watauga river Fishing Report 2024

The Apollo had great fishing today. Limits of Red and Chucks including 24 Lingcod. Plus a nice bonus 24 pound Halibut. The weather is great, finally!

Grinding away at good ones! Today was better fishing. It was still a grind but we were able to get some real trophies for our last day. Pictured here we have Mic with his beautiful Yellowfin. Also we have Jim Holman and Jon Collins with their big fish of the trip! Nice Job guys!

The San Diego checked in with us today. 

62 Yellowfin, 27 Dorado, 34 Yellowtail. Anglers changing their baits often had most of the bites.

Captain Ryan Bostian checked in this evening with an update from “The San Diego” out of Seaforth Sportfishing in Mission Bay. Today we fished offshore continuing our streak of offshore trips. We had 39 passengers and we caught 195 California Yellowtail (limits) and 1 Pacific Bonito. It was very good Yellowtail fishing. We did see a few tuna in the area but we never hooked one today.
Be sure to bring a 25 pound bait rod (for Yellowtail). A 50 pound bait rod (for Bluefin Tuna) and a 50 pound rod for your flat fall or colt sniper!

Aug. 17
    Today almost went as planned except for the lack of yellowfin.  We were supposed to scratch pretty good at the yellowfin in the morning, like 40 or so and then get on that big bluefin, and then scratch out another 30 or so yellowfin in the evening.  Well we did the middle part but the numbers were lower on the sides.  We saw plenty of that yellowfin, it just didn't bite well.  On with the cool part.  We found a mega school of that 70-100+ pound bluefin mid morning.  It's been a long time since I've seen a mega school and every time I do I forget about the time before and I think it's the biggest school I've ever seen and that's how today was.  Of course it didn't bite, but for me up in the wheel house where I can see it well it was incredible.  Just the area of fish was monstrous, and when you add in all the shiners and thousands of black backs swimming through, it's amazing.  We fished it for 4 hours on different attempts.  On the first, the youngster Brendan hooked up and landed about an 80 pounder.  On the second, his dad Scott hooked up and lost it and we hooked and lost another one.  On the third, Scott hooked up again but this time he landed his 107 pounder. So far it's looking like we'll have a father- son jack pot.  On the next few tries we got no reaction so we let it regroup for a while and a couple hours later we found it again and we hooked two more and lost them both and we missed a bite on the kite.  We tried it one more time after that for no reaction before we left it for good.  We're going to fish again tomorrow.  We'll make a small move and relocate but as things are right now, we don't need much more yellowfin so we'll concentrate on the other kind of tuna.
                                    

 

Captain Mike Pritchard called in last night from the Tribute. We wrapped up our 1.5 day trip. We fished out West. We had 56 Bluefin Tuna (38 pounds), 52 Yellowfin Tuna, 38 Yellowtail, and other assorted fish. We have another 1.5 day trip that departs on Monday night. We also have a 4.5 day trip departing Thursday night with a few spots. Call Seaforth Landing at (619) 224-3383 or book online via www.tributesportfishing.com.

Incredible amount of fish in our range right now. We see bluefin from big to too big. Yellowfin tuna from 5-25 lbs. open water yellowtail from 8-15 lbs. most of the fish are slurping small anchovies on the surface and do not bite. We did manage to land 7 bluefin from 30-75 lbs and 4 bonito.

Sep. 14

Good evening folks. We departed today after a very fast turn around on an 8 day trip. I'm back after 2 nights rest and ready to get back at it with Tommy at the helm. Good weather today along with good food, company, seminars, naps and just good old fashion relaxation mixed with anticipation. We're ready to go here. We're ready to get into battle mode. What we'll be battling is yet to be determined at this point in the night. We're still figuring out where we want to start this journey of long range sportfishing.