We had a full charter, and everyone was excited to get our second charter of the year off the dock as quickly as we could. Joining us all the way from Yuma, AZ was a group of 13 led by their newest member, Dave Shill. They filled the bait tanks with perfect sized Sardines and we headed south to start the morning off looking for Yellowtail in the 180 Fathom spots south of San Onofre. We caught a few rockfish, and quickly gave up the search. Next we moved closer to shore and anchored up on 6 or 7 different spots along the kelp. The Calico Bass bit fairly well, but it was not wide open; in fact they were definitely on the picky side, and there were very few fish over 14 inches that were in the mood to bite. Everyone caught fish and a most had at least one fish to take home to eat. The jackpot was won by Ron Withers with a 2.0# Calico Bass….I told you the fish were on the small side, but everyone enjoyed themselves nonetheless!

Report by Neil Richey
Saturday June 27th marked the FIB’ers first club charter of the 2016 fishing season. We went out of Dana Wharf Sportfishing on the Clemente with Skipper Chad. We were boarded and off to the bait barge promptly at 6am for our ¾ day charter. There was no line at the bait barge, and we quickly got our scoops of great looking anchovies with some sardines mixed in.
We made a left out of the harbor and headed south to the ¾ day zone where they had been seeing some Yellowtail action on the beach. The short drive to the first stop had great looking water, and the skipper was able to get up set up to make long fly line casts with the few sardines we had to the kelp edges in hopes of the early Yellowtail bite. This first spot, while yielding a pretty wide open Calico bass bite produced no Yellowtail, and only small bass.
Further south we headed, past the domes into the best of the ¾ day range zone. We pretty much stayed in this region, tighter to the kelp on the beach the rest of the day. The water was a warm 72 degrees, building swell, and great tidal movement. The surface was alive with Calico bass boils for the whole day. This zoned started producing legal Calicos from the start and while we never landed any monsters, it was the most consistent Calico bite the landing had seen so far. Everything got bit, of course bait, but also swimbaits, hardbaits, and surface irons. When you hooked a fish you would see wolfpacks of Calicos chasing the hooked fish. There was a handful of dedicated sardine long soakers determined to get the Yellowtail bite to turn on, sadly only one Yellowtail was caught on this trip by Brian Chichi, but soaking sardines did yield a consistently larger grade of Calico bass like our 4# Jackpot winner caught be Mike Ricigliano.

As the sun was getting lower everyone knew that the trip was coming to an end, and the skipper gave us the call to the barn. Most headed to the galley to rest their bones and talk about big missed bites, and how good the consistency was for a ¾ trip with a landing that is fairly new to our club. All in all there were no monsters, but just good fellowship and good fishing for our inaugural trip of the 2016 fishing season.

The Pride 1-Day Charter was a success! Lots of fish were caught, and limits of smiles all the way around! Jackpot for the trip was caught by Tom Handzus!!! Day started off slow. Ended up having to buy Mexican fishing permits because the captain said all the paddies they had marked and wanted to go back and fish that day were in Mexican waters. Once we got into the zone, we basically just hopped around from paddy to paddy trolling every once and a while in between. The first few stops made for some small yellow tail and dorado. Finally around 11am we hit a paddy that really produced for us. Mostly just regular football sized yellowfin, and a few dorado mixed in as well. We never came across the bigger grade of fish and we were even advised to take our line size down to 15lb if we noticed a drop off in the number of bites we were getting. Ended up with around 60 YFT and a handful of YT and Dodo’s. All in all it was a great trip and the weather cooperated, giving us a smooth ride home. Every day on the water is a day well spent.

Good times!!

Our good friend John Olson sent us this picture and story of his personal best Yellowtail he caught last week, 7/16/2015.

We left the dock at 10pm headed to the bait receiver fortunately we got some quality sardines from nacho and off to catalina we go , with a brief siminar from Rey , game plan and basic instructions on tackle and gear , and with weather conditions and yellowtail fishing in our favor we were left with a genuine, excited, anticipation of our day at the island as we hit the bunks my last thoughts like everyones is are we going to have that epic day , the anticipation of your first fish of the day and last but not least praying and thanking God for getting to do what we love and enjoy ..3 am we arrive at the island we anchor up just off church rock and as anglers start filtering out of their bunks trying to get there bearings and wakeing up the day starts slow with 3 small yellows and acouple barracuda caught we pull anchor about 6 and star working around the back side of the island with slow picking style fishing working our way to the 3 v’s and back by about 3 we had managed about 55 fish and then as we were searching he metered some fish around a rocky area loc not sure but alittle ways from the 3 v’s towards the east end as we started chumming i dropped a fly lined dine back and before we stopped i was at least a 100 yards out i proceeded to retrieve my dine and bam my dine was ingulfed instantly and with 40lb line i could not stop this fish with as much drag as 40 lb could handle it was frutile the home guard rocked me and broke me off , i imediately grabbed another 40lb stick and through out a super hot dine and within 5 minutes im on again this fish at first was fight like a bonita and then he feels the hook and now as he takes me up the rail towards the bow the brute power of this fish tells me its a home guard as it comes close to the anchor rope i bear down and am able to stop him and get him straight up and down as i see color and with the short powerfull head jerks like a tuna the brute is gaffed and with a thud on the deck from its size the realization of my first thought is its obviously my biggest yellowtail ever but it was a true home guard trophy fish and to get a yellowtail over 40 lbs was a great feeling and accomplishment and it took over 40 years of fishing to get it. In the end it was the jackpot fish!
Total count for the day: yt 64 for 30 anglers with 20 fish in the 20 – 40 plus lb range. Tight lines

Report by, Jayson Quimby
Tuesday evening, on the way down to get on board the Pride for our first overnight charter of the year, I received a call from the owner, Greg Gawitt, and he informed me that they were having some problems with the Pride, so he was putting us on the Aztec. This was definitely an upgrade as it is a much bigger boat, and the sleeping accommodations were very nice. 16 FIB’ers loaded the AZTEC and reports of excellent fishing that day got everyone excited!! The crew took their time loading cured Sardines, Macs, and Achovies into the tanks, and the captain informed us that the fish were as close as 16 miles from Mission Bay! He went over how we should rig up, and told us we should definitely try Shimano’s Flat Fall Butterfly jigs. We woke up at 5:15 to lumpy conditions, and a few people were not feeling their best because of it – it was a little windy and the close interval mixed swells had the boat rocking. We stopped on a sonar school of fish, and Art Gomez was the first one to land a fish- a 32.12 pound Bluefin Tuna

We had many stops on sonar schools, and breezing fish throughout the day, but all we could muster was the 8 fish: 1-BFT and 7-YFT. Thankfully, the weather smoothed out as the day wore on, but the bite just never got going for us. The crew worked very hard, traveled over 80 miles searching back and forth for the right school of fish, and we kept fishing hard until after 7PM. We tried it all, from 40# all the way down to 20# Fluro. We tried Macs, Sardines, and Anchovies all hooked in 101 different ways, and with really small hooks. We tried many types of lures too. Unfortunately, most of us just never got the bites we were looking for, but it wasn’t for a lack of trying!
Everyone unloaded with a smile, and a thankful heart. Thankful for another beautiful and safe day on the water, and thankful for being able to spend it on a great boat with a hard-working crew, and with our FIB’er friends.