This was probably the best Yellowtail fishing day of the year so far in our local waters. We ended up catching 84 Yellowtail for the day by 11:00 am. They were biting so good, at the end of the trip they stopped putting out bait so we could go home. It wasn't just our boat who got bit, every boat out there was hooking up Yellowtail after Yellowtail. Big mean ones too!!! I landed 4 and everyone of them kicked my butt. The weight of my fish were #22, #25 and two approached #30 lbs. Just to give an example of how the other boats were doing, the Enterprise had decked over 100 fish by the time we had to go home and we left them biting. The Native Sun had more of a novice group of anglers and had hooked 150 Yellowtail to land 75 for their 25 passengers. (No boat had a bad day!!!!!)
The interesting part of the bite was it wasn't run and gun type fishing. Once captain Mitch set up on a school of Yellowtail, we would initial hook 7-8 fish and in the past several weeks that would be all you would get out of that school. Not today, they would stick with the boat and we would make long drifts hooking fish the whole time. They bit everything, fly lined baits, baits with sliding egg sinkers on and the dropper loop rig. A few fish were caught on the Yo Yo jigs, but not much on the surface iron. My trick was using a little heavier sliding egg sinker (3/4 ounce) and it seem to put my bait in the zone of the bigger fish. These fish are not line shy either, I used #40 test all day with a small piece of flurocarbon leader. On most Half-Day boats you get a variety of experience of the anglers. The most Yellowtail I heard caught was 6 by one angler. But I heard a lot of people catch 4 like myself. Unfortunately, there is always some people who don't catch anything. Since I have been trying to catch Yellowtail every week now for the last 3 months, on this trip I gave all my fish away. Just to show you the quality of some of my fellow anglers, a nice young man heard I was giving fish away, so he took it upon himself to try to make sure some of the elderly gentlemen who didn't catch any fish got some to take home. At the end of the day, two very attractive women caught their first Yellowtail and you know what that means??? It's Heart eating time!!!!! I have never seen a more beautiful women with blood all over her mouth choking down a Yellowtail heart. She didn't just catch one, but 4 Big Yellowtail meet their demise on the Southern Cal by that gorgeous women!!!! lol