matagorda Fishing Report 2024

Captain Mike Pritchard checked in with an final wrap-up from the Tribute out of Seaforthl.  Today we had 27 bluefin (1 shy of limits) 2 yellowfin (first of the season) and 16 yellowtail for our 14 anglers today in flat calm weather.

35 bluefin 8 yellowfin. Long “plunker” drifts were the name of the game today. A rubber banded 4-6oz sinker on 40-60lb line got most of our bites.

44 yellowtail 17 barracuda 1 bonito. One stop made our day.

16 Yellowfin Tuna and 2 Bluefin Tuna for our repeat group today. Mike and his pals did just fine with the live sardine and #25-30 floro leader. We lost only 4 or so fish all day. Looking forward to getting back on it tomorrow. Welcome to Summer!!!

~~Sep. 17
 We're going to go ahead and chalk this one up as a travel day.  That's pretty much what we did today.  Starting last night.  And it was a rough one.  As soon as we got a couple hours northeast of the stones things got a bit windy and the boat started to rock.  Not good sleeping weather.  We got through it though.  Even Chef Mike got breakfast out without too much whining this morning.  Things started to smooth out a couple of hours prior to arriving to our fishing hole.  Our fishing hole didn't prove to be very productive though.  So we traveled up.  That's something you have to do on these longer trips when you fish the Rocks or the Ridge.  It's a long way down there.  So we caught a few wahoo on our travel day.

 Unfortunately the weather picked back up this afternoon and we've been scooping waves over the house steady since 3:00 or so.  Right now I turned it down swell for dinner because we have a couple hours to kill.  We're going to head back up to our tuna/wahoo honey hole from the beginning of the trip and hope for good weather.  Just two days left to fish on this trip.
       

~~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.