Let’s get the bad news out of the way first. We fished the Wilmington Canyon on our first open boat trip this season yesterday and the fishing was as close to horrible as it could get. Was not much better in any other local canyon except for the Big Eye bite now starting to happen down in the Washington Canyon the last few days. Will history be repeating itself (similar to last season) with great inshore Bluefin action on tuna in the 80-150 lb. class or bigger and world class Big Eye fishing in the Washington Canyon. It sure looks like this will be happening again.
Now let’s discuss the good news in more detail.
The first Bluefin over 100 lbs. along with a few Yellowfins in the mix were caught trolling our local inshore waters yesterday. This is great news as there is a legit chance to catch both tuna species and save big on trip costs since this is all happening inshore rather than in the canyons. Now that we can confirm the bigger Bluefin’s have arrived we plan to start running both regular charters and open boat trips for them this coming weekend. Last summer the inshore Bluefin bite was sensational for us chunking, jigging and trolling as we are equally proficient whichever way our customers prefer to fish. For those that dream of catching Big Eyes being in the Washington Canyon in the early evening into the night and again in the early morning is offers the best chances of catching what we call “Devil Tuna.” One of our friends fished the Washington the last few days and reported that the quite a few boats had Big Eye bites but there also was a number of lost fish but that is no surprise on tuna with many over 200 lbs. We strongly suggest doing a 24 or 30 hour overnight trip these longer trips gives you the best chance to be in the canyon when the Big Eyes bite is the best plus and there is far less boat traffic especially on week days. On our 30 hour overnight trips we will fish for Bluefins and Big Eyes as well as Mako’s, swords, Yellowfins, Mahi and Marlin etc.
PS: I received a report from an angler today that managed a pretty good Yellowfin tuna bite fishing inshore yesterday. These were not the larger class tuna we had last week but after yesterday trip I would take his catch in a heartbeat. Possibly the Yellowfin bite for those run short of our local canyons and pound it out on inshore structure or temperature breaks.
I have also received reports that there are lots of the smaller Yellowfin showing up in the Washington Canyon to go with the Bigeye bite. These are the same class tuna that we had last year and limited out on most of our overnight trips chunking and jigging after we trolled for Big Eyes.
