muskegon lake Fishing Report 2025

~~Sep. 6
 I think I'm going to start naming my reports.  This one is called "We should have stuck with the game plan".  The plan was to start where we did, and if it didn't look good run up 40 miles to the next spot arriving just after lunch when it's bite time there.  Well we started off slow.  Conditions were a little funky.  We saw some fish, but they didn't really bite.  We caught a few yellows and the biggest ling cod I've ever seen brought up on this boat, but it wasn't good enough to stick around.  So we started off sticking with the plan when we left and went north but then we decided to do some radio fishing.  I heard 4th hand and then 3rd hand that a boat had a couple really good dorado kelps the day prior almost in striking distance and then really good yellowtail in the afternoon definitely in striking distance.  Then I saw on my water temp chart that same water just a few hours below us so we made the move.  Obviously by my whining you can tell it didn't work out.  We didn't find much kelp in the good water.  We found one OK kelp but we only caught a handful of flats.  There was a few wahoo swimming around it but we didn't catch any.

 So that's OK.  We're not worried.  We still have yesterdays afternoon yellowtail hot spot to fish.  Not today.  Should have been here yesterday. Maybe that should be the name of the report. We saw some and caught a few but it was nothing good.  So here we sit.  I'm not sure if we stuck with the game plan that it would have worked out.  There already was a boat on the spot we were headed to and it's kind of a one boat spot so maybe we didn't miss anything.

 It's funny.  I haven't written this long of a report in a long time.  If fishing was good today I probably would have written one paragraph.  I needed to rant.  Anyways we're going to stick it out here and regroup and try it again in the morning.  Hopefully we find some yellows to work with but either way we plan on looking for a dorado kelp in the afternoon.  Hopefully I only write one paragraph tomorrow.
       

 

Captain Ryan Bostian checked in with an update from the San Diego out of Seaforth Sportfishing in Mission Bay, CA. Today we had 27 passengers catch 116 Yellowtail. The Yellowtail fishing has been very good this year!

Mike Pritchard called in with this report from the Tribute. "So far we have a really good sign of Bluefin. We have definitely lost a lot more than we have landed. Right now we have 7 or 8 fish. The fish are running 40 lbs. to 50 lbs. Some of the fish we have lost is just due to insufficient tackle. These are really very large Bluefin. I know there was 1 Bluefin caught here yesterday that ran about 180 lbs. So if you are coming out on a trip you want to make sure you bring the right tackle. 40 lbs. would be the bare minimum. We'll keep you informed as the day progresses.

Aug. 31

Our speed remained slow all of last night and today until we were 10 miles above our destination. We didn't arrive until 3:00 this afternoon. We trolled the place up for a while for no srikes before getting the anchor down. It was great yellowtail fishing but unfortunately the grade wasn't all that great. What we kept was mostly 12-25 pounds but we did alot of releasing to get that. We're going to try a different zone tomorrow. There is still alot of water to be looked at and we're in the beggining half of our trip. Maybe we'll get lucky and get a night bite going tonight. The weather is just dandy out here. Light wind and it's hot. Lots of sunscreen being rubbed on out here.

~~Aug 25
 Once again, today we had a good day.  We started our day off fishing bait.  Wide darn open on the small greenies.  I was singing the Who song "rain on me" because it was raining bait.  It didn't take long to get what we needed for the day and we headed off to the bluefin grounds which is right there.  We had one OK stop but right before lunch was our good one.  I remember because I ordered my lunch when we didn't have anything going and when I walked outside we had 4 going.  I can power down a meal pretty fast though and that's what I did.  We were able to drift with that school for hours before it stopped biting.  We had a couple per round of those 30-40 pounders.  I call those the perfect grade.  They are manageable, meaning they're fairly easy to bring to the boat while at the same time when you do you always end with a smile because they're big.  The perfect grade.  After they stopped biting say around 5:00, we looked for another school unsuccessfully for an hour so we ran back to the bait grounds and had a little start on our re-bait.  We'll finish in the morning.  Having this perfect bait right next to the fishing grounds is the most special thing about this area.  It's more special than the beautiful bluefin we're catching.  Sometimes where you caught your bait is more important than where you caught your fish.  No bait, no luck.
         
 

Sep. 3

Well today was just dandy. I got out of the office today for several hours and it was neat. We got to where we wanted to be at 10:00 this morning and for 5 hours we had very good yellowtail fishing on just a beautiful grade. 18-25 pounds is what they were and they were snapping. It's just what we needed. A stopped boat with bent rods and excited passengers and crew. After that we were successful at getting bait and I was told by a few of the passengers that even that was a blast. Anyways it's safe to say that we are stoked. A load of fish and plenty of bait to use on tuna the rest of the trip. I want to take back my hole stupid time machine comment I made yesterday. I think our timing will be perfect. There's some big bluefin being had up above. Fish up to 150 pounds have been caught and that wasn't happening the beginning part of this trip. We're doing alright. The weather today was yet again just fantastic. We may experience some bump tomorrow though and it should come down for our last couple days.

Captain Mike Pritchard called in this morning at 6:45 AM. Today we 8 Bluefin Tuna on the boat and 1 Yellowfin Tuna (22 pounds). Most of the fish are in the 20 to 25 pound range. We do have 2 fish hanging. We have flat calm weather and a light load of 14 anglers.

We have lots of room on our trip for tomorrow. The weather looks like it is going to be nice again tomorrow. If you would like to join us please call (619) 224-3383 to get in on the action.

It's been hard to find a biting fish offshore lately. But we connected with one in choppy, mixed up seas. Dylan saved the day!!