estero bay Fishing Report 2025

Fishing today was absolutely excellent! The albacore bit all day and the weather has laid down and is good. All the albies range in the 25 to 30 lb range. For lunch we had swordfish in a butter, lemon, caper cream sauce and for dinner we had a rack of lamb with a blue cheese port wine sauce. Yummy! A couple of boats headed to Guadalupe to no avail. We still have a spot here and there on some of our upcoming trips. Give Susan a call in the office if you can get away and come fish.

I have always felt that it takes 3 full days to give the Coronado Islands a thorough check. Today was day # 1 and we caught 31 bonito and 100 rockfish. Spent a lot of time looking for yellowtail and never found anything substantial. Saturday is a definite go with a light load at this time.

Tommy Rothery brought his Polaris Supreme home to Fisherman's Landing August 17 after the best five-day trip to Guadalupe Island so far this year. Rothery's anglers had an excellent catch of larger yellowfin from the big island, and a couple of wahoo. The luckiest angler on the Eric Rogger trip may heave been Dean Hendrickson of Chatsworth, who got a non-eligible (assist from a deckhand) 110-pound tuna on a sardine and 40-pound line, and a 47-pound wahoo, on a black and purple small Marauder. Phil Bruce of Ramona won first place, for a 105-pound yellowfin. He said he got it with a sardine on a 2/0 ringed Super Mutu hook, 40-pound P-Line and 40-pound fluorocarbon leader, a Cal Sheets-treated Penn 12 T reel and a Seeker 660 rod. Supreme regular Dietmar Kruger of Santa Monica was second, for an 87-pounder he got on 40-pound line, and Alex Rogger of Steamboat Springs, CO won third place, for a 79.2-pound yellowfin tuna. Stephan Kruger of Venice Beach took the trip's best yellowtail, a 39-pound mossback, on the kite with a squid for bait. "He hit it like a massive tuna," said Kruger, "there was a huge explosion in the water under the kite."

Today was by no means easy. We did a lot of moving and re positioning. We had to grind it out for a few Yellowtail. Until the last 2 hours when they wanted to bite. Our bite window was well utilized and we were able to do some damage on some 18-25 lb Yellowtail. Great quality and great numbers to end on! We are headed up the line tomorrow.

The old adage “I’d rather be lucky than good” was the story for us today. Before we even fired up the Binos our autopilot found us a kelp patty that kicked out 66 yellowtail (12-25lbs). After our kelp the weather kicked up substantially making it very difficult to work. We did however see some tuna but did not get a bite. A 40 lb flyline setup was the best today.

Happy Easter! I have decided to put some ultra limited load open party trips together for fishing the northern Channel Islands this weekend. I have set up two trips on Saturday and Sunday the 10th and 11th of April. I anticipate trying to find sea bass in the morning and falling back on rock fish and ling cod for the rest of the day. These trips will be limited to only 20 people max!! This just seems to me to be such a great opportunity to get out to the islands on such a nice boat without having to deal with a crowd. The trips will depart from Sea Landing in Santa Barbara at 9pm Friday and Saturday night. The cost will be $175 per person. Please come join me and the crew aboard the Apollo next weekend. I look forward to seeing you.

Please call Sea Landing to make Reservations at (805) 963-3564.

Polaris Supreme Trip Update 12-05-2018

Tuna fishing this morning was excellent. We took off around 10 o'clock and did a tour of the South end of the island sightseeing. Yep that's right decided to go sightseeing. The guys and gals had a great morning and they've had several great days and of course we have tomorrow to fish for a full day. So we decided to show them some of the sites! That of course was easy and a great success. We anchored backup for the afternoon and scratched a few more fish before dark. Tomorrow will be our last day here at the island. Hoping for a big morning and then maybe go do some yellowtail fishing.

The Polaris supreme crew!

After a 5+ hour drift we pointed for home with 50 bluefin(20-60lbs) and 42 yellowfin(15-35lbs). Never know what we might see on the ocean. Bring rods to fish 20-40lb line and size 4-2/0 hooks.