fort walton beach Fishing Report 2025

Found our Shot at Gold! Today we spent our day looking for kelps. There was a lot of kelps but we had to be selective and persist through many empty's until we were able to find one that was holding. The fruitful kelp for us had beautiful Dorado that wanted to bite.It was a chaotic 30 minutes of biting fish, but we made the most out of it. Everyone was able to land a Dorado and we even picked off a Wahoo! Here we have Mark and Jon with their beautiful Dorado!

The San Diego checked in on March 16, with 25 yellowtail, 6 bonito and  100 rockfish catches.  Yo yo jigs have been the top producer so far but every school has boiled on our chum.Encouraging sign of fish for 1/2 the day today. Couple decent shots on all the popular presentations. We will try again tomorrow.

The first annual Ocean Tackle Research trip aboard Polaris Supreme returned with skipper Tom Rothery and chartermaster Lon Mikkelsen November 19. The ten-day trip had 20 anglers. "We caught a lot of variety and had good fishing," said Mikkelsen, from Hood River, OR. "We also caught a lot of 40-pound Humboldt squid. The best fishing was on kelp paddies in the warmer water. "We're testing some new OTR jigs," he continued, "and they got bit." Rothery weighed the contenders on the Fisherman's landing certified scales. Clint Campbell of Bozeman, MT won first place for a 65.95-pound wahoo he caught ona silver and pink Raider jig. He said he used 40-pound P-Line, a Daiwa Saltist 30 reel and a Seeker Black Steel 6470 rod. Jon Collins of Menifee won second place for a 52.6-pound skin that bit a pink Catchy Tackle bomb. Collins brought his son into the photo to show off a big dorado. Randy Walker of Huntington Beach was third, for a 48-pound wahoo that snapped up a gold Raider.

The Tribute out of Seaforth Landing in San Diego, CA checked in with us today.