st joseph river Fishing Report 2024

Today we caught 2 yellowfin tuna and did not like what we saw offshore. We are going back to the islands starting tomorrow. Bring a 25 or 30 lb flyline setup and a 40 or 50 lb yoyo setup. Passports required !

We fished this morning without much luck. The one that we did hook the shark ate. So this will be another chapter for Bob Vance in his charter diary. Everybody had a great time and we look forward to seeing them all back again next year for Bob's annual trip. We will be in to the dock at 5:30am. We depart on Garry Roberts 9-day tomorrow morning. Myself as well as the crew are anxious to get down to Alijos. The fishing reports have been really good and we are looking forward to having our own great reports. Wish us luck, or better yet come join us and enjoy the great fall fishing. Thanks! Tommy and crew

Today we went out with 40 anglers and caught 16 yellowtail and 33 rockfish. We had a couple good shots at fish today. Unfortunately our hook to land ratio was a bit low. This spring is setting up nicely.

Sep. 8

We woke up this morning on the drift. I heard Tommy doing the stop and go on his watch early in the morning meaning he was seeing schools. He woke the rest of us up bright and early and it didn't take too long before we started hooking fish. They were the 15-18 pound bluefin and they weren't biting as well as you'd think they would judging by all the fish around the boat. We kept drifting though trying the patient mode. It's a lot easier to be patient with non biting fish when the other boats aren't getting stops. After a while and a few handfuls of BFT we gave up on these fish and went searching for some new ones. It took a while but around lunch time we found a nice big fat kelp and it was an aquarium underneath. Good viewing and catching on lot's of different fish from small throwback yellowtail to small tuna and tuna up to 32 pounds and lots of dorado. Yes it's that time of year. The water warmed up considerably in the last week or so and with that came schools of yellowfin and now the dorado in numbers. We'll take um. Crowd pleaser's is what they are and you know us, we like to please crowds. After a couple hours fishing there we went searching for something new unsuccessfully so we ended up back on our kelp and caught some more dorado and a few more tuna. We're now headed for the yellowtail grounds and everyone is fat and happy and we're planning on some good pulling on big yellows tomorrow.

I ate the escolar again substituting it for the prime rib in the fajitas we had for lunch today. It was smooth sailing John and I mean that in a good way. No problems down there. The fish isn't the best fish in the ocean. The flavor is great though the texture is a bit soft. Opening day for pro football so I'll leave you with this. Go Chargers! Let's do some competing this year. My Pad's couldn't do it so now it's up to you guys. Come on now!

27 yellowfin 21 bluefin 27 yellowtail. Shoulder and belly hooked baits work best when fishing picky tuna. The second picture shows where to place your hook. The baits pictured are also a prime example of what a bad bait looks like, taking your time and selecting a good healthy bait will get you more bites.

GOOD GRADE ! We knew something was different when we had been stopped for 20 minutes with 20+ tuna hooked and we still had not put one on the boat. After a couple hours of drifting and many “zing-pows”. We managed to land 82 (22-30 lb ) yellowfin. We also had a late afternoon skipjack riot for 138 fish.

Today we spent our day offshore looking for kelps. We had outstanding fishing on the smaller Yellowfin Tuna even though we released most of them.Our main target today was trying to find some Dorado, and a couple kelps had just what we needed. We ended up with with an action packed day of quality Dorado and small Yellowfin fishing. A great way to end the trip. full of action and a few bigger fish.

48 yellowfin 89 skipjack 36 yellowtail 5 dorado. Aquarium style on a lucky kelp.