queenscliff Fishing Report 2025

~~Sep. 17
 We had bad odds today.  We fished for wahoo and our fish hooked to fish landed ratio was poor.  It always is with wahoo but I feel today was extra bad.  I think if you're landing half of what you hook with wahoo you're doing OK.  Today at best we were 1/3.  At best.  I called out to 2 of our anglers fishing today and asked what there ratio was for the day and I got a 1/2 and a 1/4.  Then my buddy Dave came up to the wheel house and said he was 0/4.  So that gives you an idea.  If we would've caught half of what we hooked today we would've had a really good day.

 Alright.  I'm done whining.  I'm still glad we came here.  Everybody got there chance at a wahoo and there's still a chance for some more tomorrow.  We're headed inside now and we'll be fishing for wahoo while we're looking for tuna first thing tomorrow morning.  The weather now is fantastic.  A little weird this morning with mixed swell and a wind coming from the southwest but it's beautiful now.

 We couldn't come to an agreement on a price for someone to wear Mark's shirt today.  Justin wanted 200 and Mike said he'd do it for 150 but I couldn't find enough people to chip in.  It was a good one too.  He was wearing a white shirt today, so by 9:00 this morning he could've entered a wet t-shirt contest.  He may have won too if you're into guys like Mark.
        

July 16
    Arrive depart day today.  We did the whole routine, I hung out with my baby for an hour and it was time to set sail again.  We left on another 5 day with my buddy Archie and his gang and a few other regulars.  We did well at the bait receivers.  We loaded up on small sardine and left the bay and headed out to do some fishing in the afternoon.  We didn't do much.  A couple of yellowfin is all we caught.  We did see a couple of big schools of 50-80 pound tuna that didn't care we were there at all.  No bites.  We're eating prime rib and heading down in nice weather.  We're going to try for some yellows on the coast in the morning and then head offshore for the afternoon hunting yellowfin.

 

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] .

Oct. 17th

 

We had some good yellowtail fishing today. It took a little while to get going this morning but we had a couple hours of good tailing before it shut off before lunch like its been doing in the zone we were in. After things shut off we made a 4 hour move and had some good fishing again for about an hour before dark. The weather once again was great and we're currently traveling north to look for the bluefin tomorrow. Things have slowed down tremendously up there lately but we're going to look in some newer grounds where we see some good looking water on our sea surface temp charts. There will be a few of us spread out looking tomorrow so hopefully between the three of us we can get something located.

I told Mark today I didn't think he could go one hour without talking. He didn't think so either but he tried and was surprisingly successful. He can not talk for one hour. I think he might die if he tried to do it all day though so I'm not going to challenge him to that.