south island Fishing Report 2025

Capt Mike Pritchard called in from the Tribute to let us know that their 1.5 day trip is a go tomorrow night leaving at 7pm. We are hoping to take advantage of this weather window, the weather looks good for the next few days. We already have some good bait on board including some mackeral and sardines, so we are going to take advantage of this weather window. We have about 10 spots left, if you want to go give Seaforth Landing a call at 619-224-3383. We love to see you out on the water.

Greetings Apollo Anglers:
We have a one day trip, fishing next Sunday, Aug 5, that has a few openings. This is mostly a kids/beginners group, ideal for experienced anglers to bring their children or kids on a boat in a friendly and limited load environment. However, all anglers are welcome. 18 passengers, $250 per person plus food, tips, permit.

Please contact Chris at 310-701-7650 or [email protected], if you can make it.

We started off the morning with a few strikes on sonar schools of yellowfin tuna. We thought we were on the right track but things soon slowed down to virtually nothing. A few of the guys were seeing schools up above us, big schools but weren't producing much more then we where. We went and check those out and it looks like there schools of bluefin with a little bit of yellowfin mixed in it of course the bluefin don't bite. We spent part of our morning looking at eight giant kelp patties for two bites on yellowtail which we lost. Right now it's about 2:10 we have 20 yellowfin on board and were wondering where in the heck they're all at. We have good weather and six more hours to look wish us luck.

Oct 7

I'm sure like most of you at home, every morning lately I woke up in anticipation to read Richie's next fishing report and was let down to see nothing written. I was hoping he was just too busy on those shorter trips to write one for me but it's leaked into long range now too. So I guess your stuck with me.

We left today on a 6 day trip. Our bait choices were between healthy but giant sardine or not so healthy normal size sardine. We chose some of both. We'll have to see how it turns out but I am sure we will have some die off. Hopefully just the weak ones. Time will tell.

The weather out in the fishing grounds sounds windy and rough. We'll be crossing through an area tomorrow sometime around 10 in the morning and depending on the weather we'll either work the area or fish on through it on a down hill course to other more fishable grounds. One of the boats had a wahoo through these waters a couple days ago so we'll be trolling wire.

Drew

Tommy Rothery returned Polaris Supreme to Fisherman's Landing November 18 after a ten-day Ocean Tackle Research charter. The boat had 13 anglers aboard. Chartermaster Lon Mikkelsen of Hood River, OR saw his father, Bill Mikkelsen of Olympia, WA land the season's first super cow; a tuna over 300 pounds.
"It was full-speed fishing," said Chartermaster Lon Mikkelsen. Bill Mikkelsen's big fish won first place after it weighed in at 308.8-pounds, caught on a fly-lined sardine. Bill used the boats gear, including a 6/0 Mustad 7691 hook, 100-pound P-Line, and a Shimano rod and reel.
"Tommy said it was tail-wrapped from the beginning," said the elder Mikkelsen. "And he was, but he got lose and went on another run. He took me around the boat twice." "We started with yellowtail fishing on the ridge that turned out to be a real good bite," said Rothery. "We easily could have got limits on yellowtail and dorado, but these guys normally release most of their fish. We had one day of awesome marlin fishing, which this group enjoyed quite a bit." "I think we had maybe 200 hookups on marlin," said John Esler of Portland. "But our yellowfin bite was pretty amazing. Once Tommy would find them, he'd shut the motors off and just drift. They didn't need a lot of chum either, they were boiling all around the boat." Esler landed a 206.7-pound yellowfin.
Matt Kiesse of Cederville, CA was second place with a 279.8-pound yellowfin.
"The trip was just spectacular," said Kiesse. "We got everything." Lon Mikkelsen was third with a 277.9-pound tuna. The trip scored five tuna over 200 pounds.