BY LANDON THOMAS
LONG BEACH— This year’s Eldorado trip had to be one of the most impressive displays of teamwork, decision making and results I have honestly seen in my (almost) three years at Western Outdoor News. TJ and Will up top seemed to make every right decision for their anglers. While we did not have the coveted “limits of bluefin” everyone wanted to see, we caught just about every available species our fishery has to offer on our 2-day trip.
This boat is always on the move, running and gunning which is the style of fishing I love. They are not going to sit in a spot where you are going to pick at a couple of fish. They want their anglers to be bent, having fun and taking fish home.
We focused a lot of time at San Clemente Island and moved out for the nighttime bite. The first stop for our trip was live squid and dropper loops for yellows. We had a 30-pound yellowtail and a solid halibut come over the rail, but it wasn’t enough to keep us there. We ran around the Island all day, mixed bag fishing which was super fun for everyone. Yellows showed up for us a little bit throughout our day, too.
Our night bite started hot with three fish, the biggest taping out at 147 pounds. These schools of big fish showed themselves early but did not want to stick around for us. After a night of getting jiggy with it, we headed back to the island to set up for those early morning yellows.
On this final morning, we whacked the yellows pretty well on the dropper loops with most of them being well north of 20 pounds. Thank you to all of our sponsors for the Western Outdoor News charters. I wanted to mention Gamakatsu and Izorline in specific because they help so many of our anglers. This trip there were numerous people who didn’t bring the right size hooks or line and ended up okay because of the hooks and line we provide to every angler onboard. If you haven’t fished on the Eldorado, grab a friend and get on the boat. No excuses, do it.
