southern california freshwater Fishing Report 2025

61 yellowfin tuna out of four stops.

Oct. 16

I would call today a very disappointing day. We had The Rocks to ourselves today after a 3 day rest and I thought we were going to get um but it was not to be. 0 wahoo. 0. Not even a short biter. We trolled for 4 hours for nothing. I think what I'm trying to say here is we didn't catch any wahoo. We caught a few handfuls of yellowtail in the morning before the sharks took things over and after realizing there were no wahoo to be had we went offshore and looked for a kelp the rest of the day to see if we could get 1 that way or a bunch of Dorado's but that was not to be either. The fishing today stunk. Everything else today was lovely though. The weather today was really nice. The sun was out and the seas were flat. The food is always great out here and the scenery was lovely as well. We're working our way back towards home now to extend our fishing time for the trip. We're going to top off on those beautiful yellowtails tomorrow and spend our last couple of day

s hunting the bluefin tuna.

A nice grade of Bluefin still ready to bite with some being taken on poppers as well.

Our first stop of the day was a bit humbling as we went 10 out of probably 50+ on the 50-110 pound Bluefin (anything under 40 on these fish was too lite).

We ended the trip with 14 Bluefin and 41 Yellowfin (18-60 pounds) in great weather for our 27 Angler’s, we go again tonight.

~~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.
       

Seems the Yellowtail are in spawn mode. We found multiple kelps with enough Yellows on them for limits for this boat and another, if they would have wanted to bite! IF! We managed to find an area with schools of Bluefin that were not very user friendly, lost one. One Yellowtail fell for a live sardine and that was our day. Some days luck is on your side, other days it's just not. But that's fishin for ya.