chokoloskee Fishing Report 2025

Captain Mike Pritchard called in from the Tribute this afternoon. We have had very good Yellowfin Tuna fishing. We have over 130 Yellowfin Tuna and a lot of Yellowtail and Dorado.
To book a spot on the Tribute Call Seaforth Sportfishing at (619) 224-3383 or book online at www.tributesportfishing.com.

Monday, October 1st, 2012

Hi friends and happy October to all of you. First off, I was going to smack that weatherman right in the mouth this morning but he was pretty dead-on with his prediction of this evenings weather, so we cool again. Our ride back to San Diego Bay is a beautiful, moon-lit excursion -- a perfect ride for a fillet mignon dinner. The weather wasn't all that bad today, just about ten knots more breeze than predicted and the seas were spaced out and low today so it was just windy. Like I said, the weather now is just dandy so I can't be all that bummed about the excess wind.

We started off this morning in the eastern edge of things and although my gameplan for the day was right on, my execution was about an hour or so behind. We were hoping to catch a bunch of yellowfin and dorado this morning and then roll out to the west all day, get to the western edge and look for bluefin and albacore to end the day. After screwing around in the eastern zone and having not caught a fish for a couple of hours we slowly motored out to the west and just before lunch -- thinking I was hot stuff with thirty tuna and a dozen dorado on the boat -- a boat to to the west got on a kelp that ended his day. Ugh, just where I wanted to be too. After that, we plotted the position and kicked her up on our westerly tack to get out there by the afternoon time.

The bad thing about this whole scenario was that we never found the kelp our "buddy boat" bagged for us. The good news is that we found one of our own. A big, beautiful lady-of-a-kelp with a "smaller" sister about a thousand yards upswell of her and once we set up the drift for both of them, it was on like donkey kong. We had a really fun afternoon pulling on 12-22 lb. yellowfin tuna and a really nice grade of dorado to go with the tunas as well. It wasn't WFO at all, just a steady pick with three to five going all the time. The gang had a ball and before you knew it, we were finished up with our daily limit of yellowfin tuna and dorado. Better late than never.

The one thing that I'm feeling down about is the fact that we never made it out to the western edge to look for bluefin and albacore. But we had a fine day of fishing on yellowfin and flatheads and the passengers are pumped. Good times! We'll be in tomorrow morning at 0600 hours and we'll be back out on Wednesday night for another day and a half trip. We'll chat with you then. I'm sorry for the long report. Direct your slick comments to Tommy and he'll pass them along to me at a later date. Good night.

-The Supreme Team

Captain Ryan Bostian called in with an update from “The San Diego” out of Seaforth Sportfishing. Today Cameron is running the boat. The big Bluefin have been missing for awhile but they have been found. We have one 119 pound Bluefin Tuna with 2 hanging. We are still fishing Yellowtail but we need to be prepared for the Bluefin.

For the Yellowtail we recommend 25 pound live bait rod.

For big Bluefin 50 or 60 pound bait rod. Use a 2o circle hook and if they are deep try a rubber band and a sinker to get it down. Also a Shimano flat fall has been working. Fish a Talica 12 or 16. Fill the reel up with spectra 65# or 80#. Then connect to a short 80 fluroucarborn leader.

We run every day but please be ready for fish anywhere from 5 pounds to 150 pounds. CURRENT SCHEDULE We are online and have open party trips everyday this week. This photo is from the about 2 weeks ago. Ryan will update us with current photos from today later this afternoon.

35 bluefin 8 yellowfin. Long “plunker” drifts were the name of the game today. A rubber banded 4-6oz sinker on 40-60lb line got most of our bites.

"we're wrapping up our 1.5 Day trip," said Mike Pritchard from the Tribute. "We made the run down here 130 miles and we had very good fishing. We got limits of Yellowtail, 60 Yellowfin tuna, 35 Dorado & 10 Bluefin tuna. It was fun fishing, a lot of the fish were caught on surface irons.We had very nice weather with a slight breeze ths afternoon.

"We leave on a 1 Day tomorrow afternoon, Sept. 26th. There is still room so if you want to go call Seaforth Sportfishing at 619-224-3383."

The morning started off right with steady tuna and yellowtail fishing shortly after daylight. We remained until 10 am when we pulled it and tried to finish off with some more wahoo. We had a few stops for a dozen skin and are now headed home. We have had a great trip with an outstanding group of anglers, excellent weather and delicious food. We will be traveling the rest of today and tomorrow and arrive at the dock on Sunday. You can call the office on Saturday night for our ETA. 619-390-7890 Thanks for checking in.

Fishing report for the week of sept 16-22. This past week was all about looking thru the binoculars and praying that you find the lucky kelp. Scores for the 3/4 day boats this week have ranged anywhere from 0 to 150 fish. The highlight of our week was a kelp we found on Thursday which kicked out 44 nice size dorado and 100 yellowtail. On Friday we caught our first yellowfin tuna of the season. This season is showing no signs of slowing down so make those reservations and come on down.