arkabutla lake Fishing Report 2025

60+ yellowfin and 80+ skipjack tuna as of noon for 23 beginner anglers. Stay tuned for a final

Captain Ryan Bostian checked in tonight with an update from the San Diego out of Seaforth Sportfishing in Mission Bay. We had 36 passengers today catch 180 Yellowfin Tuna (LIMITS), 7 Dorado, 50 Yellowtail and 50 Skipjack. We had a long run to get these fish but we had great. It was a one done deal!

The guys are out at the islands with just 11 anglers this morning. They have 30+ yellowtail so far with lots of fishing time left. Capt Matt suggests a 20 or 25 lb bait rod a 40 lb yo-yo rod and your favorite jigstick and bass rod.

Capt Mike Pritchard of the Tribute called in on the first day of a 2 day charter, we have over 60 Yellowfin of a really nice grade. We currently have 3 hanging and they are ranging from 25 - 30 pounds, with a couple in the low 40 pound range. Very good fishing and they are even biting the popper, which makes it even more exciting. Hopefully we will have more today and tomorrow, we will check back in later.

~~July 17
  We had another great day today.  Stoked.  Things didn't start off so great though.  Nope.  Before 11:00 am things weren't so hot  We only had a few fish on board.  Things have been different at this place everyday.  We just needed to figure it out.  And we did.  We figured it out.  For the next few hours we picked away.  One here, two there kind of thing with an occasional flury.  Around two though things got busy.  For the next few hours we were pulling on 14-25 pound yellows with 5-6 going all the time.  I was just sitting up here in the wheel house with crew member Justin and we were reflecting on how much fun it was.  We had a good day.  Fish hold number 2 is full now. 

  We're going to hang tight on the anchor tonight and start off here in the morning.  We wouldn't mind getting another taste of this before we see what other shananagans(still haven't found the spell check on here) we can get into next.  We're thinking we"ll hunt for trophies and make Halibut drifts in the afternoon.  Trophies being the 40-50 pound model yellowtails.  I'll tell you about it tomorrow.
         

10 yellowfin 1 bluefin 3 skipjack. We put our McDonough charter group on enough fish to sink the boat. Unfortunately the tuna didn’t want much to do with our hooks.

~~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.
        

Fishing and the weather is still excellent! However we have had our fill of those albacore so we are heading south for some dorado and yellowtail. Dinner tonight was incredible. Pork with some amazing yummy sauce. Susan said we still have a couple of opening on our next two trips. Take some time off and come out and get into some of this action