south shore Fishing Report 2024

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.

~~Sep. 24
 Well this day has to start with last night.  During and after dinner the military helicopters were up and they were blowing up San Clemente and it was rad. We could see the tracers which were very bright and flew just as fast as the 5 rounds in between each tracer with about each strafing run having about 12 tracers per, which is over 100 rounds.  We could see the glow of each tracer bouncing off the island. And after we thought it was cool enough we went to bed.

 In the morning we started fishing.  We had a little action.  We basically drifted for a couple hours hooking fish.  Sometimes we had one going, sometimes we had four, and sometimes we had none but for some reason it didn't add up to as much as we would've thought.  We were losing alot and we attributed that to the hammer head sharks that were swimming around.  We think that they were stealing a lot of the tuna we hooked.  When that dried up we went searching and a little after 10:00 we found a dandy school and went sideways(drifted) for a while.  I'd have to call it almost wide open for about 1/2 an hour and then a pick for 15 minutes after that.  During lunch we were drifting on tuna too but we weren't hooking a whole lot.  We only caught about six that time.  And after that the life vanished so we moved on.

 It took a couple hours but we found what we were looking for.  Tuna.  Unfortunately they were the non biting ones.  I'll tell you though, it was a sight to see.  Sonar schools, breezers, boilers, foamers.  You name it, it was awesome.  We did get a couple descent drifts there in the end and all and all we're calling this a very successfully trip.

 We'll be dockside until Oct. 3.  You guys didn't book.  My babies going to have to wear hand me down shoes now.  All of her friends are going to make fun of her.  Oh well.  We"ll get through it.  We'll do a little maintenance on the boat while we're in but we don't need to do much.  The boats been running great as soon as we got rid of those early season gremlins.  See you all Oct. 3rd.
        

Captain Mike Pritchard called in late last night with an audio update from the Tribute out of Seaforth Sportfishing in Mission Bay.  We finished the day with good action.   We finished with 38 Bluefin Tuna up to 100 pounds.  They were biting the fly-lined sardines on 40 pound with fluorocarbon.

The Tribute is ONLINE at Seaforth Sportfishing.

We had a good day of fishing today on the yellowfin tuna most of the fish
were 40 to 55 pounds a few standouts in the 70 and 80 pound range! We again
had heavy losses due to tackle failure and of course the great white sharks!
Our weather was excellent all day. The guys are fishing 40 pound test to 50
pound test with very small hooks mostly size 1 or 1/0. Most of the fish lost
are probably in the 70 to hundred pound range. There just on so long that
the line wears through or they get munched! Everybody had a shot at two to
as many as seven fish throughout the day but our land ratio was down around
30%. We're going to do this again tomorrow hopefully we have better luck on
the landing end of it!, All in all it was great day.
*

open spots on a upcoming charter!Febuary 9,10,11. 3.5 day trip $1375 includes meals contact Jodie at [email protected]

We departed today on Lon Mikkleson's annual, limited load 10-day charter. We loaded up some great looking bait while Pedro prepared a delicious pork tenderloin for lunch. The weather is slick, flat calm and the our anglers and crew both are excited about the upcoming prospects. The passengers are preparing their gear and for dinner Pedro put out a yummy lobster and rack of lamb dinner. We will keep you posted.

I have three more fishing opportunities on the Apollo. Berkley will sponsoring three overnight Channel Island trips. These will be sea bass and rock fish type adventures. There will be give aways and raffles on board compliments of Berkley and Pure Fishing. Everyone will receive goodies for fishing. The dates will be: Friday April 3rd, Friday May 1st, and Sunday May 17th. To book a spot please contact Sea Landing (Truth Aquatics) at (805) 568-0460.

Mike Pritchard called in with this report for the Tribute. "So far we are off to a great start this morning. The kelp fishing is very good and we are getting some jig strikes to go with it. We have limits of Yellowtail for our morning, just over 20 Yellowfin tuna and about a half dozen Dorado. The Yellowfin are school sized with some larger fish being caught.

"We'll keep you posted as the day goes on. We do have room available on tomorrow nights 1.5 Day trip. If you are interested, call Seaforth Sportfishing at 619-224-3383."