salmon river idaho steelhead Fishing Report 2022

This is amazing we have fished 6 days out of 6 days. We fished 4 days in California and 2 days in Mexico and caught over half a dozen different game species. We wrapped up today in California fishing Bluefin and Yellowfin with good success. The top 3 fish at the scales will be bluefin. Thanks Tom Chaparro and gang for a great trip. Stay tuned for on the 3 day leaving tomorrow. Tommy and Crew.

WOW!! What an incredible day!!! This albacore is in the cooler 76 degree water. It wants to bite wide open. Can't say enough about how much fun today was catching big fat jumbo albacore. They tired our anglers out. By the end of the day only a few were still standing. Chef Pedro fixed a spicy teriyaki albacore lunch that was fantastic. For dinner he served some delicious veal chops. Today was just a great. this is what albacore fishing is supposed to be like.

Well the weather has kicked up a little and it's a little bumpy. We will be at the dock at 6:00 am tomorrow. Come down and say hi if you can. We will be in until Thursday Nov. 8 when we depart on Lon Mikkleson's OTR charter. There are still spots available if you want to come with us.

Sticking with our Instagram theme of “sex sells.” Manny Sanchez displays 2 of our 23 tuna today. Down day on the grounds today.

The Bluefin started biting before sunrise and like a broken record, more than their share got away, we went 10 for about 25 on the 45-55 pound Bluefin, the hot ticket being the flatfall. After sunrise, the plump Yellowfin bit for several hours, being caught primarily on flylined 20 pound.

65 yellowfin tuna (15-25 lbs) 129 purple skipjack aku tuna.  The skilled bait fisherman with a 20 lb setup and #2 hook was hooked up all day today.

~~Sep. 5
 Here we go again.  Arrive/depart today.  Off with the old, out with the new.  5 days.  That's how long we have on this one. 5 days.  Weather forecast looks terrific for at least the next few days so that's wonderful.  We have another first for me this trip.  Before this trip I have never loaded up with straight mackerel for bait.  Other than the last trip but that was a 1.5 day trip.  This is long range.  Straight mackerel.  That's 3 top tanks, and 2 big slammers full below deck.  All full of mackerel.  So this will be interesting.  It looks like great yellowtail bait.  Not great for chumming but great for catching the yellows, and I'm sure the bluefin will eat them too, just not as well as the sardine.  Oh well.  It is what it is.  We'll just make lemonade, that's all.

 So to start things off tomorrow we will be fishing for those yellowtails.  And most likely, we'll be doing that for the next couple of days before getting in the hunt for the blues.  Action.  We want action.  Wish us luck.
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Aug. 15
    We started our morning off in the local bluefin zone.  We caught 12 of them, 2 of them being the 50+ pounders while the rest were that beautiful manageable 30-40 pound fish and we caught a few yellowfin.  On drift number 2 we hooked and lost one.  Do to the amount of boats thinking the same thing we were and the lack of fish I was seeing being brought over the rail, I decided to leave early and look for yellowfin for a while.  It wasn't long before we found some, and then some more, and then some more.  It pretty much was like that for as long as we fished it which was until after 5 when we went back to the zone where we started.  We had good fishing pretty much all day long.  The only negative thing about it was the grade of fish was a bit on the smaller side.  They weren't runts but they weren't great either.  12 pounds is the short version.  They averaged out to be 12 pounders.  We looked all around for a bigger grade but it pretty much was what it was.  I did think that the area we finished up in yellowfin wise had quite a few more 20 pounders mixed in than what we'd been fishing so it may be something to look at tomorrow.  We finished up right where we started and we had a long 2 1/2 hour drift.  We caught a yellowfin every once in a while, we landed 4 of the 30-40 pound bf's and caught 1 70ish pounder and lost at least 4 of those.  We are going to drift tonight and do it again tomorrow.