oak island nc Fishing Report 2025

July 26
    And we're off on another 5 day trip.  Things didn't go so hot at the bait receivers.  The bait we got was healthy, we just weren't allowed to take a full load.  We were shorted 75 scoops or so.  Anyways, we looked for fishies this afternoon.  We saw some small spots of yellowfin right out of the gates that wouldn't bite, and then didn't see anything until almost dark.  A sonar ball of yellowfin produced three fish so we got jackpot handled already. 1st, 2nd and 3rd.  We're going to slide down a little tonight and look in an area that produced some pretty darn good yellowfin fishing today.  The weather is magnificent.
                            

 

We gave it the Dark till Dark effort and came up dry. We did however see multiple very nice schools of yellowfin that were not interested in our hooks.

With great anticipation of a light load aboard the Apollo, all 14 of us anglers showed up at the dock early, swapping stories about past trips. We started boarding about 9:30pm and were greeted by Capt JJ Gerritsen and the rest of his crew, we signed in and had a seat for our safety briefing. Capt JJ then asked if we wanted to head offshore for Albacore which had dramatically slowed down the last couple days or head south along the coast for a shot at Dorado and Yellowfin and Yellowtail patty hopping. Without much hesitation we decided to head south and patty hop. We got the feathers in at gray light and started the troll, within 15 minutes the yell of "Hook-up" sang out, unfortunately the mystery fish got away and we were under way again. Five minutes later we heard that yell again, the mystery fish won round two and will live another day. Third time's a charm didn't hold true for us, our third hook-up is still out there in the deep blue. At that point the first troll rotation was fired (which included me) and the second shift took over. Within 10 minutes they had our first fish on the deck, a skipjack, from that point on while looking for patties we boated about 19 skipjack. We found our first patty around 10am and moved in with hopes of a wide open bite, but to our dismay there was nobody home. That held true for the next 8 patties we found, then finally around noon with a mouth full of burger, we heard the call to get ready. Never fails every time your food is done, it's time to drop a line. As soon as our sardines hit the water the patty expolded, we ended up with 1 Dorado and 2 Yellowtail. We only found two two more patties holding fish and ended up with 1 more Dorado and 4 yellowtail. It was now time to head back to port and we again set out the troll lines and managed to pick up 7 Yellowfin Tuna on the way back in. I really enjoyed sharing the rail with a great bunch of folks and look forward to doing it again soon. If you would like any of the pictures posted please email me at [email protected] .

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.

What an absolutely, fantastic, unbelievable day. We had more marlin than you can imagine. We hooked and are released over 220.
The wahoo fishing was also fantastic. The group had a blast pulling in "crocodile" size wahoo. And we topped off the day with even bigger dorado than yesterday. The weather is good and we just had an awesome day on all three, wahoo, dorado and marlin.

Captain Ryan Bostian checked in tonight with an update from the San Diego out of Seaforth Sportfishing in Mission Bay. Today we had 30 passengers and we caught 3 Bluefin Tuna, 82 Yellowtail and 30 Bonito. We had very good sign of Bluefin Tuna today.

Aug. 15
 Our day sort of reversed from yesterday.  Today it was a super slow morning that led into an action packed afternoon.  We looked for bluefin tuna this morning.  We started off in the zone where it had been in the weeks prior, but like yesterday, it wasn't around.  We caught one 12 pounder on the troll all morning.  We looked around there and in other places I thought it might have gone but we never saw an meat.  We went through one area where at least we were seeing little dabs of the BF but it was diving off on the meter.  We could tell it didn't want it.

 So we kept tracking around and ended up close to a possible yellowtail honey hole. So we took a look and that's exactly what it was.  For the rest of the afternoon till dark we stayed pretty steady on 12-25+ pound yellers.  It was good fishing.  A very pleasant surprise.  We're keeping this ball rolling.

 Needless to say, well maybe not needless, but we're going to spend the night here and see what this place looks like in the morning.
    

June 28

I told you all we would be departing today on a 5 day trip on my last report and I have to tell yah, that's exactly what we did. We're out on a private charter with Mr. Pfleger and some of his boys. Things went alright at the bait receivers. We got two boxes of a mostly spanish mackerel with some greenies and about a 7.375 average of sardines mixed in. Things are looking a little scary with our sardine stocks of San Diego this year thus far. You may want to make sure you pack your bait catching rigs if you're coming out this year and also think about getting your anchovy fishing skills back. You may need them.

We're thinking about starting offshore tomorrow on a southerly track. We're not going to put the brakes on and fish locally where most the tunas been caught lately. We're going to put ourselves in position to do other things the next couple days after tomorrow. We may look for white sea bass and yellows somewhere down the line. It's not something we'd do on a normal long range trip but this is a special one. I'll explain later. You know how Pfleger is with his sea bass.

Tommy's running the boat but I'll still be your author so enjoy and I'll see you tomorrow.