aurora reservoir Fishing Report 2024

Nov. 7

                First of all, what the heck was that?!  Did you see that tonight?!  Holy Toledo!  It was like a rocket or something, blasting through the sky, then all of a sudden, boom!  It just lit up.  For a second there, I thought that was it.  I thought, see you later world,.  This is it.  Then it was just out of control.  I watched it with the gyros for a while and it was zippin and zappin all over the place with a huge green glow in it's wake.  Wow!!  And the whole fleet saw it.  From here, out to there, and into there and all the way down there.  I can't wait to hear the explanation.  I'll remember that forever.

 

                  OK.  Onto fishing.. Today, we had a bad day.  Just an old fashioned bad day.  And I wish that was all I had to say about that, but you make me write more to you.  That wouldn't be good enough.  So I'll explain it.  Last night I downloaded what I thought was a tasty looking water chart.  It shows much much less warm water around but there was a lovely looking strip of warm headed southeast from Clemente.  So I thought I had this great idea to start at the Island, and leave when they closed it down at 11:30.  Well it's what we did.  We started at the Island, only we didn't catch a whole lot.  A handful of nice yellows and some junk was all.  So we stuck with the plan and headed down that strip of warm water.  You know, the promise land, so I thought.  I was wrong.  And that's all I have to say about that.

 

                We did experience some great flat calm weather.  And we caught our first ever American wahoo in November, so that was cool.  Good boat, good crew, and good food.  We just missed the good fishing.  Sometimes you eat the bar, and sometimes the bar eats you.  Sometimes you're sitting field level, and sometimes you're sitting nose bleed.  That's all a part of the game.

                                                                                                                               

July 21
  Well, we started off in the hot yellowtail zone this morning.  Us and 4 of the other long range boats.  I'm not at all going to call it a bust, it just wasn't what we were hoping/expecting.  Things were a little on the slow side.  It perked up for a little while but it was short lived.  It wasn't bad.  I mean we caught almost 50 yellows there before lunch.  And they were nice ones too, let me tell you.  26 pound average is my guess without weighing a single one.  Maybe 28, OK.  But by lunch it was done, done, done.  So we got mobile.  It wasn't for a few hours before we found something worthy to shut down on.  We found a kelp and caught another 25 beautiful tails.  I mean beauts.

  

 

So we can't complain.  75 gorgeous  yellowtail today to go with flat calm, sunny weather.  I can think of many, many days out here where I would have paid plenty for a day like we had today.  We're making that move while we still can.  We'll be getting our Island on tomorrow.  Hopefully we can put some more quality yellows on board and fish our last couple days up there in tuna land.

  Getting to know your crew:  Mark didn't inherit his eating habits from his dad.  Nope.  Mr. Clark himself is out here in the flesh and I've bussed his plate twice now and I haven't seen a finished plate by a long shot.  Mark would never.  Especially now with him being hungry all day and all with the diet.  Oh, and I guess I have tendonitis in my Supinator muscle which is awesome  Stoked.

  Matt Hess?  Shame on you buddy.  I'm supposed to give you a shout out here and I don't even no what to say to you I'm so disappointed. Oh well, see you next time I guess.  And Joe Miller.  My buddy Joey.  You were the first one Jed and I asked about.  Get yourself all fixed up and we'll see you next year.  We love you and we miss you buddy.
          

"It's 1 O'Clock here & I think we have 10 Yellowtail on the boat." Ryan went on, "we're seeing them pretty good here this morning. These are very big fish, we have lost another 10 for sure. We had one stop where we hooked 4 and lost them all. That's just the way it goes with this sized fish. They are bigger today, about 25 pounders. Biting mainly to fly line bait, we have caught a couple fish on the yo-yo and on surface lures. But they are maily biting the fly lined bait. I'll give you a final talley on the way in. As of 1:00 PM I know we have at least 10 Yellowtail on the boat maybe a couple more. And we're still seeing them hook a few. I'll get back to you later.

Aug. 10
    Well, I can't say we caught very much today.  I can say we saw plenty of schools, we just couldn't get more then one of them to bite and on that school we caught one 70 pounder.  I'm thinking we saw about a dozen schools of tuna today but like I said, it was the wrong day for biting fish in these grounds.  The weather though today, man o man is it nice out here so at least we got to look at non biting fish in good weather.

    In other fishing news we got the word from the higher ups that Mexico has lifted the ban on recreational bluefin tuna catching and keeping so with that news we're going to roll on down into some traditional Mexican bluefin tuna grounds and give that a go tomorrow.  We'll be looking for yellowfin tuna as well tomorrow.  We've heard they"re in the area too.  Wish us luck.
                            

 

~~July 28
  I just woke up and thought I'd better write this before I forget about it.  Last night after our late hit we made a 5 mile move tighter to the Island in this little bay, if you would.  Man o man was it good sleeping.  The boat just gently rocked us to sleep.  Gently.  The AC was pumping and we were all beat from our day and kind of sick of the wind, so we came over here, out of the wind and fell asleep with our thumbs in our mouths.  Now it's getting about time to fish.  I'll let everyone sleep another hour and then it's wake up time.  See you tonight.

  Midday report:  We left The Island around noon.  It wasn't as good today as it was yesterday.  It was still good, we were just hoping for a little more in a shorter time.  It might be because of all the bait that's around here.  I can't imagine they haven't been just stuffing there face all night and morning.  i've been fishing that Island for 15 years and I haven't seen anything like it.  Even the Godfather himself called it an "unbelievable" amount of bait there.  And then at noon when we were looking for one more stop, all the life vanished  Just like that.  Poof.  I didn't give it any time after that looking.  We left right away.  So it took us a couple hours longer then I was expecting and we were just a stop shy of what I wanted but we're still looking good on yellowtail.  We saved a little room for tomorrow. 

  So we took off in search of tuna/dorado this afternoon, and we were unsuccessful.  The ride up so far has been fine.  The weather forecast looks good for tomorrow.  It should be good to start and only get better throughout the day.  We deserve it.  The reports above in tomorrows tuna zone for us were good today.  There were some productive kelps up there today.  We want some.
          

  Happy Anniversary, Renee, thanks for letting me go fishing, I love you!!!! D

We started off with a good morning bite where Jeff Hoover pull in a 78 lb. bluefin. We also caught some smaller grade bluefin and a nice grade of yellowfin. However it was short lived. By 9am we were off scratching for small, medium and nice grade albacore for the rest of the day. For this trip we scratched away every day and caught enough fish for everyone to take home. Our eta for tomorrow will be 7:30 am and then Drew will take out the next one which is the 2nd annual Let's Talk Hook-up Charter. Weather has been excellent. Well it's time to go down for dinner. Tonight will be surf and turf, steak and lobster. Thanks for checking in.

We have to fill this Oct 5-day. All season long I here everyone asking how they can get on one of our 10 passenger Guadelupe trips. Well here it is. I have 2 spots open on what is really a 5.5 day trip to Guadelupe with only 10 people on the Apollo. The trip departs on the morning of Oct 1rst at 9am. and returns mid morning on the 6th. $1800 covers all meals and permits. This trip is a charter and if you are a part of it now chances are you'll be invited on many other trips with this group in the future. If you can make this happen, please call Steve at 714 272-4395.