We took Captain Scott Leon out for a local trip today. Scott is the former editor of Fly Fishing in Salt Waters magazine. He was working as a guide in South Florida, but recently moved his business to Southern California.

Fishing was pretty slow, with only 4 bonito to show for the day. One was pretty decent size - around 5 lbs. That fish hit a small (size 2 hook) blue/white half-and-half.

The false "Low Oil" alarm came on once, even though the water was pretty flat. Again, it went off when we were coming over a swell at an angle. So...it's off to Boat Depot to have them take a look.

The Standard Horizon fuel flow meter continues to work well, now that we've rerouted the fuel hose. Accuracy was 3% on this trip.

Took a friend who hadn't been fishing for 3 years out today. We left Mission Bay at 6:00a with a couple of scoops of nice sardines and headed on a straight line towards the East Butterfly Bank, which is about 60 miles WSW from Mission Bay.

We started stopping on paddies around 15 miles out, working all of the larger ones we saw for nothing, although on one paddy north of the 226 Bank we had some dorado come up but would not bite.

We finally got out to the eastern edge of the East Butterfly (32.17 / 118.04) around noon, and saw a few terns working. We put in a Black/purple Sumo jet head jig behind a dorado-clored Boone Bird, and a Yozuri Hydromag plug, and got a strike almost immediately on the jig. That was a 15lb YFT, which put up a spirited, if short-lived, struggle on the 30lb trolling outfit.

The normal process when you get a jig strike like this is to start a chum line to try to draw the school to the boat, but we couldn't get the school to come in, and the birds left. We boxed the area for another 30 minutes with no more strikes, so we continued on.

We were a little east of the high spot on the E. Butterfly (32.17 / 118.06) when we spotted a medium-size paddy, and as we turned to head towards it, a large marlin came out of the water and splashed back in. We didn't have any marlin jigs ready, so we dropped in the tuna jigs and circled the paddy for nothing.

Then we slid up to the paddie, tossed a few sardines for chum, and fish started boiling. That was at 1:30 - when we left for home at 3:45, the fish were still going off. It was pretty much one-bait-one-bite on dorado and small yellowtail. We lost one dorado estimated at 25 lbs next to the boat, but the remainder were mostly 12 - 15 lb fish. The YT were in the 6 - 10 lb range.

I got the second fish off the paddy on a fly - it was only an 8lb fish, but I caught it on an 8wt rod with 8lb test. The fish struck a 1/0 white Deceiver with peacock herl topping. After that, I could get the fish to follow the fly, but they wouldn't hit it. Tried a few different patterns (Sea Habit, Crease Fly, Tuna Kahuna), and several retrieves, but no luck. I was fishing the Crease Fly on a floating line, and it was pretty wild to watch the fish come up and boil behind it, but not take it.

The dorado seemed to like the smaller sardines best, the YT didn't care much. The 120 gram skinny Shimano Butterfly jig also worked very well on the YT. I'd toss it out, let it sink about 150 feet, then do the "Butterfly jig" retrieve. After about 3 -5 cycles, I'd pin a fish. I was getting a hit on almost every cast, but I didn't try a regular jig for comparison, so it might have been just the hot bite.

That 50 lb Spectra on the Buterfly jig rods really zips through the kelp - most of the fish wound up in the paddy, but I didn't lose a single fish on the recommended setup.

To give you an idea of how hot the fish were, I started using a clear Zara Spook, the same size used for largemouth. A fast "walk the dog" retrieve had fish boiling behind it repeatedly. I only managed to hook two of them, but lost both. I was using a 9' graphite swimbait casting rod with Spectra, and I think the lack of stretch contributed to the long-line releases.

The weather and seas were perfect - small swell mostly from the west, 71 - 72 degree water, clean and blue. Only a light breeze during the day. The ride home was a piece of cake, since we were running quartering with the swell - we averaged 25mph with the autopilot on, so we mostly sat back and chewed the fat on the 2+ hour ride back. We covered about 135 miles total for the trip, but that one stop made it worth it.

