The Jig Strike going down off the Cortez Bank 100 miles offshore with the Top Gun 80 in the background, as seen from MV Legend.

Dock Totals 8/25– 8/31: 4052 anglers aboard 181 half-day to 3-day trips out of San Diego landings over the past week caught 299 barracuda, 2799 bluefin tuna (up to 201 pounds), 72 bocaccio, 1488 bonito, 1847 calico bass, 1 dorado, 12 halibut, 13 lingcod, 1 mako shark, 606 rockfish, 688 sand bass, 47 sculpin, 142 sheephead, 2 thresher shark, 322 whitefish, 13 white seabass, 6 yellowfin tuna, and 1498 yellowtail.

Happy anglers aboard the Daily Double score on yellowtail and white seabass during a PM half-day trip in nearshore waters.

Saltwater: With about the same number of trips and anglers as the week previous, bluefin tuna numbers doubled, bonito quadrupled, and yellowtail halved. Half-day boats have been doing well on Calico bass and even some white seabass and the occasional yellowtail, while further out, much of the focus of the 1.5-day to 3-day fleet has been due west about 100 miles from Point Loma near the Cortez and Tanner Banks where bluefin tuna are showing very well in large schools of fish up to 200 pounds. That there are many boats working the area turned out to be a very good thing for the passengers and crew of the Jig Strike out of H&M Landing.

While working the area at 10:35 am on Saturday, August 31, the 56x18-foot boat struck an unidentified submerged object, causing a major hull failure in the portside bow. The boat began taking on water very rapidly and Captain Patrick Dorety had just enough time to put out a Mayday call to the other boats in the area before mustering the passengers to the stern to don lifejackets and abandon ship onto the life raft. True to form, Captain Dorety was the last off the sinking shipm which went down so fast it was less than five minutes between striking the object and abandoning ship. No injuries reported and all were safe. 

MV Legend, a partner vessel out of H&M Landing, was on the scene in minutes and took the passengers and crew aboard and returned them to San Diego. The object was never sighted; as Captain Dorety noted, “I can't say what we hit, as I never saw it. The only thing I was concerned with after the accident was that we got everyone off and kept everyone safe.” That he did, earning praise from the sportfishing community for his quick action in a very stressful situation.

Given the number of boats in the San Diego fleet and the thousands of trips made annually, such accidents are fairly rare. The last sportfishing vessel running out of San Diego that sank was the Invicta when she ran into rocks at Coronado Island while under way in the wee hours of the morning on September 3, 2016. Passengers were in their bunks asleep but were jolted awake by the collision. All managed to get off the boat and onto life rafts. The Mayday call went out, a Coast Guard MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter crew was launched, and the crew of the Coast Guard Cutter Sea Otter was diverted to assist the passengers and crew. By the time the Coast Guard cutter made it to the area, a commercial tuna boat, the Sweet Marie, had come to the rescue and was able to get the passengers and crew of the Invicta aboard before the life rafts were washed against the rocks by the current. 

On Thursday, June 15, 2023, MV Sea Jay running out of Channel Islands Sportfishing struck rocks near Santa Cruz Island and went down. Ten passengers and three crew members made it onto the deployed life raft as the captain anchored the boat. As it sank in relative shallows on the lee side of the island, recovery crews were able to refloat the Sea Jay and tow it for repairs. That is not normally the case when a boat goes down so quickly. The Invicta was a total loss, and given the location far from any port, it looks like the Jig Strike will not be able to be salvaged. 

Most importantly, no lives were lost in those three incidents, due to quick actions by captains and crews. Striking rocks adjacent to an island is usually due to operator error or electronics malfunction in some way, and in both of those cases, the collision came in the middle of the night when most aboard were asleep. In the case of the Jig Strike while underway in daylight, it is gemerally believed that a submerged log was the culprit. In years when we have a lot of rain and flooding along the Pacific coast of North America, logs can become more of an issue than normal. I have seen many while fishing from off the coast of Puerto Vallarta to Catalina Island. Usually, if you are in warmer water, logs are a good thing for anglers. Baitfish will gather under and around them for shelter, and thus, they will hold gamefish like dorado, yellowtail, and tuna.

But logs are not always a benefit. As may have been the case here, they can sink a good-size vessel. As they saturate, logs washed out to sea will become less visible as the majority if not all of the mass will be under the surface and hard to see. Radar or sonar — even side-canning sonar — will not normally pick them up. If they don't wash ashore, logs can drift in the currents for years. Though most are encountered coastally, they have been seen in all parts of the ocean.

The most dangerous are large ‘deadhead’ logs. Deadhead logs are those that are mostly saturated and float vertically and can do so for months or even years before sinking. They can bob, barely breaking the surface all but unseen, but still pose a threat, especially to fiberglass- and wood-hulled vessels. They are called the "dreaded deadhead" for good reason. Given that the accident was 100 miles off the coast, a dreaded deadhead log is the most likely culprit in the demise of the Jig Strike. A very popular overnight, 1.5-day, and lobster hooping boat, the boat will be missed. But our sportfishing vessels undergo rigorous inspections annually, and the crews are trained for this very occasion, no matter how rare, so wherever they are biting, go out and get ‘em!