clear lake tx Fishing Report 2024

Offshore kelping today was tough. Not a whole lot of action. Plenty of kelps with not much on them at times, and areas of water with no kelps in it. We had one kelp mid afternoon where we had some action on shaker size yellows up to 20 pounders and a kelp in the morning with a handful of dorado on it. We'll be at Cedros in the early morning trying to get a tank or two of bait and begin our day yellowtail fishing.

~~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.
        

YELLOWFIN ON THE REBOUND (090510) APOLLO came back in from a 2-day trip with 133 Yellowfin Tuna, 16 Albacore & 6 Bluefin Tuna. Time to go guys!!!

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.
*

Captain Andrew Viola checked in this morning at 8:59 PM with an audio update from the Pacifica out of Seaforth Sportfishing in Mission Bay, CA.  We have been drifting for an hour and have put together a good score so far.  We have 62 Yellowfin Tuna and 4 Bluefin Tuna.  We are still drifting with fish around the boat.

We have a 1.5 day trip departing on Wednesday night.  We also have a full day trip on Sunday.  Come out fishing on the Pacifica!!!!

It's late in the season, but Guadalupe Island is still holding and producing good catches of quality yellowfin tuna.

"We just returned this morning from another very successful Fall Guadalupe trip," said the report from the charter boat Apollo October 25. "This was another charter with 12 friends. We made good time getting to the Island and arrived at the south end around 9:30 am. There were good biting school size (25/40 lb) yellowfin tuna biting on the anchor. There were also a few schools of better grade (50/100 lb) fish to be found if one was willing to work for it. We were willing! We worked the Island for 4 days mainly targeting that better grade YFT and produced a beautiful catch of 127 Yellowfin tuna. The biggest was 108 lbs with 6 other fish breaking the century mark."

The good fishing at the island could go on until Christmas. It usually lasts until the water drops below 67 degrees or so. Old-timers tell stories about fishing yellowfin or bluefin tuna at the island when there was snow on the peaks. Guadalupe is the one destination that consistently produces yellowfin tuna of 50 to 100 pounds or more short of Alijos Rocks, another full day's cruise south.

The Annual SFR charter aboard the Apollo with Captain J.J Gerritsen and crew was a big success !! The Apollo is running out of Sea Landing on beautiful Santa Barbara Harbor, the closest harbor to the outer Channel Islands. Great weather meant an ideal cruise over to San Miguel Island for some of the finest shallow water rockfishing you'll find anywhere. 300 feet down you say, maybe 200, how about 100 feet ? No way. The offshore terrain around San Miguel is so rugged and marked with underwater pinnacles, we spent most of the day fishing in 25 to 90 feet of water. Lighter rigs, jigs, leadheads and swimbaits were the order of the day, and the San Miguel rockfish were in a hungry mood. We started catching fish before daybreak and spent the rest on the trip hauling up huge reds, chuckles and lings, all sporting some of the most vibrant colors I've seen on any fish in a long time. Awesome day!! We limited out on huge rockfish, slammed about 50-60 grumpy whitefish, 5-6 huge goats and 16 or so pre-historic looking lings before calling it a trip. Epic day !!!! The jackpot was a nail biter as Shawn Suhr's huge lingcod and Art Moralez's giant goat battled to a near dead heat. Captain J.J needed to come down and settle the score, with the final vote went going to Shawn's 12-13 pound ling. Great job Shawn. Captain J.J and his crew did an awesome job as always and the Apollo is looking as spotless as ever. The Apollo will be in Santa Barbara till around mid May before moving down to Fisherman's Landing in San Diego. Call Sea Landing at 1-805-963-3564 or log onto www.apollocharters.com for their schedule. Great trip everyone !!!. email me at [email protected] for any photos. Thats the word on the water. Don

Pretty darn good fishing once again today, 26 Bluefin and 1 Yellowtail. Please make sure your gear is in good working order, I really should have taken pictures of some of the gear failures.