From Pt. Conception to Pt. Loma the bone bite is on
BY Merit McCrea
SAN CLEMENTE – As the summer season faded to fall and the final few free kids settled back into their school schedules, their final week of freedom featured great action on the local grounds for lots of bonito, with shots at yellowtail all along the SoCal Coastline. It was hard to find a local waters catch without a solid whack on some nice grade striped tuna.
We’re talking a grade that put some of the yellowfin tuna caught alongside them on longer offshore runs into second place. Most were 3 pounds or better and some went past ten.
The Stardust had 50 to 12 pounds fishing way up the coast, nearly to Point Conception and had a yellowtail up there too. Out of Channel Islands Sportfishing the Speed Twin’s 14 anglers put 70 bones aboard on a ½-day.
In Santa Monica Bay the New Del Mar had 35 and 160 each day. The Victory ¾-day out of Long Beach Sportfishing had 40 to 70 each day fishing coastal waters and that was a side order to the 20 to over 50 yellowtail in the first days of September.
Out of Newport Bay the Freelance ¾-day turned in from 160 to 280 bonito each of the first 3 days of the month, basically 4 to 5 per angler. Almost every run out of Dana Point posted similar per angler bonito numbers, basically stopping at 5 per person, although sometimes more, as the actual limit is 10, but no more than 5 less than 24 inches, although the fillet limit remains 10 fillets.
Capt. Brian Woolley reported “Big jumbo bonito made their presence known as well this week. Bonito up to 10 pounds were caught on the troll and big sonar schools. Flashy Sniper style jigs were the jam on those stops. Full pandemonium boat ripper bites on this bonito made for some very fun and incredibly hectic fishing.”
Out of San Diego it was hard to know how good it really was as anglers on even the local ½-day runs focused on yellowtail and barracuda. But even at that the bonito numbers in the catch reports were substantial.
