whidbey island Fishing Report 2025

Pretty darn good fishing once again today, 26 Bluefin and 1 Yellowtail. Please make sure your gear is in good working order, I really should have taken pictures of some of the gear failures.

Back after a five-day trip, the 7th Annual Paul Chappell Charter aboard the Polaris Supreme arrived at Fisherman's Landing July 10. The 24 anglers were guided by skipper Drew Henderson.
"We got some nice yellowtail at San Martin," remarked Drew, "but there's a lot of that big squid around there. You can't get any more yellows once they get on you." Chartermaster Chappell won first place for his 34.6-pound albacore. He said he bagged it with a sardine on a 2/0 Mustad 94150 hook on 30-pound Yo-Zuri line. He fished with a Penn Squidder reel and a Sabre seven-foot rod of the same era. Phil Beltrami of Napa won second place for a 33.4-pounder, and Craig Pappas of Santa Cruz won third place for a 32.4-pound longfin.

Polaris Supreme returned October 14 under skipper Drew Henderson's hand. Drew took his 23 anglers on a seven-day adventure, returning to Fisherman's Landing, where he weighed the best of the catch. "We had a very good afternoon at the Bush," (San Benitos Islands) said Drew, "and we spent some time looking for kelps. Alijos Rocks gave us some really good yellowtail fishing in the dark. We had four or five fishing going. We also tried Guadalupe Island, where we got a few tuna but saw very little." "We had a couple hours of very good dropper loop yellowtail fishing," Drew wrote October 0, "on 25-35 pound fish in the morning. When that slowed we stayed busy with smaller grade tuna and the occasional mahi. We made a tour and got the anchor back down around lunchtime and had the same action but with an occasional larger model tuna being hooked. We hooked 10 and landed four 50 to 60-pounders. After dinner the few that still had the energy to fish all caught several more of those big yellows before we took off at 10:00. We're now spending the day traveling up the line and will be arriving to finish up the trip at Guadalupe Island for a day and a morning." The certified scales provided the winners. Dennis Sewell of Walnut creek won first place for a 68.2-pound tuna.

"It took a lot of line," remarked Dennis. "It fought for a half-hour." Sewell baited a sardine on a 2/0 Eagle Claw hook tied to 40-pound Seaguar fluorocarbon leader and 40-pound P-Line, and fished with an Accurate 870 reel and a six-foot rod of unknown origin.

Jake Hamstra of Tulare won second place for a 66.6-pound yellowfin, and Tom Kroes of Tipton won third place for a 60.2-pound tuna. David Richardson of Hacienda Heights stood in with the winners, with his 52.2-pound wahoo, a fish that took his trolled Catchy Tackle spinner head jig in pink and black.

We stopped the boat once today and didn’t move until it was time to go home. We ended up with 123 yellowfin 53 bluefin. Live bait has been best but we had our fair share of bites on the Shimano colt sniper. 100 gram was the best size.

Oct 7

I'm sure like most of you at home, every morning lately I woke up in anticipation to read Richie's next fishing report and was let down to see nothing written. I was hoping he was just too busy on those shorter trips to write one for me but it's leaked into long range now too. So I guess your stuck with me.

We left today on a 6 day trip. Our bait choices were between healthy but giant sardine or not so healthy normal size sardine. We chose some of both. We'll have to see how it turns out but I am sure we will have some die off. Hopefully just the weak ones. Time will tell.

The weather out in the fishing grounds sounds windy and rough. We'll be crossing through an area tomorrow sometime around 10 in the morning and depending on the weather we'll either work the area or fish on through it on a down hill course to other more fishable grounds. One of the boats had a wahoo through these waters a couple days ago so we'll be trolling wire.

Drew

Captain Mike Pritchard called in this morning at 10:41 with an update from the Tribute. So far we have 130 Yellowfin Tuna and a couple Bluefin Tuna. We are running another trip departing on Monday. Call Seaforth Landing at (619) 224-3383 to get in on the action or BOOK ONLINE at www.tributesportfishing.com.

20 pass. 33 yellowtail plenty of reds and rockfish. Yo yo lures were the top producers however we did catch a few on flyline sardines and surface iron.

Our first stop of the day was a bit humbling as we went 10 out of probably 50+ on the 50-110 pound Bluefin (anything under 40 on these fish was too lite).

We ended the trip with 14 Bluefin and 41 Yellowfin (18-60 pounds) in great weather for our 27 Angler’s, we go again tonight.