erie pa steelhead Fishing Report 2025

It's been biting pretty good and weather is great!

Aug 19

A good finish to a good trip today. It started off a slow morning like every morning of this trip started off. It being the last day we just traveled north all morning to increase our fishing time for the day. We bumped into a school of those 50-70 pound bft's mid to late morning and drifted till we were out of time. We landed almost 30 of those beauts before we had to call it and head for the barn. The weather today was great and the ride going up is ideal. The fillet and crab cakes were delish and everyone is tuckered out but me but only because I have to be up.

Thanks again to the Heil group for coming out once again after all these years and creating another memorable trip.

Captain Ryan checked in tonight with an update from the San Diego out of Seaforth Sportfishing in Mission Bay, CA. We returned late last night. Our trip today and Friday have been cancelled due to weather. Our next trip is going to be Saturday.

We had 25 anglers catch 7 Bluefin Tuna, 38 Yellowtail and 35 Bonito. We had some nice quality on the Bluefin Tuna. We had 6 Bluefin Tuna between 60 and 108 pounds. To be exact we had Bluefin Tuna weighing in at 108, 102, 90, 90, 80 and 60 pounds. We also had one small one that we caught on the troll early in the morning. There is excellent sign of big Bluefin Tuna right now.

It is very important to be prepared with the correct tackle. A Shimano Talica 12 or 16 two speed filled with 65 or 80 lb spectra. Connected to 5 feet of 80 or 130 lb flouro and a 250 gram flatfall. A sinker bait rig fished with a Talica 16 or 20 two speed filled halfway with 80 lb spectra than topped off with 60 or 80 lb mono to a short leader of 80 lb flouro. A 2/0 or 3/0 circle hook and a 4-6 oz torpedo sinker.
Please bring the correct tackle. During our last trip we had 20 hookups and got 6 of them.

After two trips in a row without seeing yellowtail. This morning we were pleasantly surprised when we located a nice school first thing in the morning. After a hectic 10 minute drift with our 48 anglers we had four 13-19 pound yellowtail on the deck. All four of our yellows were taken on yo-yo jigs. The rest of our trip was spent catching whitefish and rockfish with a few sheephead mixed in. Our afternoon yellowtail hunt came up empty. Fish Count = 4 yellowtail 14 sheephead 1 lingcod 215 whitefish 107 rockfish.

Sticking with our Instagram theme of “sex sells.” Manny Sanchez displays 2 of our 23 tuna today. Down day on the grounds today.

Fishing Update

Our Sat. Sept. 10th 2 Day is a go!!!!!  We are still looking for a few more anglers to join us, but we are going fishing!!!!

Fishing today was absolutely fantastic. The morning started out slow. We were scratching on the anchor. We thought we were in for another slow day. But we made a move to a new area and had some phenomenal fishing on some nice grade yellowtail. Beautiful average of about 22 lbs or so. We were fishing with a porpoise school and sharks.

Lots of surface iron. Lots of action. Weather is good. Nice and sunny in the afternoon. Tomorrow we'll be be looking for some cow yellowtail.

Thanks for checking in. Tommy and crew

~~Sep. 12
 Slow morning, strong afternoon was how the fishing went down today.  We had 2 fish by lunch time and I was feeling the pressure.  Thankfully at noon the sonar went boom boom and we went sideways for a few hours.  Let me try and give you a picture of how things looked out here.  The fishing was wide open on a mixed school of skipjack and yellowfin.  We had 23 passengers and basically 23 rent rods.  Chaos out here on the Polaris Supreme.  And by chaos I mean fun, fun, fun.  At any given time we had half the passengers with fish on while the other half were tying on hooks.  It was pretty funny looking at 12 people at a time in the center of the boat tying on hooks.  Usually our customers have 10+ rods with hooks on them ready to go but all our anglers had one.

 Here is how I describe stand up tuna fishing.  It's not like freshwater angling.  Freshwater angling is more like an art.  It can be very peaceful and relaxing.  You use light tackle and  finesse.  With stand up tuna fishing, we can hook 24 fish at one time with every fish swimming a different direction with every crew member screaming out directions.  Gaffs are flying, reels are screaming and lines are snapping and it's some of the funnest $%^& in the world.  That's what today made me want to write.  We had a good time.

 We're on our way in already and we leave again tomorrow for 8 days.  See you then.