The boat was running well, although the false "Low Oil" alarm continues to be a problem. On this trip, however, I think we finally came upon a repeatable scenario for the alarm: when the boat takes a hard bump with the stern higher than the bow, the alarm goes off. This doesn't happen that often - usually when coming off a swell, we usually land stern-down.

We also had the "HOT" alarm come on three times during the trip - it looks like we may have ingested some eel grass or other debris. Back to the shop! This time we're headed off to Boat Depot to have them look at the for the service

Took the boat in for the factory recall. According to BRP Tech Support, the recall just required the dealer to replace the engine fuel filter and do a visual inspection. Took the dealer over a week to do this, blaming BRP - "We haven't gotten the recall kits yet", but from what we can tell, there was no reason for the delay.

A thin envelope with BRP Customer Service listed in the return address appeared in our mailbox. "This can't be good . . ." we told the wife, and sure enough, a recall letter was inside. It turns out it's not as bad as it could be. . .it is a voluntary recall (meaning the Coast Guard is not making them do it, they are doing it on their own) to replace the fuel filter under the cowling. Apparently the fuel systems on a few 40 - 90 HP units with serial numbers below 5166490 were QA tested at too high a pressure, which might have damaged the filter, causing it to leak.

BRP is instructing owners not to use the motors until a dealer can replace the filter and check the system for leaks. Back to Sunset Marine. . .

We also finished installing our replacement trim tab actuators and the tab position indicator switch. Look for a short feature aricle on the replacement in a bit...

After our last trip, we decided to do something about the fogging issue with our Raymarine DS600X. A quick search of the Internet indicated that our fogging problem was not unusual, and in fact, several Raymarine models seemed to be having the same problem.

We boxed up the unit, sent it to Raymarine 3rd day UPS, then called in to check up on the unit after it arrived.

Raymarine turned the unit around in two business days, and returned it to us via 2nd day DHL. Turns out 2nd day DHL is available for all warranty repairs AT NO CHARGE, if you ask.

Fishing for Dorado (Mahi-mahi) has been incredible for local SoCal waters this year. I don't think I've ever seen the fish counts this big. The fish shown in the left photo is typical for the fish being caught.

Yellowtail, jumbo bonito, mako shark and marlin fishing has also been pretty good this year, but unfortunately it looks like Mexican seiners have intercepted almost all the tuna. Albacore, bluefin and yellowfin tuna have been almost nonexistent compared to years past. As of today, there are reports of a few small yellowfin tuna being caught, but nothing big.

We've been mostly busy with the site changes, and working on our upcoming saltwater flyfishing site, but we did manage a couple of trips. No records, but some memorable fish!

TB2 has been running generally well, but our Lenco trim tabs, which had served well up to this point, froze up in July. We decided to replace them with new Lencos, and also added their controls with the LED position indicators. Turns out these controls also have an auto-retract feature. We'll cover the repair in a future article.

Fortunately (or maybe not?) the tabs froze in the "Up" position, so we could run the boat and adjust trim using the motor as if the tabs weren't there. We made a trip before the repair, and discovered why both trim tabs and motor trim are a good idea in a boat.

With the boat fully loaded, without trim tabs, we were unable to properly trim the boat with just the motor without pushing the boat too fast for water conditions. It's not that the E-TEC 90 didn't have the horsepower needed - it's that even with the motor trimmed fully in, the boat ran too bow up unless we ran faster than water conditions would allow. Our fuel mileage also suffered as a result, dropping down to around 3.7 MPG average for the trip.

Our Raymarine DS600X also has some problems with fogging. We thougth we had done something to the unit, but a subsequent search of the Internet revealed that a number of people are having problems with fogging or leaks in the DS600X case. The smaller units (DS400X and DS500X) do not seem to be affected as badly. The unit has been sent in to Raymarine for repair

What about our Low Oil Alarm? Prior to this trip, Sunset Marine replaced the oil tank assembly under warranty. During their testing, they couldn't find anything obviously wrong. BUT the alarm still sounded a few times on this trip. We talked to them after the trip, and they suspect an electrical problem with the boat wiring, rather than a problem with the motor. We'll go over everything before the next trip.