ausable river steelhead Fishing Report 2024

Back to the Islands starting tomorrow (Nov 1).  Please bring a 40 lb yo-yo setup and a 25 lb bait setup.  For all you jig fisherman.  We will be targeting yellowtail and all other gamefish. Who knows, maybe even a stray Bluefin Tuna.  Passport required.

~~Oct. 12
 Here's what went down today.  Breakfast, then American Hustle(movie), then a whole lot of tuna leader making, then the Charger game.  Listen to this.  Our goofball crew member Mark Clark, well he claims to be a Raider fan but the only time he seems to care what they do is when they play the Chargers.  Myself and the rest of the crew usually bet 20 dollars on each game. Well today couldn't have played out better.  Prior to the start of the game he assumed we were betting and to rub it in that the Raiders are no good, I claimed I didn't want to bet because I'd feel I was taking money out of his sons pocket.  He insisted  we bet so we did.  I still had it planned out to give him his money back if the Chargers blew them out as the ultimate rub in.  So if you didn't know, it was a nail biter.  Mark missed the last couple minutes of the game and everyone on board made him think that the Raiders won.  He immediately came down to the galley and just absolutely let me have it.  I don't know
 how but I managed to keep a straight enough face to still have him think the Raiders won.  Ever since then he's been on cloud 9.  I don't know how and when I'll break the news and bring his reality crashing down to a major low.  I'm sure looking forward to it though.  He thinks he's up 120 bucks but more importantly to him he gets to talk all that smack. 

 Anyways, moving on.  It's cocktail hour now and soon we will be feasting on a veal chop.  One more day.  The weather is fantastic right now.  A beautiful sunset too.

100+ yellowtail out of the first stop this morning. Please bring a 25 lb bait rod and a 40 lb yo-yo rod. Reservations are very important as trips are filling up fast. Call 619-224-3383 for resos. A passport or a passport card is required.

Capt Matt just called in with 45 plus Yellowfin Tuna for just 13 anglers.  Very good fishing.

We had awesome variety this year on our 8-10 day trips. Especially the Dorado fishing on kelp patty’s! 

~~Oct. 11
 And here's what we did today.  The crew rigged up mucho tackle.  I'm talking the grande stuff for the grande fish.  After that and after breakfast we did our tuna seminar and I talked Tommy into doing a couple parts of the seminar.  All I know for the past 10 years is my tuna seminar.  It's nice to get a different perspective.  Anyways, after that we were finishing up tackle rigging when poof, all three trollers went off.  So we caught a couple meals.  3 nice dorado.  So then it was lunch time of street tacos.  And then some napping went down and the afternoon movie was Caddy Shack.  When 5:00 rolls around it's cocktail hour and it looks glorious.  Drinks, cigars, and friends.  Then we had baby back ribs for dinner.  Once again like the first 2 nights we tried for some giant squid to use as bait, but we were unsuccessful. 

 Still no storms brewing up down below and we're getting more and more confident we won't be getting pushed out of the fishing grounds until we say so.  2 more days of travel before we arrive.  Everyone is enjoying themselves now because in a couple days, it's going to be war.  We'll be battling it out with 200+ pound tuna and wahoo.
      

Nov. 13

We finished up the trip today mostly concentrating on yellowtail. We kept the wire on in case we got into some wahoo and weren't going to steer away from tuna either. Well we did get a wahoo today. A nice fat one. 60 pounder? We'll see at the dock. We saw a few schools of tuna that wanted nothing to do with us and we saw a few foamers of good grade yellowtails. We got on top of one of those foamers and they flashed us for a second and then left us. We only caught a handfull before they were gone. We chased down a few other schools but they all sank out before we could get to them.

To recap the trip we caught all you want on big fat dorado, lots and lots of school grade yellowfin tuna and had a pretty good catch of wahoo throughout the trip. We spent two full days hunting the cow yellowfin and saw plenty each and all day but only have a couple trophies to show for our efforts. A lot of non biting fish but that's how the cookie crumbles sometimes. We only had a couple days of choppy weather and other then that it's been beautiful. We're heading home right now with just a fantastic ride up the line.

Drew