We are heading south again with another fantastic group of anglers ready to do some business in the traditional ten day regions. We got off to a good start with a beautiful load of bait and proceeded directly towards Alijos rocks where we will begin our fishing this voyage. With a tremendous amount of information at our disposal, we chose our starting point and will continue our trek towards other destinations as necessary. Of course we have the southern or "local" banks (trophy yellowfin) zone in mind as this is the traditional time of year when that zone comes to life. Time will tell as we have plenty of it and a good effort out here with four of us presently heading down.

One other note of interest is that we are again joined on this voyage by Kurt Schaefer and Dan Fuller from the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission who will be continuing the deployment of electronic or "archival" tags in yellowfin tuna and also skipjack tuna that are volunteered by participating anglers. This is the fifth year Royal Star anglers have participated in this program that has been successful well beyond all original expectations. Between the overwhelming enthusiasm anglers have demonstrated for the project and the high percentage of recaptures, including an archival tagged yellowfin tuna that was at liberty for over eleven hundred days last year, we are very thankful for the opportunity to be involved in such undertakings. This year Kurt and Danny will be deploying almost one hundred archival tags in the lower zones so be on the lookout for both yellowfin and skipjack tuna carrying the green tags that when recaptured and returned to the IATTC, net the angler a five hundred dollar reward!

I will keep everyone up to date as the voyage progresses so look for our daily reports to continue.