BY MERIT McCREA
SAN CLEMENTE – In the past several weeks there have been marlin reported in areas throughout the Bight within U.S. waters – including the Northern Channel Islands.
A Santa Barbara Harbor based Open Access commercial fisherman had been seeing numerous marlin at the Channel Islands while commercial fishing, so he decided to declare out for a day and do some sport fishing with his girlfriend. He said “We even had one come right by the boat a couple weeks ago on the frontside of Santa Cruz Island in like 40 feet of water chasing bait!”
His sportfishing day saw multiple marlin in his spread with one finally getting hooked on a Cedar Plug, after several others had swatted and missed on the regular marlin jigs.
About mid-day on day one of the Balboa Angling Club’s 2026 Master Angler Billfish Tournament they reported 30 stripers caught already.
In addition to the ubiquitous stripers there were blues too, at least three of which have been boated in the past 2 weeks. This included what is likely the largest gamefish ever landed aboard the San Diego fleet of sportfishers. The 648-pound blue bit for the anglers aboard the Pegasus out of Fisherman’s landing, owned and operated by Capt. Alec Stockfelt.
That fish took down a DTX Minnow trolled on a CalStar stick with a Shimano TLD reel. Pegasus crew Daniel Harris, Jeffrey Janowiak, Jacob Kocaya and Stockfelt plus a few of their anglers fought the monster for about 2 hours before teaming up to drag the beast aboard through the boarding gate.
