lake winnebago Fishing Report 2025

An 81-pound bigeye tuna that came out of a school of albacore was the first tuna of its kind to come in on a long range boat this season, and it won the Polaris Supreme jackpot for rookie angler Carl Geosana of Whittier at Fisherman's Landing July 14.

Drew Henderson skippered the five-day trip with 24 anglers, and was the beneficiary of a tip from Doug Reed and the Renegade that put him on the albacore, which have staged a badly needed re-bite at about 90 miles from San Diego.

Henderson said a second bigeye, a fish in the 120-pound class was hooked.

"Everybody on the crew pulled on it," said Henderson, "for over an hour. We had it close enough to bring out a gaff once, but it took off again, and finally busted the 30-pound line it was hooked on."

Geosana said he spent an hour and 15 minutes on the 81-pounder.

"I almost went overboard when he bit," said Carl. "He went down, and then he pulled me up to the bow, and I had to get over the anchor there at least ten times. He kept making runs, until the reel got red hot."

Carl said he fished a sardine on a 3/o Eagle Claw hook, and used 30-popund Big Game line, a Penn 500 reel and a seven-foot Ugly Stick rod.

Greg Hannond of Huntington Beach was second, for a 42.6-pound albacore, and Brad Hall of San Diego won third place for a 42.4-pound albie. Skipper Henderson said his anglers had a very good catch of yellowtail and some bluefin tuna and were "‚Д¶just short of limits of the albacore. At least half the guys did get limits."

The Voyager returned this morning with 13 Bluefin Tuna and 5 Yellowfin Tuna. They landed a couple of monster Bluefin, with the largest weighing in at 298 pounds! Congratulations to Captain Todd and the passengers and crew of the Voyager.

~~Sep. 24
 Well this day has to start with last night.  During and after dinner the military helicopters were up and they were blowing up San Clemente and it was rad. We could see the tracers which were very bright and flew just as fast as the 5 rounds in between each tracer with about each strafing run having about 12 tracers per, which is over 100 rounds.  We could see the glow of each tracer bouncing off the island. And after we thought it was cool enough we went to bed.

 In the morning we started fishing.  We had a little action.  We basically drifted for a couple hours hooking fish.  Sometimes we had one going, sometimes we had four, and sometimes we had none but for some reason it didn't add up to as much as we would've thought.  We were losing alot and we attributed that to the hammer head sharks that were swimming around.  We think that they were stealing a lot of the tuna we hooked.  When that dried up we went searching and a little after 10:00 we found a dandy school and went sideways(drifted) for a while.  I'd have to call it almost wide open for about 1/2 an hour and then a pick for 15 minutes after that.  During lunch we were drifting on tuna too but we weren't hooking a whole lot.  We only caught about six that time.  And after that the life vanished so we moved on.

 It took a couple hours but we found what we were looking for.  Tuna.  Unfortunately they were the non biting ones.  I'll tell you though, it was a sight to see.  Sonar schools, breezers, boilers, foamers.  You name it, it was awesome.  We did get a couple descent drifts there in the end and all and all we're calling this a very successfully trip.

 We'll be dockside until Oct. 3.  You guys didn't book.  My babies going to have to wear hand me down shoes now.  All of her friends are going to make fun of her.  Oh well.  We"ll get through it.  We'll do a little maintenance on the boat while we're in but we don't need to do much.  The boats been running great as soon as we got rid of those early season gremlins.  See you all Oct. 3rd.
        

The annual Burgesons private charter went the distance today. They were rewarded with limits of dorado and 13 yellowfin tuna.

Capt Ryan checked in from the San Diego out of Seaforth Landing, today they went out on a 3/4 day trip with 48 anglers. We ended the day with 39 Yellowtail, the water temperature cooled a little with this front we had. The temperature when we arrived was about 61.5 degrees, as the day went on the temperature warmed up nicely and was 65 degrees as we headed home. We saw some really nice schools of fish today and it should only improve as the weekend gets here, they seem a little lethargic right now. But as they adjust the fishing should only get better. Make sure to bring a yoyo rig, flyline rig and a surface iron rig, come on down and get in on this action. We are fishing everyday with a departure time of 5:30 am.

31 bluefin 72 yellowtail. Beautiful weather and some very fun island fishing. Flylined baits on 25lb line, surface iron and yoyo jigs all produced.

We had a nice afternoon hooking fish landing was okay lot of tackle failures and losses to the sharks! But we still managed to put a nice afternoon together. It’s absolutely a beautiful grade of fish! Most of the anglers hooked for five of these fish! We have great weather and are going to do this again tomorrow! Polaris supreme crew.

We didn't have to go too far to get some good action on the albacore. Everyone hooked and landed some. Weather is good. We will head into blue fin territory tomorrow. Thanks for checking in.