A large number of tuna have been taken on live bait, as well as on Mega Bait lures. "This lure looks very similar to the bait fish, so they really slam the lure after locating it," said Neil. "Other lures producing tuna include the popular Fish Traps and Cedar Plugs. The water temperature where we are fishing is 61 degrees."

"We have seen a wide variety of sizes of fish brought in lately," emphasized Neil. "One day may produce tuna averaging 25 to 30 pounds, with several 50 pounders mixed in. The next day of fishing may kick out fish averaging 50 pounds, with several 20 pounders thrown in."

On Friday, November 2, anglers fishing out of Morro Bay hooked into a school of albacore averaging 30 pounds, accompanied by several 50 to 60 pound monster tuna. "The mixture of weights in the tuna catches is a great indication to how long the hot bite will last," noted Neil. "As long as we continue to hook into small fish along with the large ones, we know that the run is going to hold steady."

"What is evident from the scores on Friday is that we are not yet into the tail end of the run, so we should see the bite last for at least several more weeks to come," revealed Neil. "When we start catching only fish over 50 pounds, with few or no smaller fish, then that will be the indication the bite is beginning to taper off."

Anglers have a great chance of hooking into several big albacore weighing up to 80 pounds, as evidenced by veteran tuna fisherman, Dan Barrios, who took an 82 pound tuna while fishing aboard a private boat. Dr. Dan Goodman took big fish honors with his 80 pound albacore taken while aboard the Princess on an October fishing adventure out of Morro Bay.

During the week of October 28 through November 3, the 466 albacore passengers fishing out of Virg's Landing got into great action that produced 1,945 fish averaging 25 to 35 pounds. Robert Yohimoto from Los Angeles caught the biggest tuna, a 61 pound albacore, aboard the Princess.

The charter boats off Half Moon Bay, Santa Cruz and Monterey have stopped albacore fishing because the blue water is too far out, 80 to 90 miles away, and has had no sign of fish in it lately.

"We had a great albacore season," said Mike Baxter, captain of the Wild Wave out of Shamrock Charters in Santa Cruz. "The albacore showed up on June 22 and we had a very consistent season up until 1-1/2 weeks ago. That is 4 months of good fishing; we only had to cancel a couple of trips due to bad weather and managed to get a decent fish count on most of our trips."