east central florida Fishing Report 2025

Today we went out with only 11 passengers. At the end of the day everybody on board had a full Mexican limit of rockfish. Our rockfish today were a nice mix of reds, salmon grouper, whitefish, sheephead and lingcod. The weather was absolutely perfect today.

Scripps Ranch Old Pros charter. 42 anglers killed 400 beers, 3 yellowtail, 26 bonito, lots of shallow water rockfish. ‘‘Tis the season for mixed bag fishing and binge drinking in beautiful weather.

Oct. 13

Well we struck out on the bluefin today. It wasn't a called third strike, I mean we went down swinging but they definitely beat us today. We saw one good school in the dark hours of the a.m. that didn't stick and then found one deal that didn't react all that bitchen after daylight. We only landed five but they were beautiful fish. 35-50 pounders. Our afternoon was spent traveling down. We left that zone after lunch because we didn't have high hopes for the afternoon based on what we and the other boats had seen.

Our weather was good today. Cold, but not a whole lot of wind. We're going to be fishing for yellowfin tuna tomorrow at first light. They'll be a few of us looking around there so hopefully we get them located early.

 

In other news Mark tried to tell me that Steve Nash was as tall as he was and I called him out on it, bet him 20 dollars in which he agreed upon, and then I had to call my lovely wife to get her to Google it. I was right, he's 6'3" and now I'm 20 dollars richer. Here's the thing though, I spent almost 20 dollars in the phone call to win that bet so was it worth it? Absolutely. I would gladly spend more money then I'd win against Mark, he's fat, just to prove my point and make him 20 dollars less rich.

From Brook Trout to Big Yellowtail! Siblings Tom and Mary Chaparro have been fishing buddies since the early days. They started out catching Brook and Golden Trout in the mountains when they were kids, now catching Yellowfin Tuna and Yellowtail on Toms annual 7 day trip. Keep it up you two! A tad bit breezy today, but still plenty comfortable. Will report again tomorrow, Team Supreme

Nov. 11

After our previous day of wide open fishing - we had high hopes of the same on giant yellow fin tuna. The day started with Captain Tommy identifying sonar readings of big schools of tuna all around us. We fished hard all day. Kites, sinker rigs, fly line, chunked, jigged, drifted and anchored. Tommy calling out the sonar readings the whole time, ", "big tuna at 20 fathoms" or "we are surrounded by school tuna 10 fathoms to 30 fathoms". We began to doubt Tommy's sonar and guessed that it was just a screen saver image. Then, in the late afternoon, tuna started flying out of the water all around us for a 1/4 mile. 100 lb to 300 lb tuna fully coming out of water and giving us a show and taunting us once more. At the end of the day Greg, Matt and Rick caught larger tuna and kept us from getting skunked. We flushed the stomachs of the tuna and found them stuffed with pelagic crabs. The sardines, mackerel and flying fish we offered were not on their menu. We hear of a place up the line where the yellow tail are biting. We are going there now.

OTR Lon Mikkelsen.

143 Yellowtail, 77 Bonito. Amazing November fishing again!

~~July 16
   
  We had a very very good day today.  Stoked.  We got in the water we were looking for around nine this morning and it wasn't an hour before we found our first school.  We plunked away for a couple hours and when things slowed down, we got the call from our buddy Brian on the American Angler who was drifting a mile or so upswell of us and he was on the boomer school so we went over and gave him a hand.  About an hour later another boat showed up and we took a break.  I sent everyone in for lunch while myself and the crew got the deck under control and fired up another fish hold.  After lunch we went on the hunt again and found another deal, and then another but by that time most of the anglers were now spectators.  An hour before dark we found another good school and we may have had 5 or 6 people fishing all with a bent rod.  That's what we call a very very good day.

  We're off to Cedros Island.  We'll be there prior to daylight and we hope for some good yellowtail action for the next couple of days.
           

A very slow pick turned into full speed chaos. 230 yellowfin 6 bluefin (40-60lbs).