devils lake Fishing Report 2024

Aug 7
 Well, our best fishing today came from the zone where all of our offshore fishing has been this year.  No surprise there.  I wish we would have stayed in that zone longer, but for the past week, anyone on there last day of there trip has been complaining about there speed going up.  "Oh it's soo slow", "we're driving through mud", "make sure you give yourself plenty of extra time", etcetera, etcetera.  So we planned on that.  We fished with our watch today.  But that never happened.  We never did slow down.  Unfortunately, by planning on it, it put us in this years desert zone.  The zone with no fish.  Beautiful water, no fish.  But things have to change right?  Right.  Just not today.  Oh well.  At least our first 2 days were good ones.  Oh, and the weather was good.  That always helps.

 We'll be in tomorrow and Tommy will be coming back out for 5.  I'm going home.  What will I do?  Spend every minute with my beautiful daughter except for the 4 1/2 hours spent on the golf course.  I will miss writing to you folks though.  I enjoy telling you what's on my mind.  I sugar coat nothing.  See you all in 5 days.
     

~~August 1
 Good morning.  It's morning time for me.  1:53 am.  I'm  writing about yesterday.  I'd call it good fishing.  Nothing crazy, just steady scratch fishing for most of the day.  Same old grade, 14-22 pounders.  Same basic grounds.  It was a lot more fun than that sounds though.  Come on, good fishing on a good grade of fish.  What more could we ask for?  Better weather? OK.  But sometimes you get wind.  When life gives you lemons...  Seriously though, we had a whole lot of wind today.  Here's the thing though.  The boat drifted great.  We may have had over 20 knots of wind, but the boat drifted like we had 10.  A little wind burn and some chapped lips is all.  As long as the fish bite and no one gets hurt.

 Good fishing or not, we decided to take a break from that wind this afternoon.  We made a little move where the wind gets blocked by The Island.  What a difference.  I compared it to sitting in a spa.  Just that, aaahhhhhhhhh feeling.  We even caught some fish.  There were some spots of YT's up and at dark we caught 4 grouper, a halibut and a tail on a drift.  Then we anchored up for Seabass and had dinner.  We haven't caught a Seabass yet but we're hoping at or just before daylight we get some.  One boat had some around these parts yesterday.

 So that's it.  We'll be here again tomorrow.  20 minutes left on my watch and I'll be going back to bed for a few more hours.  Stay classy everyone and thanks for stopping by.
       

~~Sep. 8
 Today was not a bad day at all.  We tailed it.  The yellowtail bit a little.  We fished a fun little pinnacle rock most of today.  Conditions weren't perfect for drifting today.  For starters it was windy as heck here last night and yesterday.  We didn't see any of that because we weren't here but we got some of the after effects of it.  We had no wind at all yet we were rolling our pa toots off for the first couple hours of the morning.  Because we had no wind we were drifting with the current so it made fishing that spot difficult.  The fish wanted to be right on the edge of it and we would end up drifting right on top of the pinnacle and we were losing a lot of the fish we would hook.  The simple solution would be to anchor up off the edge but we tried that and the fish wouldn't bite on the anchor.  So it was really good fishing but landing them was tough but we were still able to land plenty.

 After lunch things straightened out and we were able to make a few good drifts but then I watched the entire school on my meter swim to the deeps and vanish.  After that we couldn't find the fish on that spot anymore.  They swam away.  So we looked else where and we were unsuccessful at finding any more yellers.  That was fine though.  We still caught plenty today.  It was a good day.

 Tomorrow we're going to finish the trip off looking to top off on dorado.  If we can get it done early enough we may have some time to try for some more yellows.  Otherwise we'll just be rolling on home after wards.
       

The beat goes on at the Coronado Islands ! Today we caught 38 yellowtail 22 barracuda and 3 kelp bass. Fly lined sardines and surface lures were the best today.

Captain Ryan Bostian called in tonight with an audio report from the San Diego out of Seaforth Sportfishing in Mission Bay, CA. We had EXCELLENT fishing today. We fished at the Coronado Islands and our group of 34 anglers caught 155 Yellowtail (up to 23 pounds).

The are biting the fly-lined baits really well and also the Yo-yo iron too. Anglers comfortable with surface iron fishing were also very successful. We are heading back out there tomorrow.

Same story different day. Stopped on some good schools of tuna but very tough to get a bite. Ended up with 5 yellowfin. Hoping for a change in the near future.

Today we we picked at the quality Tuna we have been after. Many successes before the sharks took their share. The fish were on both live bait and chunk bait. It was nice catching them on the chunk because we were able to use big hooks and heavy line. As opposed to small hooks and light line.

Pictured here is a neat looking Pilot Fish. Really cool looking blue fish with black stripes. They hang out with sharks waiting for bits and pieces from a kill to float back to them. Also pictured is a delicious sashimi spread prepared by chef Mike!

82 yellowfin 2 bluefin 19 yellowtail. When we stop on a school of tuna every bait that hits the water gets looked at by the fish. If it isn’t presented perfectly they won’t touch it. We highly recommend changing your bait often, the more presentations you make the more likely you are to make a perfect one. 20lb flouro and size 2 hooks are what worked best.