Was another successful trip on our charter group aboard the 100′ O-95 out of Oceanside.

Started the trip out with a potluck pre boarding on Friday night which consisted of smoked bluefin, BBQ ribs, fried chicken, homemade salsa verde and guac, chocolate chip scones for desert and beer to wash it all down. Boarded the boat at 8:00 and made our way 100 miles south down off Ensenada, where the previous weekend epic bite took place. Was a great vibe, as most everyone already knew each other and we knew the weather was going going to be epic as well! We raffled of all of the donations from TackleDirect, Okuma and Shimano. Chef Josh of the O-95 ended up with the TDBag and super stoked…deck boss Corey not so much as you can see by the picture. Everyone got a YFT keychain and they were a hit.

Arrived to the grounds right at gray light and deployed the feathers right away, without another boat in sight. Chowed down on our breakfast burritos and coffee while waiting to hear the ZZZZZZ…..but it didn’t happen. Spotted porpoise working bait so worked our way through them and ended up getting hit on one of the feathers for a nice yellowfin, but no conversion.
Played that game for a couple more passes, before deciding we just weren’t going to put a score together with that school. So off we went and spotted another a breazer patch in the distance. Slid in and threw the kitchen sink at them, but they were keyed in on the bait they already had balled up, so off again.

Water was a bit off color and cooler, so captain pointed the bow west, where there were some reports of fish from some other boats. We were about 5 miles from the break we needed to hit, so fast trolled our way in that direction and ended up getting hit about a mile short on a triple skipjack bite. Captain comes over PA and says don’t fish this spot, pull all lines in, we have a kelp about 1/2 mile out that we are going to hit. Turns out that’s was THE kelp and we would sit on that until we limited out on the yellowfin. Our bait was weak, which was frustrating since we were site fishing flying yellowfin and skipjack, but if you couldn’t get a bait away from the boat it did no good. So we had to work at switching out constantly to get that 1 out of 10 that would run away and then get inhaled. I switched over to Daiwa Saltiga SK jig once I had a few bait fish under my belt and that worked well, especially at getting under the skipjack and to the yellowfin. Soon I was playing catch and release. Did try to get them to go on the Coltsniper stick bait, but they weren’t liking it. So stuck with the iron and an occasional bait when I wanted to be lazy.

After about 1.5 hours we had boat limits of yellowfin, so was time to look for dorado and yellowtail on other kelps. Headed NW and the crew was up with stabilizers looking for kelp. We did this for the rest of the day and just about every kelp we hit we would pull off a few dorado and the yellowfin would fill in, which we had to catch and release. The dorado DID like the Coltsniper like last weekend, so there were many aerial displays of dodos crashing that lure. Best one was when I casted about 20 yards from the kelp, gave it one twitch and from right under the kelp you could see a “V” in the water shoot out at 30 mph and explode on sniper…..Unreal! The last kelp of the day was something out of National Geographic with free swimming yellowfin, dorado, yellowtail and skipjack all competing to inhale whatever hit the water. So awesome. Then it was time to relax, tend to our war wounds (popper hook in the finger spit from a thrashing dorado doesn’t feel good)
and have our victory drinks….again.

SoCal fishing at its finest yet again and the endless summer continues.
Tight Lines!