umpqua Fishing Report 2024

STELLAR BLUEFIN ACTION!!! APOLLO on an overnight trip with 18 anglers 90 Bluefin Tuna and 4 Albacore. Really Really great trip. Plan your next trip with Capt. JJ for another stellar trip. Call FISHERMAN'S LANDING at (619)221-8500 for more info and reservations.

Myself and the crew would like to thank @relentlessboat for making our groups first fishing trip a success. Many large schools of yellowfin were passed around the fleet.

Again another scratch fishing day with the usual mix of yellowtail, yellowfin, bluefin, albacore and dorado. No big numbers, we just scratched away. We spent the morning in the tuna area and mid morning to the end of the day we went looking for kelps and caught and released a lot of small dorado. The weather again has been excellent.

The most interesting thing is that everybody is getting albacore strikes anywhere they go. We are hoping the water will cool off in the next week and the albacore will start to group up and bite. Chef Jeff is still serving up some great food. An open faced steak sandwich for lunch and dinner was a superb cajun yellowtail filet and shrimp grilled with bell peppers and onions, served with fresh yellow squash, zuchinni and mushrooms and wild rice. It was really good. It looks like Alijos and the Ridge are starting off good. The crew and I are anxious to get down on a longer trip for some of those bigger yellowfin and wahoo. We still have a couple open spots on our 9-day departing August 28. And if your looking more into the future, Larry Brown still has some openings on his 10 day on October 25th. So come out and join me and the crew.

We'd love to have you on board.

Thanks, Tommy

I missed a few days. I apologize. After we left Cedros we ran up the line to fish a day offshore. We hit a couple good kelps and a few kelps that we scratched good off of and ended the day with good numbers on yellowtail and dorado. We finished our last day fishing for albacore. A slow day. We saw a little bit of fish all day long and a couple of schools through out the day. We ended the day good with a bite right before dark. We're heading in now leaving tomorrow on another 5-day.

We started off with a good morning bite where Jeff Hoover pull in a 78 lb. bluefin. We also caught some smaller grade bluefin and a nice grade of yellowfin. However it was short lived. By 9am we were off scratching for small, medium and nice grade albacore for the rest of the day. For this trip we scratched away every day and caught enough fish for everyone to take home. Our eta for tomorrow will be 7:30 am and then Drew will take out the next one which is the 2nd annual Let's Talk Hook-up Charter. Weather has been excellent. Well it's time to go down for dinner. Tonight will be surf and turf, steak and lobster. Thanks for checking in.

Oct.12

Today was a good day out here. We started our morning off with a few yellowfin strikes and at 8:30 we hit a good school of stock 25-30 pound bluefin, a few bigger and a few smaller with some yellowfin and dorado mixed in. We drifted with them for two and a half hours. For most the rest of the day we didn't drive for more then an hour before seeing something. We found a dab of 40-60 pound bluefin and landed one, we found another dab of 25-30 pounders and landed 10, we found a kelp for a handfull of yellowfin along with the occasional yf jig strike. An action packed day, just what we needed. Good weather for us today but the guys down below are complaining about rough weather. We're heading in now and Tommy Rothery is coming back out after a long land stretch and is taking the boat out for 8 days. I'm sure he's looking forward to getting out of the office and back on the water.

The Apollo will be running an open party over night trip out of Santa Barbara. This trip will depart on Friday night March 27th at 9pm for fishing Sat. This will be a freelance trip hoping for squid and sea bass, with rock fish. If you are interested the cost will be $140 and you will need to contact Sea Landing at (805) 568-0460. to make a reservation.

Tom Rothery docked his Polaris Supreme July 18 after an eight-day trip with 16 anglers aboard. His group found some good fishing at Alijos Rocks and Alijos Bank.
"Yesterday we had good fishing on wahoo in the morning," he wrote Sunday July 15, "and excellent fishing on tuna in the afternoon. The average weight on the tuna ranged from 45 to 70 pounds. Our weather is still good. Chef Tommy put out some great meals again. Lunch yesterday was yellowtail served over fresh spinach, surrounded by black beans with a spicy avocado cilantro sauce. And dinner was Cornish game hens topped with a spicy apricot sauce on wild rice with grilled asparagus on the side.
"Fishing this morning has started off again with wahoo biting and this afternoon we will fish the tuna again. We still have some open spots on Sept. 8th an 8-day trip, if you want to come get some of these wahoo. Give Susan a call at 619-390-7890."
Boat builder Harold Davis fished on the trip. "It was a great group," said Harold, "and we had four guys who had been skippers on the Bongos boats in Newport Beach. The whole group was good fishermen; we didn't have many tangles or much shoulder bumping. We had excellent food, too, like prime rib, rack of lamb, Ahi steaks with wasabi. My best fish was a yellowfin tuna, but I got some wahoo on bombs; purple bombs."
Zander Rodriguez of Loveland, CO made his first long range trip with the group. Zander is entering the University of Colorado this fall as a baseball pitcher, at age 18. He also plays golf. He had the second-best yellowtail at 44.2 pounds, a wahoo, and also got a white seabass on the 13 Spot.
Skipper Rothery weighed the best fish on the certified scales at Fisherman's Landing. Daniel McCaffery of Norco won first place for a 60.8-pound yellowfin tuna. He said he fished a sardine on a 2/0 Super Mutu hook. He used 40-pound Big Game line on a TLD 20 reel and a seven-foot glass Calstar rod.

Bob Wolfson of Dana Point was second, for a 56.4-pound tuna, and Harold Davis, the boat builder from Morro Bay, won third place for his 52.4-pound Alijos yellowfin tuna.