kona hawaii Fishing Report 2025

A nice grade of Bluefin still ready to bite with some being taken on poppers as well.

Thank you to Vince and Phenix rods for making the Steele 2 day a great trip with some awesome raffle prizes. A few lucky anglers walked off the boat with some brand new Phenix rods!

We are out this weekend on a 2 day trip. Only one spot left!

June 28
We found some action early this morning on a kelp with some yellowtails.  Mark found it but I don't think I can give him credit for it.  "twelve  oclock, a trash can lid.  Oh I lost it. oh nine o'clock. ile in a half.  No, half mile.  Two trash can lids.  Oh I lost it".  The second time he lost it he looked ion the wrong side of the boat so i found it and  it was a good sized kelp.  Oh Mark.  Anyhow, everyone on the boat got to pull and tug on a little yeller and tag one or two if they chose.   We hit it a couple times before getting in tuna mode.  Things looked very similar to yesterday.  Many spots of yellowfin around, just no meat to it.  I'm talking 6-12 fish schools mostly and they weren't very interested in us.We worked very hard for just a handful of fish.  The good news is it wasn't boring as I think I mentioned last night.  The fish kept us on  our toes.  Good sight seeing.  Good fishing, bad catching.  Oh well.  We still had a good time out here on our first trip of the year and we have our passengers to thank.
Please excuse the spelling.  I'm sitting back in my chair as I write this and the letters on the screen are to small to see and the E on this keyboard keeps falling off.  We'll get everything under control real soon.

 

Captain Mike Pritchard called in from the Tribute this evening. We had 141 mixed fish. We had Yellowtail and Yellowfin Tuna. We have another 1.5 day trip departing tomorrow night. Call Seaforth Sportfishing at (619) 224-3383 to get in on the action or book your sport at www.tributesportfishing.com.

With great anticipation of a light load aboard the Apollo, all 14 of us anglers showed up at the dock early, swapping stories about past trips. We started boarding about 9:30pm and were greeted by Capt JJ Gerritsen and the rest of his crew, we signed in and had a seat for our safety briefing. Capt JJ then asked if we wanted to head offshore for Albacore which had dramatically slowed down the last couple days or head south along the coast for a shot at Dorado and Yellowfin and Yellowtail patty hopping. Without much hesitation we decided to head south and patty hop. We got the feathers in at gray light and started the troll, within 15 minutes the yell of "Hook-up" sang out, unfortunately the mystery fish got away and we were under way again. Five minutes later we heard that yell again, the mystery fish won round two and will live another day. Third time's a charm didn't hold true for us, our third hook-up is still out there in the deep blue. At that point the first troll rotation was fired (which included me) and the second shift took over. Within 10 minutes they had our first fish on the deck, a skipjack, from that point on while looking for patties we boated about 19 skipjack. We found our first patty around 10am and moved in with hopes of a wide open bite, but to our dismay there was nobody home. That held true for the next 8 patties we found, then finally around noon with a mouth full of burger, we heard the call to get ready. Never fails every time your food is done, it's time to drop a line. As soon as our sardines hit the water the patty expolded, we ended up with 1 Dorado and 2 Yellowtail. We only found two two more patties holding fish and ended up with 1 more Dorado and 4 yellowtail. It was now time to head back to port and we again set out the troll lines and managed to pick up 7 Yellowfin Tuna on the way back in. I really enjoyed sharing the rail with a great bunch of folks and look forward to doing it again soon. If you would like any of the pictures posted please email me at [email protected] .

Captain Ryan Bostian checked in tonight with an update from the San Diego out of Seaforth Sportfishing in Mission Bay. We had 36 passengers today catch 180 Yellowfin Tuna (LIMITS), 7 Dorado, 50 Yellowtail and 50 Skipjack. We had a long run to get these fish but we had great. It was a one done deal!

~~Sep. 6
 I think I'm going to start naming my reports.  This one is called "We should have stuck with the game plan".  The plan was to start where we did, and if it didn't look good run up 40 miles to the next spot arriving just after lunch when it's bite time there.  Well we started off slow.  Conditions were a little funky.  We saw some fish, but they didn't really bite.  We caught a few yellows and the biggest ling cod I've ever seen brought up on this boat, but it wasn't good enough to stick around.  So we started off sticking with the plan when we left and went north but then we decided to do some radio fishing.  I heard 4th hand and then 3rd hand that a boat had a couple really good dorado kelps the day prior almost in striking distance and then really good yellowtail in the afternoon definitely in striking distance.  Then I saw on my water temp chart that same water just a few hours below us so we made the move.  Obviously by my whining you can tell it didn't work out.  We didn't find much kelp in the good water.  We found one OK kelp but we only caught a handful of flats.  There was a few wahoo swimming around it but we didn't catch any.

 So that's OK.  We're not worried.  We still have yesterdays afternoon yellowtail hot spot to fish.  Not today.  Should have been here yesterday. Maybe that should be the name of the report. We saw some and caught a few but it was nothing good.  So here we sit.  I'm not sure if we stuck with the game plan that it would have worked out.  There already was a boat on the spot we were headed to and it's kind of a one boat spot so maybe we didn't miss anything.

 It's funny.  I haven't written this long of a report in a long time.  If fishing was good today I probably would have written one paragraph.  I needed to rant.  Anyways we're going to stick it out here and regroup and try it again in the morning.  Hopefully we find some yellows to work with but either way we plan on looking for a dorado kelp in the afternoon.  Hopefully I only write one paragraph tomorrow.
       

 

We had an absolutely fantastic day fishing yellowtail in flat clam weather. Most were in the 16-22 lb range with some around 25 lbs. Late in the afternoon we received information from one of our code boats that he found a good area of albacore so we are off and on our way. We will have two days to fish the albacore. This is the first good hit in about six days and it is a new area so we are very excited. Thanks! Tommy and crew