ash river Fishing Report 2024

~~Aug 23
 We drifted most of the morning until around 9 or so.  We drifted due to us catching fish.  We caught a whole lot of fish this morning.  They weren't the same 20-25+ pounders we've been getting.  There were a few of those, but these were about half that size.  It wasn't what we were hoping for but they were still fun.  The guys were having a blast.  They were getting some practice at the whole tuna fishing thing, picking a good bait, where to drop in, follow your fish... And they got to use some of there tags as well.

 After that we thought it would be a great idea to make a few hour run and get to San Clemente Island to catch those big yellows we caught there a couple of trips ago.  In theory it sounded great, but we didn't catch very many yellows.  We ended up bailing on it and looking for some bluefin that's been hanging around there.  We saw one pretty good spot around there but they wouldn't bite.  At dark we ended where we'll start tomorrow.  Some boats had some pretty good days here today on a very good grade of yellowfin along with some of that 25-50 pound bluefin as well.  Oh how I hope we can get in on some of that tomorrow.
Time will tell.  Cross your fingers at home. We'll take some good luck anywhere we can.
      

24 nice grade yellowtail. 100+ miles on our track line today, we now know where not to be.

GOOD GRADE ! We knew something was different when we had been stopped for 20 minutes with 20+ tuna hooked and we still had not put one on the boat. After a couple hours of drifting and many “zing-pows”. We managed to land 82 (22-30 lb ) yellowfin. We also had a late afternoon skipjack riot for 138 fish.

ISLANDS ARE ON THE MEND ! 35 yellowtail (12-25 lbs) on the boat so far for just 20 anglers. Flylined Sardines on 25 & 30 lb monofilament has been the best. Stay tuned for a final report.

Happy July 4th everyone.
    We started our morning off doing some bluefin watching.  It's like whale watching but instead of whales you watch bluefin.  In other words they didn't bite.  We got on one spot and they were practically smacking the side of the boat they were so close but they wanted nothing to do with us.  After a little bit of that and a kelp for some yellows and our first dorado of the year we started getting strikes on yellowfin.  It was pretty steady for 1 1/2 hours then shut down for 1 1/2 hours then started up again for 1 hour then went completely dead.  We went west because west is best.  After lunch things got interesting.  We started to see big schools of yellowfin and it didn't stop until dark.  As my grandma would say, "holy Toledo!".  Unfortunately they were not biting fish.  We would get stops for 2,1,1,2,4,1,1,2,2,3,3,3,1,2, like that.  But we stayed busy and worked  hard at it and scratched out a nice catch.  We had 40 tuna stops and averaged 2 per stop.  Now thats scratching.

    The weather was incredible.  As my grandma would say, "holy Toledo!".  Variable winds all day.  That means there wasn't enough wind to measure.  I think that's what it means anyway.  We're headed back in and will be docking at 7:15 in the am and we will be turning around on a 6 day.  I'll be your captain.  See you then.