skagit Fishing Report 2024

Sep. 9

It was awesome yellowtailing this morning. As soon as we got to the grounds it was on and that time was dark 30. That's right. It wasn't even daylight yet and we were gettin um. Nice big fat yellows. As soon as daylight hit we were still gettin um and we kept gettin um for a few more hours too. And after that, we made a move and we were gettin um there too. So lunch time came around and Chef Shawn made yellowtail sandwiches and guess what, they were awesome. After that we worked up up up to get us in position for bluefining tomorrow. The weather coming up is not good. As I write this at the Charger halftime my legs are 6 feet apart for balance. Sometimes my butt is against the wall and I can barely reach the keyboard. The weather man is calling for better weather tomorrow. Should we believe him?

A awesome sunset and some action on bigger Bluefin last night. But..... in typical Bluefin fashion lately, the big ones came through and bit baits flylined on gear from 40-60 pound. We had two fish at color in the dark (estimated @ 130 pounds) and somehow the last 4 fish of the day found their freedom (1 spooled, 1 broken hook and 2 pulled hooks). These things can be down right mean.

Yellowtail fishing fell on its face today we had about 1 around. But we managed to keep busy have fun and catch some killer table fair. Thats right Rock Cod. You should see the rock cod fishing we had, it was pretty darn good. We where lucky the yellowtail and the Rock cod grounds are one in the same and we could do both while waiting for the yellows to bite. The lings and reds made up most of our catch today. All of us are looking forward to dinner tonight, it is going to be fresh tuna we caught a few days ago. We will be back in the tuna grounds tomorrow to finish off our trip. Tommy and Crew.

Capt Ryan Bostain checked in from the San Diego out of Seaforth Landing, today we ran offshore to search for some Bluefin. Yesterday we went offshore and got skunked, we made the decision to try again today and we are glad we did, we ended with 22 Bluefin for our 22 anglers. That doe not sound like great numbers but the quality more than makes up for it, they are running from 45 to 75 lbs. We are getting most of these fish on the surface iron so make sure you bring several set ups to maximize your chances. The crew makes all the difference in your success and our crew is on of the best in making sure if you hook up you will have a good chance at landing them. We probably had 45 bites mostly on surface irons and we did get a few on bait. We don not know how the bite will last, so hurry up and get down here and get in on this early season action.

Aug. 14
    Arrive depart today.  We offloaded a beautiful catch, got fuel, changed oil + fuel filters, swapped out some crew and left the dock by 10:00.  We're good.  We left on a very long running charter called the Heil charter.  I won't go into our bait loading, I'll just say we have some bait on board.  We were in the fishing grounds before 3:00 this afternoon.  The couple boats that departed yesterday had some good yellow finning.  When we got there it just had that "should've been here yesterday" kind of feel to it.  We didn't see much.  We had one long drift where we picked up 14 but other then that it didn't feel like we were going to get a hit so we rolled out of that zone.  Below there didn't look much better until right around 8:00 when the sun fell we had a good old fashioned blind jig strike that resulted in a good stop.  We always fish till the end over here and tonight we were rewarded.  The fish bit full speed but only for a flash but it was long enough to get everyone on board at least one with many getting three or more.  They were snapping.  I call departure fish free fish because we weren't even supposed to be fishing.  They're free.  Anyways we're going to fish again tomorrow.  See you then.
                             
     Oh yeah, the weather is still sooo nice.  We're going to have to pay for this stretch.

82 yellowfin 2 bluefin 19 yellowtail. When we stop on a school of tuna every bait that hits the water gets looked at by the fish. If it isn’t presented perfectly they won’t touch it. We highly recommend changing your bait often, the more presentations you make the more likely you are to make a perfect one. 20lb flouro and size 2 hooks are what worked best.

Aug. 29

Here we go again. We arrived early this morning and unloaded a deck full of bluefin and yellowtail, loaded up some sysco, put on a bunch of fuel, then loaded more groceries, put the new peeps on and took off on the glory run. The Gary Roberts 9 day baby. We got a good load of bait and we're headed down. It looks like we're going to pass by where we caught our bluefin last trip after daylight so we'll definitely be looking for those as we roll down. We'd never pass up that kind of fishing but we're not going to give it our all. If we don't see it and the other boats in the area aren't seeing it we're going to keep her rolling on down down down to destinations unknown. Or better yet not decided on. Either my next report will be about us catching bluefin or it will be about our traveling down.

Wednesday, August 1st, 2012

Well. That's a wrap ... We ended up with 51 bluefin tuna for our morning efforts and then we left. We also had a kelp for 19 cow yella. Our traveling weather is fantastic and our ETA is looking like around 0700 hours tomorrow morning and the boat will be turning around and departing on Mary Chaparro's 6-day adventure. Look for reports to continue from one of the boys. Take care and good night.