kaipara Fishing Report 2025

We had an awesome 1.5 trip on the Apollo out of Fisherman's Landing. We left Friday night at 7 pm and headed to Punta Colnett. Weather was very nice, calm and glassy. We started fishing for Yellowtail in the early morning but no biter. We preceded fishing for Rockfish. We drifted every hot spots that Captain JJ knew and they were all very productive. We came up with lots of good quality Vermilion Reds, Lingcod and Bocaccio Rockfish. At about 3 in the afternoon, Yellowtail breezers came through and all six of us got hooked with our rockcod gangnion hooks. We ended with two 25 lbs Yellows. Next time I'll be ready. We fished until almost dark and we bagged 125 Vermillion Reds, 98 Rock cod, 25 Lingcod and 2 Yellowtail for 25 guys. Captain JJ runs a top notch operation together with Jessica, Joe, Travis and Chef Nick. They were all very professional and helpful at all times. Chef Nick serves all variety of gourmet food on the boat. Apollo will be still running trips in Fisherman's Landing until end of March and will move to Santa Barbara on April. Don't miss our overnight charter trip on Sunday, April 3rd departing Saturday at 10 pm.

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.

The San Diego out of Seaforth Landing in San Diego,CA checked in with us today:

7 yellowtail, 110 red rockcod, 100 rockfish. These cool water yellowtail never make it easy.

July 2

It turned out it was a travel day today. There wasn't any fish in the water we looked at today. On the way down we went through an area in the dark loaded with fin bait so we thought we'd look at it on the way back to see if any game fish found the area but they hadn't. The weather was fantastic today and we got a lot done. All and all we had a great time this trip. Most the passengers on board had never been on a deep sea fishing trip before and they all had a blast pulling on those beautiful yellows at Cedros. Thank you Mr. Tom Pfleger for making this trip possible. We all appreciate you and all our charter heads and all our passengers for that matter.

We're leaving on a 2 day trip tomorrow morning. That trip is designed to fish a full day at 200 miles if need be. If that's where the best fishing was we could get there on a 2 day where on a 1 1/2 trip you'd be limited to within about 110 miles for a full day of fishing. The best fishing is within 100 miles of San Diego so the cool thing about tomorrows trip is we'll have time to fish a handful of hours before dark tomorrow. There is still 2 spots available so let's go fishing!

The San Diego finished today with 23 yellowfin 42 skipjack. Still plenty of fish out there. Make those reservations.

Incredible amount of fish in our range right now. We see bluefin from big to too big. Yellowfin tuna from 5-25 lbs. open water yellowtail from 8-15 lbs. most of the fish are slurping small anchovies on the surface and do not bite. We did manage to land 7 bluefin from 30-75 lbs and 4 bonito.

Captain Ryan Bostian called in tonight with an update from the San Diego out of Seaforth Sportfishing in Mission Bay, CA. We have been fishing offshore. Today we had 39 Yellowfin Tuna and 1 Bluefin Tuna. Our last trip we had 52 Yellowfin Tuna. Most the fish are 15 to 25 pound range. We are starting to see some bigger fish too. Please be sure to have a light rod (20#) and a heavier rod. Be ready to catch fish between 15 and 100 pounds.

176 yellowfin out of one long drift. Make sure you have the crew check your tackle on the way out. Having the right hook size, connection knots, and drag settings are beneficial to your success.