west okoboji Fishing Report 2025

37 anglers, 10 yellowtail, 18 bonito, and 48 rockfish. We will be at the dock for the next few days while our first real weather rolls in.  We are online till the end of December. Make those reservations.

~~Aug 20
 It was a slow day out here today for us.  It was a slow day for many.  But of course it depends on who you talk to, some might say it was a great day.  It all depended on which school you found.  Just like it's been, most schools don't produce, but the few lucky ones do.  We didn't find the lucky one.  Our best school was for 20.  But no matter who you ask, it was a slow afternoon today. After lunch, we didn't find a school till after 6:00.  We're due.

 The weather today was awesome.  Again.  We're going to drift out here tonight and try it again tomorrow.  I thought about doing something different, like hunting bluefin, but it hasn't been very good and our plan B., that being San Clemente island is closed tomorrow darnit.  Plus these yellowfin we're catching are just too beautiful.  Such a nice grade.

 One more day.  We're due.  It won't take much more to get 200 of these things for the trip.  200 of these things would be nice.
        

Aug. 22

We kicked the you know what out of the yellowfin today. We engaged in battle and we won. We started our drift at 6:30 this morning and drove away from them biting at lunch. The fish were from 22-35 pounds and were snapping. I don't think I've seen that good of fishing on that good of a grade since the albacore days. Hopefully this lasts for some time to come. The weather was great today but the further north we go now the more choppy it's getting. Just in time for dinner.

We've just been traveling up since our only needed stop this morning setting us up for our last day in the bluefin grounds. It sounded slow up there today but maybe they're just waiting for captain Drew to get up there. Rent rod Ryan donated a 40 pound bluefin yesterday to the galley and we were planning on eating it for dinner tonight but in the middle of the mayhem today we lost it buried under the yellowfin so he donated a few yellowfin so we're having seared Ahi instead. Mmmmm.

Drew and the super crew.

Sunday, July 7th, 2013

Hello friends and a very happy Sunday to all of you back on the beach. We departed Fisherman's Landing around 14:00 hours today on the Joe Beck/Mal Wagstaff 6-day adventure with plenty of familiar faces and a few new ones to spice things up. Our stop at the bait receiver went a little bit better today and although it's not the best bait we've ever seen, it's a lot better than what we loaded up on Tuesday. At this point, we'll take it and we'll be keeping a close eye on their well-being throughout the night.

Other than that, we've been enjoying a nice ride out to the Bluefin grounds and our activities have been pretty standard for a departure day. Rigging tackle, napping, eating, seminars, and catching up with old friends and new ones alike. Chefs Schooler and Shawn just finished up the dinner serving of prime rib, baked potatoes, peas, and sorbet for dessert.With that being said, we're going to cash in for the evening and get ready for tomorrows fishing adventure to begin.

We'll be in the upper end of the Bluefin zone around mid-morning and the scores for the boats in the area were decent. It sounds like that 50-70 lb. BFT was biting a little bit and a few schools of 25-40 lb. fish were around too, so we'll see if we can't get ourselves some of that.

Not too much to report today but hopefully tomorrow is a different story. We'll be at it tomorrow morning and we'll report back to you tomorrow evening. Take care everyone and wish us lots of luck.