st johns river Fishing Report 2024

8 DAY ULTRA LIGHT LOAD TRIP!!! APOLLO still have 5 spots open on a 8 day trip. Ultra light load limit to 12 anglers. THE ULTIMATE TRIP. Boat leaves 11/13 Monday at 9am & returns 11/21 Tuesday at 9am. Cost is $2400(all meals & Mexican permits included). Fuel surcharges will be extra. For more info & reservations call Fisherman's Landing @ (619)221-8500

Well, we had a great day today. Everybody had a blast fishing lots 60 -100 lb. tuna. Pat Jaeger landed a 195 and a 213 pounder. Chuegy pulled in a 225 pounder. There were a couple more around 165 or so. We did stop at lunch for a delicious pork shank with spiced white beans and saffron pilaf. It was really good. And our weather is also good. So another wonderful day out here. Look at our schedule and find a trip that will work in your schedule and come out and have some fun.

Capt Ryan Bostain checked in from the San Diego the 3/4 day boat as they have had some of the best Yellowtail fishing we have seen in years at the Coronado Islands. But things have changed anf the water temperature has dropped and the Yellowtail have really slowed down. Yesterday we had 33 Yellowtail and around 20 Yellowtail today. So we are going to shift gears and start fishing offshore in Mexican waters outside the 12 mile area, so you will not need passports to fish. We will be in search of Tuna, Yellowtail and Dorado which are in our range. Make sure to bring your standard offshore gear from 20 to 50 lb rigs, we will check back in again tomorrow and let you know how things go.

Fishing today was somewhat subdued. We gave Guadalupe a check to see if the tuna have arrived without much luck. We picked up 5 yellow fin and spent most of the day rocked by home guard yellowtail. Our weather is gorgeous in the lei of the island. We will be back offshore tomorrow for some hot kelp patty action. It's first call for dinner tonight. Sauteed shrimp with tomato, garlic and parsley. So we will be back with you tomorrow. Thanks

~~July 12
 Today was just slow. There is no way to sugar coat it so I won't try. The wrong kelps had no fish, the right kelps had no fish. We had a pretty good spread of boats working it with us too but it was a no go. We gave up on the offshore thing in the afternoon and tried to salvage a day at an Island but it didn't work out. Poor sign of fish with a great sign of seal.

 We're going to regroup and try again tomorrow. We're thinking a nice nights sleep on anchor should do the trick. Hopefully I have some good news for you tomorrow.
 

13 yellowtail and plenty of bottom grabbers for all. Couple shots in the bottom of the ninth on yellowtail.

~~Oct. 13-14
 Nothing to report on Oct. 13.  More of the same.  Though it was our last day so the cocktail hour was to a minimum.  We arrived to our destination around 1:30 in the am Tuesday morning.  We did a tour for flying fish (to use as bait) but we only caught a few.  We kicked the anchor over and most of us got a couple more hours of sleep.  Everyone got up at 0400 hours and got to work.  Some faster than others.  When I woke up George was the only one in the water so I thought I'd give him a hand.  I threw a sinker on a rig and dropped down a sardine and 5 minutes later we had our first tuna aboard.  About an 80 pounder.  It was our sashimi fish.  After that there was a whole lot of good shark and small tuna fishing going down so again during a time when no one was in the water (due to having to retie because of shark teeth), I dropped another bait down, this time on the rod Mark likes to call the OJ (no one knows why), and about 20-30 minutes later we had a 196 pounder aboard.  While that was going on George got hooked up and brought a 218 pounder over the rail.  It wasn't even light out yet.  After that the sharks fully took over.  It was pretty much unfishable so we didn't give it much time, we pulled anchor and got to trolling and for the next 8 hours or so it was steady striking on the wahoos.  Damn.  We caught about 5 per angler so I'd call that good for sure.  For the last few hours we got steady strikes on one of this groups favorite fishing methods, trolling the yummy fliers.  We caught a lot of tuna today on those and on the marauders and some on bait.  They were all mostly in the 120 pound range.

 The weather today sure was interesting.  The wind never had much strength but it couldn't pick a direction.  One minute it was coming out of the northeast, and the next it was coming out of the west.  It did that all day so for that and the sharkies giving us grief we never tried another anchor job today and we're spending the night adrift.  It also rained a whole lot this evening.  I'd say it was raining cats and dogs when I went to bed but it's cleared up now at 0100 hour as I write this on my watch.  One more hour and I'm going back to bed until 5 when we'll all be going back into battle.  Hopefully tomorrow these dang sharks leave us alone.

 

Capt Ryan checked in last night from the San Diego out of Seaforth Landing with a report for yesterdays trip, we went out with 36 anglers. We ended up with 35 Yellowtail, we have had a few days of weather this last week and it dropped the water temperature. We had a lot of novice anglers today who caught their first ever Yellowtail. Everything worked today from dropper loop to surface irons, we caught a few each way today. Things are looking really good right now and it is rebounding nicely, come on down and see us we are running these trips everyday.