fort morgan Fishing Report 2024

Captain Ryan Bostian checked in this morning with SDFR with an update from "the San Diego" out of Seaforth Sportfishing in Mission Bay. Today we are back fishing at the Coronado Islands. We have 10 nice grade Yellowtail on the boat so far as of 10:55 AM. The fish are in the 15 to 23 pound size. The San Diego runs full day trips departing at 5:30 every morning!

July 28
    Today we had about as good of yellowtail fishing as you can get.  Quality to quantity ratio, holy Toledo.  18-25 pound fish and they were biting pretty much as full speed as yellows bite for a couple hours and after that it slowed down but they were still biting well for a couple more.  If you have read my past reports you know that surface iron fishing on big yellows is my favorite kind of fishing and it was pretty much wide open on the surface iron.  Holy Toledo!  I'm not the only one who felt this way either.  We have a Polaris Supreme first timer on board, his name is Josh and he may love it more then me.  He named his dog after a surface iron.  Tady.  How cool is that?  We've had a tank of mackerel on board for about 3 weeks and we finally let them go today.  On hooks that is before getting eaten by yellows.  In the late afternoon ewe looked for bait and found some a couple hours before dark and caught a tank full of nice mackerel.  We restocked our supply.  We made a couple drifts along a kelp line while the sun set and tugged on a few calico bass and now we're headed up to fish tuna tomorrow.  Sweet dreams.
                            
    Oh yeah, Happy Anniversary to Renee.  I think you know who that's from Renee.
                    

 

Bring a yo-yo rod if you are coming out with us tomorrow. There has been some yellowtail sightings in La Jolla.

Mike Pritchard called i with this report for the Tribute. "Very good fishing here once again. Limits of Yellowtail, 18 mixed tuna with a sprinkling of Skipjack to go with it. The weather is really nice & we are looking around for some more Bluefin.

"We have room available for tomorrow the trip tomorrow night. After that we have 3 spots open on a 5 Day trip departing October 28th. If you are interested give Seaforth Landing a call at 619-224-3383. We will keep you informed."

A five-day Dan Heil Annual Charter aboard Polaris Supreme with Skipper Drew Henderson, arrived August 21 at Fisherman's Landing. "It's been 20 years now, since '87," said chartermaster Ron Heil, "that I've been doing this trip. My father Dan, who passed away this last season, had been doing it since Tommy (Rothery) bought the boat back in '80 or '81." Dan Heil had been chartering with Rothery since the early eighties on the Polaris Deluxe, now the Breezers. He sailed with Rothery on the Polaris Supreme since '85. Rothery bought the boat from Bill Poole in 1987. "It was a little choppy on that first day," said Skipper Henderson. "But we had great albacore fishing. Cedros was great, we spent a half-day kelp fishing with little action, so we finished up at Benitos, and it was all the fish you could get." "We had a good trip and great timing," continued Heil, who hails from Portland, OR. "Drew did a great job, right out of the chute the first day, we were on a great albacore bite. It was a well rounded trip."
Mike Hunting of Riverside landed a 48.4-pound yellowtail at Benitos Islands, good for first place in the jackpot. Mike fished a sardine on a 5/0 Owner hook, 40-pound P-Line, an Avet HX 2-speed reel, and a Calstar rod. "We were in a shallow spot on the ridge" said Hunting, "and there were guys losing fish in the kelp. So when I got bit, I decided he wasn't gonna get to the kelp, so I buttoned down, past strike, and started cranking." Bill Byler of Covina was second for a 37.6-pound albacore and Gary De Void of Encinitas was third for a 36.4-pound albie.

~~Aug 25
 We had a slow day today.  The morning seemed promising.  We caught a little but we saw a whole lot.  If just one of those schools we saw this morning wanted to bite a little we would of had a great day.  That seems to be the deal this year though.  Today, we hit the wrong schools.  We caught about 20 ish this morning from 30-50 pounds.  The afternoon stunk.  We ran in to where we finished up last night and it was muerto.  We ended up in an area late that had mucho fish but unfortunately they were all small.  We didn't even try them.  It wasn't worth wasting our precious sardine for. 

 The good news about not catching much fish this afternoon is we still have some of a tank of sardine left to fish with this morning.  It's 4:00 AM as I write this and we just finished up with our attempt at bait making.  We caught plenty of bait, but it wasn't a good size for the tuna that's out here so we're going to try and make some lemonade here.  We're going to take our big spanish mackerel and take it to where the 150+ pound bluefin live.  We'll do this after we run out of sardine this morning.  No one has tried that cow BF with a couple tanks of spanish yet.  Maybe that's the key to it all.

 The weather remains great.  We had a few hours this afternoon where things were getting interesting.  We had a descently strong wind out of the southeast and with it came some rain.  It wasn't all that neat but it didn't last long.  Things went back to butter.  Nice.
       

We are continuing to see impressive schools. It seems everyday we are getting better responses out of them. Our last trip we had a good opportunity on the 60-90 pound fish, keeping 1 to 5 fish hooked for the better part of 4 hours. Getting a bite wasn’t the hard part but because we were forced to use our “finesse” gear we had to work very hard to land them. Hopefully the trend continues ! 

 We are implementing a new satellite buoy tracking system to better assist us with re finding productive kelp patties and other floating debris that may hold fish! 

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