brigantine Fishing Report 2025

27 yellowfin 21 bluefin 27 yellowtail. Shoulder and belly hooked baits work best when fishing picky tuna. The second picture shows where to place your hook. The baits pictured are also a prime example of what a bad bait looks like, taking your time and selecting a good healthy bait will get you more bites.

29 Yellowfin Tuna, 38 Dorado, 33 Skipjack and 77 Yellowtail. Ernie Escalante with one of our nice Dorado from today.

Thanks for the amazing response to the OPEN Shimano Charters we scheduled for the Channel Islands this spring. The response was so positive that I spoke with the folks at Shimano and they agreed to put another trip on line. This one will be set for fishing on March 13. That would be departing at 9pm on the night of the 12th. This trip will be just like the others. Shimano will provide a bunch of outfits for fishing butterfly and lucanus systems. There will be give aways of tackle and goodies as well. Please email me if you would like to join us on this trip.

Drew Henderson docked Polaris Supreme at Fisherman's Landing August 12 after four days of fishing. His anglers had near-limits of yellowtail, mostly from Cedros Island, where he found mackerel to be superior bait, and fish biting at both ends. Drew said his anglers released some 200 fish. Henderson's posting for August 10 read: "We started our trip making the long haul down to Benitos Island due to the bad weather and bad offshore report. We got to the Island at about two thirty. We got held up with a giant school of 3 to 4 foot giant squid. I can't say it was bad there, I mean we caught a lot of fish we just had to go through lots of little ones to get the bigger ones. We gave the night bite a couple hours only getting ten fish and took off towards Cedros. "The morning was great. Everyone woke up to bent rods. After a couple hours the current slowed and the slime (barracuda) took over. We did a little scouting and found some large model yellows and had a couple of long plunking drifts. Then we took off to the northern head to gain some time for tomorrow and give it a check and found the honey hole. Mucho Fisho. All the beautiful grade, and they chewed until we all got our fill. We're traveling up tonight to do some offshore tomorrow until it's time to go home." Dave Betz of Huntington Beach won first place for a 27.6-pound yellowtail he bagged with a sardine on a 1/0 ringed Gorilla hook and 20-pound P-Line. He said he fished with his favorite Accurate 270 reel, and a Calstar six-foot rod. The fight ran to 35 minutes, he said. Forrest Broyles of Kelseyville got a 25.4-pounder. He was tied by Ken Wan of Oakland for second place.

Mike Pritchard called in this morning with this report for the Tribute. "We've had a very nice start here this moring. A couple of kelps have been absolutely fantastic. Great Yellowtail fishing to go along with some Yellowfin and Dorado. We caught 160 Yellowtail out of 2 drifts. A lot of the fish were caught on surface irons, swimbait and even poppers.

"We are now targeting some tuna or maybe some Dorado. We'll keep you informed."

Oct. 21

 

Trip wrap up: It was a hell of a trip with a great group of guys, with great tackle from Accurate and great food from Shawn. Yes we had some nausea from hurricane Paul but that's something you have to deal with sometimes in long range sportfishing. Thank you so much Mr. Joe Gigliotti and The staff at Accurate for letting us use and lend out your Accurate tackle.

Jackpot goes as follows: Dale Goss took 1st with a 52.6 pound wahoo, pizza man Joey G. took 2nd with a 50.4 pound yellowfin tuna (I told you Joe), and Gary Rogers took 3rd with a 40.2 pound yellowfin tuna. An Honorable mention goes out to Steve Lowe for his 56.4 pound wahoo he caught on the troll.

 

Today we left with our good friend George Davis and his group of dudes on a 14 day trip. Yup, a glory run going down down down. Our bait was fair and seems to be swimming in circles in the tanks and not dying off so that's good. We rigged up our rods and reels today taking our time because we have some time with some travel days ahead of us. We haven't had a true departure travel day for a long time now and I have to say it's nice not being in a rush to get everything done at once. There were some movies played today and a lot of sleep going down in the staterooms. Chef Shawn put out a nice little Sushimi snack that went down quick. Tomorrow we'll do our tackle fishing seminar for Wahoo after breakfast and then I'm sure there will be more movies and naps in everyones future. Travel days are nice. Can you say 1492 and Titos ! See ya.

 

 

P.S. We may loose satellite phone service on Wednesday and if we do we will try to keep you updated through Susan via the Radio and have her type up the reports and email them out.

P.S.S. If you have received this email directly from the boat the guys have asked me to put you on the email list. You now have the boats direct email and you may send the boys emails. Girls please be careful what you say the crew and I will be able to read what you put out.

Thanks for tuning in Tommy.

Good weather today as we traveling down south looking for wahoo, tuna and tails. Not much to report on the catching but that should change shortly.

~~Aug 25
 Once again, today we had a good day.  We started our day off fishing bait.  Wide darn open on the small greenies.  I was singing the Who song "rain on me" because it was raining bait.  It didn't take long to get what we needed for the day and we headed off to the bluefin grounds which is right there.  We had one OK stop but right before lunch was our good one.  I remember because I ordered my lunch when we didn't have anything going and when I walked outside we had 4 going.  I can power down a meal pretty fast though and that's what I did.  We were able to drift with that school for hours before it stopped biting.  We had a couple per round of those 30-40 pounders.  I call those the perfect grade.  They are manageable, meaning they're fairly easy to bring to the boat while at the same time when you do you always end with a smile because they're big.  The perfect grade.  After they stopped biting say around 5:00, we looked for another school unsuccessfully for an hour so we ran back to the bait grounds and had a little start on our re-bait.  We'll finish in the morning.  Having this perfect bait right next to the fishing grounds is the most special thing about this area.  It's more special than the beautiful bluefin we're catching.  Sometimes where you caught your bait is more important than where you caught your fish.  No bait, no luck.