priest lake Fishing Report 2024

This past week has been all about chasing yellowtail. The amount of yellowtail we have been seeing at the Coronado Islands has been very impressive. The fish counts have not been a representation of how much fish is in the water. Stopping on a school of 300 yellowtail and only hooking 1 has become very common. On Friday we managed to catch 30 yellowtail and Saturday produced 20. These fish are still running in the 20-30 pound range with multiple fish over 30 in the past week. Fly lined sardines on 30 lb. yo-yo lures on 40 or 50 lb. as well as surface iron on 40 lb. have all been producing fish. These yellowtail have been a challenge to hook mainly because of all the bait in the water. When some of the bait goes away and these fish settle in. 50 to 100 fish days will become common. If you would like to experience some very fun yellowtail fishing, where every bite is earned. Make your reservations and come join us !

Yesterday we looked at 612 kelps and they were all empty. Today, the very first kelp we looked at was loaded. Aquarium style fishing for yellowtail, yellowfin and skipjack tuna.

SUMMERTIME CONDITIONS ! Hey guys. Two days ago the water at the Coronado Islands was hovering right around 60 degrees and the fishing was slow. Conditions started improving rapidly yesterday afternoon and subsequently so did the fishing. Today we went out with 43 anglers and captured 25 calico bass 58 barracuda and full Mexican limits of sandbass. While we did not manage to catch any yellowtail today, we did however enjoy steady action from start to finish. I took a photo of our temp gauge for all you yellowtail hunters out there. With water temperatures like this. It won't be long before the yellows get back on the bite. Be here the day it happens, not the day after !

8 DAY ULTRA LIGHT LOAD TRIP!!! APOLLO still have 5 spots open on a 8 day trip. Ultra light load limit to 12 anglers. THE ULTIMATE TRIP. Boat leaves 11/13 Monday at 9am & returns 11/21 Tuesday at 9am. Cost is $2400(all meals & Mexican permits included). Fuel surcharges will be extra. For more info & reservations call Fisherman's Landing @ (619)221-8500

Our private charter had to display some good old fashioned patience today. In a typical 3/4 day trip we can expect to make about 3-5 moves thru ought the day looking for fish. Today however, we did not find what we were looking for until our 9th stop of the day. The rapidly changing conditions coupled with the short windows of biting fish have been driving yours truly crazy the past couple of days. Today's photo will show you why we have been putting ourselves thru such mental anguish. Today's final count for our 31 passengers is 11 yellowtail 20 calico bass 16 barracuda 7 rockfish. Our yellowtail today weighed 20-35 pounds and were biting the fly lined sardines the best.

Sep. 19

We didn't start fishing today till around 2:00 in the afternoon. Before that we traveled up in very cool dirty looking fishless water as we expected. Everyone slept in and chilled out while the crew did some maintenence on the boat and did some repairs on monday details. After the boat was in tip top shape we ate fish tacos and got ready to fish. We didn't find any wide open yellowtail fishing but we scrached out an afternoon. We caught 3 a round on mostly good grade yellowtails with a few cows mixed in. 35 pounders is about what they were. So we're traveling up now in good weather to the yellowfin/dorado grounds. We could use a top off on some yellowfin and we can use some more dorado and then we'll have most of a day to fish for the bluefin before we head for home.

Captain Steve Gawitt just called in with an update from Aztec with an offshore update from San Diego. This morning on our first drift put 24 Bluefin Tuna, 2 Yellowfin Tuna, and 1 Yellowtail on the deck. We are seeing bigger Bluefin Tuna and we have had a fair amount of missed fish.

The Aztec is running Overnight trips departing from Seaforth Sportfishing in Mission Bay. You can call (619) 224-3383 to get in on the action.

Game fish eluded us today. So we loaded up our freezers with fresh rockfish. Skip the grocery store nausea. Have some fun and harvest your own seafood. We need reservations to run. Call Seaforth Landing (616)224-3383.