It’s been another great week of fishing for SoCal anglers. With yellowtail biting at most of the islands, tuna biting out of San Diego in US waters and great weather forecast across the bight this weekend, this weekend’s angling opportunities are endless. Let’s take a look at the Navionics Chart to check out your options with the Channel Islands to San Diego fishing report.
Starting up north, they yellowtail are biting at Santa Rosa Island. The Aloha Spirit made the run to the island on Tuesday’s full day trip and landed 42 yellowtail for their 22 anglers. There are still some seabass at Rosa and Santa Cruz Islands but the bite has been more miss than hit lately, but this may improve for the better going into next week’s full moon. Definitely something worth keeping an eye on.
The yellowtail are also biting at Catalina and San Clemente Islands. The Catalina bite has dropped off considerably from the big scores they were getting a couple weeks ago but 3/4-day boats are averaging about a dozen fish on most trips. The bite at San Clemente Island has been hit and miss but there have been some bright spots, like Monday’s trip aboard the Thunderbird out of Davey’s Locker, that scored 81 fish for 21 anglers.
The San Diego fishing report is yellowtail are also biting at the Coronado Islands for the full day boats. Due to the generally uncooperative mood of the tuna off our coast, the Liberty out of Fisherman’s Landing and the San Diego out of Seaforth Landing, have switched back to island mode and had very good results. On Wednesday the Liberty Scored 124 fish and the San Diego 157. These fish are biting fly-lined baits as well as surface and yo-yo iron. If you’re looking do something besides taking a tuna watching trip, I’d jump on one of these boats this weekend.
Speaking of tuna watching, there are plenty of places to do it right now. There are fish spread from well below the border to San Clemente Island and while they’re not biting great, they will bite if you know what to look for and have the right lures to throw at them. I fished bluefin over the weekend and we went 3 for 3 on 70 to 100-pound fish. You can read my full report and my insights on what worked for us here. BD Member Jonathon, was also out over the weekend and loaded up on the yellowfin (as usual). You can read his full fishing report here. Finally, if you’re looking to learn more about the tackle and techniques you’ll need to catch these picky tuna, you can check out my video tutorial on the subject here.
If you’re not interested in fishing for yellowtail or tuna, the bass fishing along the coast is really good right now. I fished Palos Verdes yesterday afternoon and had wide open calico bass fishing along the outside edge of the kelp. The fish are grouped up in pre-spawn mode and are hungry. As with the tuna, the bass are keyed in on small bait right now so a 100 to 150 mm sized hardbait was the hot ticket.
