If there was an award for the boat and skipper on the heater of the season--we'll call it the "Spring Heater Award"--it'd be Shawn Steward on the Aloha Spirit. 

It's been an incredible June along the Ventura County coast; but it goes beyond incredible, it's bordering on inconceivable for the 5-to-5 trips on Steward's rig out of Channel Islands Sportfishing Center. He's put more anglers on seabass, trophy seabass, than any other skipper along the coast this spring. As always, he's just super humble about the whole thing. 

With the first day of summer coming up on Wednesday, it'll be interesting to see what boat is the one getting the job done the most come prime time; but then again, there's different classifications for summer.  In the meantime, here's a look at the pics from the last few days on the Aloha. With WON's Channel Islands Shootout coming up, the sample shows what it could take to win what should be highly competitive sportboat and private boat divisions. (The yellow was caught on the coast, and went 50 pounds for Dan Hernandez.)