madison lake Fishing Report 2025

Ryan Bostian called in from the San Diego with this report. "We've been fishing offshore & the Yellowtail fishing has been excellent. We have been fishing kelp paddys 20 to 40 miles from home. The Yellowtail fishing is starting to slow down a little bit. The body of fish we have been fishing is starting to move on out to the northwest. However, today Capt Ray went out with 31 passengers. We caught 12 Yellowtail, 1 Skipjack, 7 Dorado and 40 Bluefin tuna. It was an excellent, excellent day. There were some very nice schools of tuna out there. It's getting to be that time of year that is going to turn more into tuna time. We should start to see more Yellowfin tuna in the counts, or more Bluefin.

"If you want to go out with us we have trips everyday. We leave the dock at 5:30 AM. The ticket price is $130.00. That includes your Mexican Fishing License. It's just a great time of year, there are a lot of fish within 40 miles of San Diego

2 days of searching was rewarded with a bottom of the 9th rally on good grade yellowtail. Flylined sardines on 25 lb is the most productive right now.

Sep. 2

Well we started in some traditionally tasty grounds today. The weather was magnificent and so was the water we were in. Warm and a beautiful glassy blue. It was also lively as could be. There were birds buzzing around all over, little dabs of dolphin, big herds of dolphin that were "all birded up"(that's code for "looks right"), a dead animal floating,(known for holding lots of dorado),kelp paddies and floating fishing gear buoys(also known for holding mucho dorado and wahoo). Well none of it was holding !@#$. I'm just bummed about it too. We had this area all to ourselves for 3 days in early September with beautiful weather and fishing conditions and it stunk. I can't sugar coat it. We covered a lot of good looking spots for not much fish. It just wasn't there. If I had a time machine I would go back 5 days ago and do it all over again. We would start above and fish our way down instead of starting below and fishing our way north. At least then my stress level wouldn't be high because we'd have fish in our holds. Fishing would be so easy with a time machine. Maybe I shouldn't write such downer reports but my friend Rob on board says he enjoys reading the good with the bad and you know what, this sort of thing happens. Fishing can be good and it can be bad. Oh well but hey, our trip is only half over, we're going to catch a bunch of yellows tomorrow, get some bait, maybe catch some more yellows and some more bait then go and whip on the tuna. Right? I hope so.

Your bummed but still very high spirited captain, Drew

I apologize but we are having problems sending out emails from the boat so I couldn't give a daily report. It should soon be taken care of. Our first day was mostly a travel day due to the lack of fish offshore. We were in great looking water most of the day but could not find any fish to work with. That seems to be the trend offshore lately. The next two days we fished for yellowtail at the beautiful island of Cedros. Our first day there we scratched most of the day on anchor doing well on the great great quality fish. They are averaging close to 30 pounds this year again. In the late afternoon we took a tour and found big balls of the yellows at the surface feeding on krill. They were being very stubborn and didn't care to much about us but were very interested in the krill they were eating. Jerks. After a great nights sleep in the calm of the island we began our next day. We had very good fishing. The grade was a bit smaller averaging 15-20 pounds but that is still quality fish. They were hitting good for most of the morning. Just after lunch it sizzled out so we went in search of some more trophies. We found them but again they sure didn't bite like you would have thought. We had 30 more of the trophies before taking off up the line to put us in position to fish offshore for tuna our last day. We found an area of jumping bluefin late morning and fished two hours there before we had to head home. We tried quite a few different spots and they laid under the boat each time for as long as we sat there but were reluctant to bite. We caught two bluefin from 25-35 pounds and lost a nice albacore. I'm pretty excited about what I saw offshore today. It looked much better than it has in the past week. The water is warmer and cleaner and there is fish in it. The offshore season is here. Thank you once again Mr. Larry Brown and to all the kids and dads aboard this trip. Me and my crew had a blast. Drew and the greatest crew around.

Captain Mike Pritchard checked in tonight with an update from the Tribute out of Seaforth Sportfishing in Mission Bay, CA.  Sorry for the late report tonight.  We found a school of Bluefin on the way home and let them have it!  We ended our day with 9 Bluefin and 18 kelp grade yellowtail.

We go again tonight! Come on out and get some