fishing illawarra report Fishing Report 2025

Monday, July 18th, 2012

Hello friends. The weather could be a lot better offshore, that's for sure. It's bumpy, it's windy, it's cold and wet - the people are not digging it at all. It's just a bad time for everyone when the boat is rolling back and forth, bouncing up and down, the wind howling, people are sick and it's just an unpleasant deal all the way around. Buuuutttttt, this problem does not exist when you're in the calm lee of an island and that's where we are, so we're pumped. Our only problem with the weather right now is sun burns and kelp flies. Needless to say, we're happy we made the move inside and with the weather still forcasted to be up offshore, we're going to give this island weather another day and brave the elements of flat calm weather and endless sunshine.

As for the fishing; it wasn't hot and heavy but it was a nice pace for the gang to enjoy. We had a few morning drifts where the dropper loops were getting bit but the seals ended that party pretty quick. So, we decided to make a move for less local harassment and we had ourselves a nice drift around lunch time that really made our day. a fly-lined sardine was the ticket to capture a nice 'tail and the fish ranged from 12-18 lbs. Quality sized fish and the kids and adults alike were having themselves a ball. After our drift dried up, we toured around various spots to no avail but were excited about the prospects of tomorrow.

Like I said, we'll be here for one more day tomorrow and come the evening time, we're going to have to start working our way up the line and try to make it the smoothest ride we can going home. With that, we'll chat with y'all tomorrow. Have a great day.

30 pass. 37 trophy bluefin tuna. Today’s group was prepared and took full advantage of an amazing opportunity.

Oct. 15

We had excellent yellowfin tuna fishing today. It wasn't a one stop shop or anything like that, but rather a short stopping thing for six or eight or more per stop but we did this every hundred yards or so and we did this all day. Normaly we would be 100% stoked with this fishing but unfortunately the grade was not great. We were looking for the 25-35 pound fish and would never think twice about keeping an 18-25 pound fish but the fish we were catching were as small as 8 pounds and not very many exceeded 12 pounds. We had good action though. We were kept busy all day long. Nobody had time for a nap. We were kept on our toes. Anyone who wanted to keep some yellowfin tuna had that opportunity today and many did though we released about as much as we kept but like I said it was still fun none the less. The weather wasn't ideal. The wind was blowing some and the current was going straight into the wind which calls for rolly conditions but the sun was out and it was ok. Everything seemed to smooth out after dark.

We're going to go do some yellowtail fishing tomorrow. .

Captain Ryan Bostian of The San Diego checked in. Had steady gamefish action all day long. We caught 107 Yellowtail and 98 Bonita!

Captain Mike Pritchard checked in tonight with a final wrap-up from the Tribute’s offshore trip today.  We had 9 anglers and caught 17 Bluefin Tuna (one shy of limits), 1 Yellowfin Tuna and a Yellowtail.  We had flat calm weather.  We are back at it tonight.  Come on out and go fishing on the Tribute.

13 bluefin(20-80lbs) 3 yellowfin. Locating a school that wanted to stick around the boat was challenging but we managed to scratch a few.]

This is amazing we have fished 6 days out of 6 days. We fished 4 days in California and 2 days in Mexico and caught over half a dozen different game species. We wrapped up today in California fishing Bluefin and Yellowfin with good success. The top 3 fish at the scales will be bluefin. Thanks Tom Chaparro and gang for a great trip. Stay tuned for on the 3 day leaving tomorrow. Tommy and Crew.