nickajack lake Fishing Report 2025

Yesterday we had good fishing on wahoo in the morning and excellent fishing on tuna in the afternoon. The average weight on the tuna ranged from 45-70 lbs. Our weather is still good. Chef Tommy put out some great meals again. Lunch yesterday was yellowtail served over fresh spinach, surrounded by black beans with a spicy avocado cilantro sauce. And dinner was cornish game hens topped with a spicy apricot sauce on wild rice with grilled asparagus on the side. Fishing this morning has started off again with wahoo biting and this afternoon we will fish the tuna again. We still have some open spots on *Sept. 8th* an 8 day trip if you want to come get some of these wahoo. Give Susan a call 619-390-7890.

Back to the Islands starting tomorrow (Nov 1).  Please bring a 40 lb yo-yo setup and a 25 lb bait setup.  For all you jig fisherman.  We will be targeting yellowtail and all other gamefish. Who knows, maybe even a stray Bluefin Tuna.  Passport required.

18 pass. 20 bluefin tuna from 60-80 lbs. Excellent opportunity to hook and land a trophy fish on 40 lb flyline bait with a 1/0 circle hook. 160 gram Flatfalls fished on 60lb was also working well.

~~Oct.16-20
 So for the last few days, I was either too busy to write a report or just too tired.  I knew these blogs wouldn't be making it out here until tomorrow anyway so I figured I would just do a 4 day report to explain the remainder of our trip down below so here it goes.

 When I left off, the sharks backed off and allowed us to have a great afternoon and we were hoping the sharks would do the same thing they did last year after the first couple of days which is leave.  That didn't happen.  It was a sharky trip for sure.  Brown Reef Sharks were in the picture for the remainder of the time we were down there.  Sometimes they were relentless and we'd have to pull anchor and go trolling for wahoo and other times they would back off just enough to allow us to scratch at the tunas and then other times they would back off completely.  They weren't tuna eaters though.  They let us wind in what we hooked, but they loved our kite baits.

 Anyways, we still had an excellent trip down there sharks or no sharks.  There were a lot of windows of opportunity and there were some slow windows as well.  There was almost always a window where we would get at least two cows before sunrise, and after that it never stayed consistent.  If we didn't need to sleep it would've been convenient.  I know we missed plenty of tuna bites in the dark hours through out the night but that's when we would sleep.  Like I said though we had an excellent trip and here are the numbers to prove it.

 130 yellowfin tuna and 60 wahoo for 8 guys for 6 days.  54 tuna kept.  11 over 200 lb's, 5 that may go when we weigh them on the dock scale, 6 between 170-180 and the rest were 100-150 pounds with much fish being in the 120-130 pound class.  We also released 76 of those too!  One release estimated to be around 200 pounds and several in the 150 pound range and like I said, many in the 120-130 pound range.  Our largest was 240 and next in line was a 234 pounder kept.

 Here are the team jackpot totals: 1st place goes to Charlie and Craig with 2 fish totaling 453 pounds.  2nd went to George and Scott with 2 totaling 414.  George also had 5 tuna over 200 pounds by the way.  One per day besides the last day.  3rd place went to the Jer-bear and JC with 399 pounds, and Brian and Bernie finished just behind them with 396 pounds.  None of this is official.  We still need to weigh them oin land.

 And that's basically how fishing was down there.  Here are some things that stand out to me while we were down there.  First of all I'd like to talk about KC.  I'm not saying he was scared, he just didn't seem too pumped on fighting one of these fish we call cows.  He wasn't the first or fifth for that matter to jump on a spot on the kite for example when one was available.  On the third day it couldn't be avoided.  He got up on that kite and when he did this particular time he hooked a big one and he handled it as well as anyone.  I mean he kicked that fishes @$$.  He came to battle and he won.  It taped out as a 193 pounder.  After that it wasn't hard to get KC up on the kite when a spot was presented.  It went from where the heck is KC, to him not leaving the rail at all.

 I let Mark know the Raiders lost.  I did it in a mean way too.  His birthday was the 16th I believe, and Chef Mike baked him a cake and we all sang happy birthday and when it was over, I gave him my birthday present which is spilling the beans on lying about the Raiders beating the Chargers.  Ha ha Mark.

 The weather was a lot less steamy the last few days down there.  It was still hot, but once the clouds went away it didn't feel like a sauna there anymore.  Although myself and a few others got the worse case of burnt lips we ever had.  I did it in a dumb way too.  I knew I should go get my chap stick from my room on the first day down there but my lips did;t feel like they were getting chapped so I thought, because of the humidity my lips weren't drying out and I didn't need protection.  Dumb, stupid and idiotic.  My lips may not have dried out but they still got as burnt as ever.

  So that's it.  We now travel for a few days.  The crew has plenty to do.  Clean, clean clean and sleep.  The passengers will be sleeping and celebrating a wonderful trip.  We'll be trying to break up the ride on our last day of travel by looking for a dorado kelp but that's still not for a couple more days.
      

 

We have to fill this Oct 5-day. All season long I here everyone asking how they can get on one of our 10 passenger Guadelupe trips. Well here it is. I have 2 spots open on what is really a 5.5 day trip to Guadelupe with only 10 people on the Apollo. The trip departs on the morning of Oct 1rst at 9am. and returns mid morning on the 6th. $1800 covers all meals and permits. This trip is a charter and if you are a part of it now chances are you'll be invited on many other trips with this group in the future. If you can make this happen, please call Steve at 714 272-4395.

Captain Ryan Bostian called up early this morning with an update from "The San Diego" out of Seaforth Sportfishing in San Diego, CA. We got in really late last night so we were unable to call in a report. However, we had very good Bluefin Tuna fishing for tuna in the 20 to 40 pound class. Our group of 30 anglers ended up with 54 Bluefin Tuna. We did see some bigger fish jumping around but we did not hook any. The 20 pound bait rod was the ticket with a 1o or 2o circle hooks.

Here we go again. We are off for another 5 days on Paul Hess's annual charter from Napa. We are anticipating good weather and great fishing. Wish us luck!

The Apollo has a last minute opening on this weekend's Colonett trip. Call Fisherman's Landing now at (619) 221-8500 to get in on the action. The weather looks great for this weekend.