valentine refuge lakes Fishing Report 2024

~~Sep.21
 So we fished today on our open party 1.5 day trip.  What a morning.  We got on a school early.  In the dark.  I saw them on the sonar, then stopped, then looked out the window and there they were, swimming around under the lights.  So I dropped a bait in the water and a minute later I had a tuna on board.  So I woke up the crew and the passengers and we commenced fishing.  Before the sun came up we were finished.  I mean we had our daily limit of yellowfin so we passed the school off to another boat and moved on.  The reason we were able to get it done so quickly this morning was because the fish were small.  Unfortunately that's what the plan was all along.  The good grade tuna schools are missing here in 3 day range at the moment.  we've seen this before.  It's no surprise during a tuna season.  I don't believe it's over.  Just temporarily down.

 So we wanted to get our tuna out of the way early and then concentrate on finding dorado kelps, but we never found too much for dorado kelps.  The wind blew too.  It was perfect weather this morning, but by lunch it was blowing a good 25 knots.  Not comfortable.  Thing went back down though.  It didn't stay windy.  It's nice now.

 We get in tomorrow and we're going to take a couple of days off so we'll see you when we see you.  And by that I mean write and read.
   

The day after the first Coronado island yellowtail are caught is always a very exciting day. After hours of searching high and low for yesterday's yellowtail it became obvious that today was a different day. The conditions were basically the same as yesterday but unfortunately we never found a school. We have seen this behavior in the past and I would not be surprised if our yellowtail show themselves tomorrow. Limits of rockfish provided the entertainment today. We will try again tomorrow.

Capt Matt and the boys are engaged with a school of bluefin. They currently have 7 on deck and few more hanging. The fish they have landed so far are 25-35 lbs. I’m sure the big boys are watching and waiting for their opportunity to bite someone’s light line. Come prepared with a 25 lb setup a 40 lb setup and a setup capable of landing a fish over 100 lbs. the variety of available fish sizes creates a bit of a pickle but trust me when I tell you. You want to use heavier than needed equipment rather than the opposite.

Hello everyone We are wrapping up our Beck, Wagstaf and Emerson and Friends 5 day trip today. This trip the Joe Beck, Mal Wagstaf and Emerson and friends charters joined forces on this summer time five day trip. We had some great fishing on some great quality yellowtail. Most of the fish were well into the 25 lb class with some pushing 30lbs. The fish were up high and very surface oriented. They were being hooked on the fly line sardine and surface iron. It doesn't get much better than yellows boiling around the boat and chewing on the surface iron. We had very few small fish mixed in with these biting yellows, the vast majority were great quality fish. It was a great relief getting into these big biting fish after a few trying trips with tough conditions. The next leg of our trip was spent offshore and lead to fantastic kelp patty fishing. The kelps we found had great sized yellows on them school size tuna and also some trophy Dorado. We were able to top off our yellowtail count and mix it up with some Dorado and tuna as well. The water was blue, the fish were biting, and the weather was flat calm. Everything one would ask for during an offshore fishing day. We Depart on our Steele 5 day charter tomorrow Wish us luck, team Supreme

Captain Mike Pritchard called in from the Tribute last night updating us about the 1.5 day trip returning this AM. We had 72 Yellowtail (up to 40 pounds), 13 Bluefin Tuna (up to 30 pounds), and 7 Dorado. Our next couple trips are SOLD OUT but please call Seaforth Landing at (619) 224-3383 to get in on the action.

August 22   
We got in there and got things done pretty fast this morning.  We docked at 6:30 and were off loaded and on our way to the fuel dock after an hour.  We handled fuel and an oil change and had passengers on the boat by 10:00.  So we got a good jump which allowed us extra time and the bait receivers to search through our options to ensure we had the best bait available.  We took what we call firecracker sardine.  A mix of mostly 4-6 inch sardine.  It didn't look so hot going in but it's seems to be getting the hang of living in our wells now.

 It didn't take long before we were arriving to the fishing grounds.  We found a few schools before dark and scratched out 20 something tuna before dark.  We're going to drift here tonight and start off here in the morning.
      

Great fishing again today with our 17 Angler’s putting the Landings rental gear to the test. 29 Bluefin, 6 Yellowfin and 4 Yellowtail in awesome weather.

Captain Ryan Bostian checked in with an update from the San Diego out of Seaforth Sportfishing in Mission Bay, CA. Today we had 23 passengers catch 29 Bonito (8 to 10 pound class), 26 Lingcod and 85 Rockfish.