south west Fishing Report 2025

Shortly after arriving on the grounds we located a small school of yellowtail and caught 2. We then proceeded to drive around for 2 hours and never found another school. A couple of rockfish stops in the afternoon assured all 30 of our passengers will be eating fresh fish.

Saturday, July 14th, 2012

Good evening everyone. We departed earlier this evening for our second annual Optima charter with Garth and his best of buddies. We loaded up on some bait that doesn't look all that stellar but maybe after it settles down, they'll turn into some champions. Anyhow, we're on our way down to try our hand at some Bluefin tuna offshore and some Yellowtail on kelps. Apparently, the Yellowtail are growing a little bit, if you can locate the right kelp as one of our code boats did, and caught some 'tails in the 15-22 lb. range. Regardless, we'll be looking first thing tomorrow morning and we'll try to make a day of it. Our weather is beautiful and we're looking for more. Wish us luck.

 

Fishing report for the week of sept 16-22. This past week was all about looking thru the binoculars and praying that you find the lucky kelp. Scores for the 3/4 day boats this week have ranged anywhere from 0 to 150 fish. The highlight of our week was a kelp we found on Thursday which kicked out 44 nice size dorado and 100 yellowtail. On Friday we caught our first yellowfin tuna of the season. This season is showing no signs of slowing down so make those reservations and come on down.

Captain Alyar called in last night last night with a dual update. We returned this morning from a 1.5 day trip. We ended up with limits of Bluefin Tuna. We then ran a full day trip and caught 37 Bluefin Tuna and 5 Yellowfin Tuna. The Bluefin are 15 to 40 pounds and the Yellowifn are 35 to 40 pounds.

We have a Full day trip departing Tuesday morning and a 1.5 departing on Tuesday night. Be sure to bring outfits for 25 to 50 pounds with flurocarbon leader. Right now we are using size 6 or size 4 circle hooks.

Captain Ryan Bostian checked in with an update from the San Diego out of Seaforth Sportfishing in Mission Bay, CA. The water rolled at the Coronado Islands and the Yellowtail have stopped biting. We had 5 Bluefin Tuna today. We had 3 fish around 75 pounds and 1 fish weighing in at 120 pounds and the biggest fish was a 130 pounder.

The fish are biting fly-lined baits but they are really biting the Poppers. Make sure you bring you 50 pound out at a minimum.
We have seen some fishing pushing 200 pounds but we have not caught one of them yet!

Skipper Drew Henderson took a look at the San Benitos Islands on a four-day Polaris Supreme trip with 24 anglers. He arrived in the afternoon to find fair to good fishing and some seals that were hungry but not ravenous. He said his anglers got yellowtail there up to 30 pounds. Next day he fished at Cedros Island.
"We got 80 big ones there," he said, "at the South End." Eric Thomas of Palmdale won first place for a 46.8-pound yellowtail. He bagged it with a sardine on a 5/0 Eagle Claw hook and 50-pound Big Game Line. Thomas fished with a Trinidad 40 reel and a Calstar 6460 H rod. He said he got the big ‚Дтtail in 15 minutes.
Shannon Nutt of Palmdale was second for a 37.8-pounder, and Edward Agadjanian of Glendale, home of Newell reels, said he used a Newell reel to take his third place 34.8-pound yellowtail.

Great boat, great crew, great food, great passengers, good weather, slow fishing. That's just the way it went down on this day and a half. We were in tuna mode trying for nice quality albacore.

We scratched 26 and some yellows and let go lots of flats. Descent amount of fish seen at times throughout the day, but they didn't climb on our hooks. Hopefully soon coming and more consistent. Next trip is a 5 day, so stay tuned.

Today was spent traveling in good, but foggy weather. Basically we just rigged tackle and ate a bacon, avocado, sprout omelet for breakfast. Rigged more gear and had a giant Texas cheeseburger for lunch. Rigged more gear then snacked on salmon, tuna, shrimp and eel sushi and sashimi. Rigged more gear and finished off the day with a beef tenderloin with a tomato, basil pesto sauce. Just rigging and eating and anxious to get to the fishing grounds!