Author: Capt. Steve Lassley

World Record Swordfish Caught In Five Minutes Editor’s Note:The crew of the Bad Company just got to experience an epic fishing moment recently.  Boat owner and angler Anthony Hsieh pitched a bait to a tailing sword and fought a quick epic battle to land it in under five minutes.  Capt. Steve Lassley recaps the story for us below. “We departed 7/11 on a 4-day trip. Our primary focus on this trip was a local swordfish for Anthony. When we are targeting a particular species we will drive past all kinds of game fish. On this particular trip those pesky 250-pound bluefin…

Watch this classic video of some amazing swordfish harpoon action put together by Capt. Steve Lassley and the crew of the Mirage while commercial swordfishing on the West Coast in 1999. Capt. Steve said ” I think we were 23 for 27 over that two day period. Many of those were “eyeball” fish meaning they were not spotted by a plane.” The crew of the Mirage in the video were Ryan Burr (video man), John Richardson (pilot) and Jeremy Smith (harpooner).

Over the years I have been given a number of great opportunities to run a number of very good commercial fishing and tournament fishing operations dating back to the 1970’s. So many come to mind — Agitator, Dorsal, Unreel, High Gross, Ab Seas, Hana Pa’a, Colleen, Three Daughters, After Midnight and of course the Mirage and Bad Company — and that’s just a portion of them. With all of these came little nuggets of knowledge, twists and turns and different ways of looking at the same picture. Many were learned as things evolved and others were learned because that individual…

I guess 2012 was a pretty good year overall. The fish pretty much did exactly what they were supposed to do in this condition, well sort of. The Browning newsletter kind of called it back in April — a wannabe El Niño. I think the only curve ball was the absence of striped marlin off California and the absence of blue marlin off Baja. Overall, we had a pretty good season on big fish in Mexico. We really didn’t fish that many days when the blacks and blues should have been around. Normally we are fishing really hard all September,…

First a quick fish report. I’m in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, right now and by the looks of things here, this El Niño is really going to happen. The water has already pushed way around the corner and up into the Pacific. August could be good and it should be a great September and October. On our second day of fishing down here we released a 550-pound black marlin — a great start to our season. I always like fishing early in the season. I know I’ve written about this before, but one of my favorite things on the Mirage…

We just finished up our spring mission and as always, it was action packed. The swordfish didn’t show up like last year, at least not on the surface, so I switched gears and started fishing all of the stones — all of ‘em — stuff I haven’t fished in 20-plus years. The marlin fishing was off the charts. I may have seen that many marlin in one day before, but I honestly don’t think so and I’m certain we saw a 1,000-plus pounder. There were marlin spread over about a 15-by-10 mile area. At one point I counted 48 marlin…

Where do they come from, where are they going and do they move with the water? These three questions plague my thoughts and dreams (aka nightmares) more than any others. When you’re fishing on a daily basis, whether it’s commercial fishing, chartering or whatever, you’ve gotta figure this stuff out. I had been running Glen Stollers’ Mirage operation for about three years and was just starting to really get with it in the harpoon fishery, targeting swords on the West Coast. We were butting heads with Gary Sanson and Johnnie Foster on the Pilikia on a daily basis. Gary had…

After putting the boat back in shape we made plans for a quick delivery to Cabo. The amount of work was staggering. The crew included myself, Eliseo Herrera, Erik Carmack (the captain from Shannon Rose) and Kyle Kritz. I had invited some others to go but they couldn’t make the trip. Bummer, they blew it! All the subcontractors came together and did whatever was needed to make it happen. Many thanks to John Gumb Yacht Management, Shelter Island Boatyard, Pacific Edge and Viking Marine for going above and beyond to help me out. We arrived in Ensenada at daylight, fueled…

I honestly don’t even know where to begin. So much has happened since my last article. I was fully planning on getting all caught up as soon as I got home at the end of the tournament season — remember, we rebuilt a main in one week just a couple of days before the Cabo tournaments started. After that, we took a group out from Costa Rica. Their trip started two days after the Bisbees ended. We pulled all of the black and blue marlin stuff off the boat and switched gears into full-on striper mode. All-out striped marlin fishing!…

