Article by Joey Marowski
Hello everyone and welcome back to another offshore fishing report, this time we finally have some fish to talk about! The majority of the week came with clouds, rain and wind both on land and off the beach but the weekend brought some nicer conditions and some decent fishing as well. We ran our first charter of the OC season on Friday, targeting seabass and tilefish. In the morning we found decent conditions but a very slow pick of fishing, only boxing a few blue lines. We decided to make the run inshore a little ways to a wreck to target seabass and were greeted with amazing marks of bait and fish but still a slower bite. The fish we did catch came up absolutely full of small sand eels, the base of the midshore food pyramid. I decided to try my luck with a jig, well about 50 ft. down I got absolutely crushed, and did my best to hang on as I watched my spool shrink by the second. A few moments later the fish pulled off and I retrieved a jig with a straightened out hook, I looked at the bottom machine on the TV to see half a dozen large “boomarangs” on the screen, right around 50 ft. down. To me, it was quite certain that there were a pack of bluefins swimming around feeding on the same sand eels as the sea bass. As the afternoon progressed, the bite improved ending with a little over 50 keepers in seabass, as well as having 2 thresher sharks eat our fish on the way up. This weekend several boats had good seabass/tilefish trips including the Wrecker and Restless Lady II throwing good catches onto the dock. But the big news that everyones been waiting for has finally arrived, sort of. A few boats ventured out past 1000 fathoms to a piece of warmer water and found quite literally, unlimited tunas waiting for them. I have heard of a handful of yellowfins possibly being in the mix, but the main catch were all bluefins ranging anywhere from 20 lb. BLT size fish all the way up to the larger 150 lb. class fish. Austin and crew onboard Primary Search had quite a memorable Memorial Day, reporting over 60 tuna bites! Granted the current regulations only allow for 1 fish between 27”-72” to be kept, nonstop action is always a good thing and I haven’t seen too many people frowning while cranking on a tuna fish. Hopefully this fishing keeps up and the water pushes west and inside of reasonable range for charter fishing as well as the upcoming Battle for the Buckle Tournament May 29-31. An offshore run of bluefins is quite typical of what proceeds our first push of warm water that hold the crowd favorite yellowfins, so hopefully some of these eddies that do exist about 150/200 miles out form in a way that push them into 100 fathoms. Some traditional tackle for these early tunas is a plastic heavy spread, consisting of spreaders bars and chains on the flats, short riggers and shotgun, with sea witches/Joe Shutes in front of ballyhoos on the long riggers way, way back. The wind looks to puff up in the middle of the week out of the east, so hopefully that also helps push that water a little closer to the beach.
