botany Fishing Report 2025

Tom Rothery docked his Polaris Supreme July 18 after an eight-day trip with 16 anglers aboard. His group found some good fishing at Alijos Rocks and Alijos Bank.
"Yesterday we had good fishing on wahoo in the morning," he wrote Sunday July 15, "and excellent fishing on tuna in the afternoon. The average weight on the tuna ranged from 45 to 70 pounds. Our weather is still good. Chef Tommy put out some great meals again. Lunch yesterday was yellowtail served over fresh spinach, surrounded by black beans with a spicy avocado cilantro sauce. And dinner was Cornish game hens topped with a spicy apricot sauce on wild rice with grilled asparagus on the side.
"Fishing this morning has started off again with wahoo biting and this afternoon we will fish the tuna again. We still have some open spots on Sept. 8th an 8-day trip, if you want to come get some of these wahoo. Give Susan a call at 619-390-7890."
Boat builder Harold Davis fished on the trip. "It was a great group," said Harold, "and we had four guys who had been skippers on the Bongos boats in Newport Beach. The whole group was good fishermen; we didn't have many tangles or much shoulder bumping. We had excellent food, too, like prime rib, rack of lamb, Ahi steaks with wasabi. My best fish was a yellowfin tuna, but I got some wahoo on bombs; purple bombs."
Zander Rodriguez of Loveland, CO made his first long range trip with the group. Zander is entering the University of Colorado this fall as a baseball pitcher, at age 18. He also plays golf. He had the second-best yellowtail at 44.2 pounds, a wahoo, and also got a white seabass on the 13 Spot.
Skipper Rothery weighed the best fish on the certified scales at Fisherman's Landing. Daniel McCaffery of Norco won first place for a 60.8-pound yellowfin tuna. He said he fished a sardine on a 2/0 Super Mutu hook. He used 40-pound Big Game line on a TLD 20 reel and a seven-foot glass Calstar rod.

Bob Wolfson of Dana Point was second, for a 56.4-pound tuna, and Harold Davis, the boat builder from Morro Bay, won third place for his 52.4-pound Alijos yellowfin tuna.

Sunday, September 9th, 2012

Hi friends. We woke up today to a lovely Sunday brunch complete with Belgium waffles, bacon, eggs, and bloody mary's. I didn't have any. Sad face. After brunch, we were treated to all of nature's glory with rain, lightning, and thunder. Some of the strikes were less than a mile from us. Amazing. Anyhow, after a carne asada taco lunch and more cocktails that I didn't have, we made it to the fishing grounds and enjoyed a couple of drifts on a beautiful grade of yellows up to twenty-five pounds. They were biting that yo-yo jig real nice but our bite was short lived. After the sun had set, we sat down to a prime rib dinner and lots of red wine that I didn't have and we finished off with pecan pie and ice cream. I had some.

So that was our day in a nutshell. Hopefully the fish aren't as crabby tomorrow and we can get down to business. Wish us luck and we'll hit you up on Monday night. Peace out, homies.

FANTASTIC 1.5 TRIP WITH CAPT. J.J.!!!! APOLLO just came back in with 24 anglers brought in 26 Yellowtail(ranging 22 lbs to 30 lbs), 78 Lings, & limits of Rockfish. Next available trips will be Feb 2nd & 16th. Book now before it's too late. Call Fisherman's Landing @ (619)221-8500 to get your reservation.

Captain Ryan checked in tonight to report in. We had 40 passengers on a private charter catch 136 yellowtail 174 calico bass. Very good action all day.

Mike Pritchard called in with this report from the Tribute. "So far we have a really good sign of Bluefin. We have definitely lost a lot more than we have landed. Right now we have 7 or 8 fish. The fish are running 40 lbs. to 50 lbs. Some of the fish we have lost is just due to insufficient tackle. These are really very large Bluefin. I know there was 1 Bluefin caught here yesterday that ran about 180 lbs. So if you are coming out on a trip you want to make sure you bring the right tackle. 40 lbs. would be the bare minimum. We'll keep you informed as the day progresses.

We woke up to jock strap and sun visor weather this morning. Did some rigging and had roast beef in a portabella mushroom sauce for lunch. We had good success acquiring yellowtail and tuna for hors d'oeuvres and proceeded to eat them in the form of sushi and sashimi. Dinner is coming up in a few minutes, halibut in a lemon butter caper sauce. We are going to consolidate our sardines and swing by the bait grounds to pick up a tank of greenies. We will see you tomorrow on the tuna grounds.

~~Aug. 28
 It was a busy morning for us today but a kick back afternoon. For the second time this year we are not fishing on our departure day. We did the usual turn around throwing in an oil and fuel filter change. We offloaded, then onloaded and then we took off before lunch. The bait was OK. It looked great but lost some scales putting it in our tanks. We'll see how it likes 80+ degree water in a couple of days. I decided to skip this 30 mile yellowfin zone today and get down below while we have a window of good hurricaneless weather. There will be some wind the next couple of days everywhere but should come down nicely for a week or so everywhere if the forecast holds true. I'm still not sure where we're starting yet this trip. We'll either head straight to the rocks or drag our feet for a day and wait for the weather to get pristine. For now there is some napping going on and just some old fashioned kicking back. Something we haven't seen a whole lot of this year as it has been straight to fishing out of the gates.
 

Fishing today was absolutely fantastic. The morning started out slow. We were scratching on the anchor. We thought we were in for another slow day. But we made a move to a new area and had some phenomenal fishing on some nice grade yellowtail. Beautiful average of about 22 lbs or so. We were fishing with a porpoise school and sharks.

Lots of surface iron. Lots of action. Weather is good. Nice and sunny in the afternoon. Tomorrow we'll be be looking for some cow yellowtail.

Thanks for checking in. Tommy and crew