When I first thought about writing this column I sent out a request, asking readers what they wanted to hear about. One of the things that came up more than once was to write about some of the struggles we face, not just the fun stuff. Ok, here ya go… We were in the middle of all our preparations for the largest series of money tournaments in the sportfishing world. It has shrunk significantly over the last five years but it’s still huge, paying out more than $4 million dollars in 10 days of brutal fishing. We had done all…

I gotta tell ya, missing the Catalina tournaments gets harder every year. Several people made comments to me, saying things like, “Well you can be glad you weren’t here this year.” And all I can think is really? I mean really? I love those tournaments and I love a challenge even more. That’s what fishing is all about — the challenge. Throw competition in there and it quadruples the rush. I thrive on that. All my guys thrive on that challenge. Fishing isn’t about pushing a button, it’s about doing whatever it takes. Teamwork is so important, especially when fishing…

I can feel it in the air — it’s that time of year again. If you love fishing tournaments, then September in California is like Christmas to a little kid. The anticipation, the check in, the shotgun starts — all of it — what an adrenaline rush! I can’t believe I’m not fishing the Catalina tournaments again this year. I’ll be in Mexico getting ready for the tourney’s down south. But for all you So Cal boys, the local fishing isn’t as bad as some of you may think. Is there a lack of fish? For sure, but I have…

Like everybody else who enjoys marlin fishing here in Southern California, I’ve been kinda holdin’ my breath about the marlin season. I know earlier I said that it was gonna be more of a normal season as far as the billfish went, and we’d have to wait and see. Well, right now it looks like it could shape up ok. Lately I’ve been doing more boat work than fishing, but we got a chance to get out there and almost landed the first marlin of the season. Before we had the Rybovich in Kona, Hawaii, Anthony Hsieh had a 55-foot…

We put up a forum post a bit back, asking our readers what kind of stuff they wanted to hear about in this column. The responses varied quite a bit. I got a lot of requests for sword stuff, SST chart reading, tips and techniques, etc. Here is one of my favorites: “We hear about all the glory and good fishing, what about the stress on home and family life?” I can’t wait to write about that one. But for now I think I will write about tips, techniques and strategy on how to maximize your fishing time while you…

I keep getting asked to make a 2011 fishing season prediction. Everybody that knows me knows the answer: “I’ll let you know what kinda season it’s going to be in November.” Certainly we are in a cold-water trend. Wait a minute… I need to rephrase that. We are no longer in the hot-water trend that started in 1983. We are also no longer in that funk from last year where the El Niño died right when it was supposed to start. The La Niña has ran out of gas as well, although they will not declare this for another month…

First off, a quick fishing report… Cabo is still biting, and it’s what I would consider very good fishing. On Bad Company we have fished nine days now and released 47 striped marlin and two sailfish while primarily hunting for swordfish. We spotted 10 swordfish, baited seven of them, had six bites and caught three. Some of my friends are targeting yellowfin tuna and doing well on the 80- to 220-pound fish. Cowboy, with Capt. Kevin Bohannon, was probably the hot-dogger on the tuna. We also anchored one night and caught grouper, pargo and cabrillo. We have caught yellows and…

It took us a full three-and-a-half days to prepare the boat after the delivery to Cabo from California. The trip down was uneventful, too rough to fish but okay for travelling. Based on what I saw, it actually looks like the local season may be a good one! We had brought down two years worth of spare parts, supplies and filters. Bob Hoose had also supplied us with about 25 Penn reels — new Torques and a bunch of new Internationals. We had to match the reels to rods and spool them up with new line. On the hunt for…

Hello, I’m Capt. Steve Lassley. When the guys from Bloodydecks and I first started talking about me writing a column for the new website, we discussed all of the different scenarios. I told them that personally, I don’t really like writing the how-to articles. Most of what I write here will be about a trip or a particular event that occurred while fishing. From there, it’s going to be up to you to extract the info. It will be in there just the same. They gave me a ton of latitude to write about anything I wanted. Most will be…