cargill.

According to Rebecca Ehrenberg of Pisces Sportfishing, which posted about the catch on Facebook, the anglers had received information about the presence of large tuna from the crew of the San Diego-based Red Rooster III.

After arriving at the spot, they hooked a tuna estimated to weigh 380 pounds and lost that fish after 4-1/2 hours, in the darkness, just 15 feet from the boat.

Cargill told Ehrenberg: “We were devastated after we lost this fish, but we were ready to get right back on it first thing in the morning. The next day I rigged the line with a natural flying fish I had, and immediately had an explosion on it. Again, huge fish, but we missed it.”

Cargill then baited a line with a fresh sardine, handed the rod to Hammerschmidt, and the hookup was nearly instantaneous. After 2 1/2 hours the fish was safely on board and the veteran anglers celebrated their largest catch to date.

The tuna measured 84 inches and had a cow-like girth of 59 inches, leaving the group with enough fresh ahi to feed a small community.

–Images are courtesy of Sean Sadler and Pisces Sportfishing