Author: Erik Landesfeind

This is one of those weeks where I have very little to actually report because the storm that rolled through this week kept most of the boats off the water. The good news is that the storm was short lived and the sun is shining outside my office window as I write this on Thursday morning. Even better news is that the forecast is calling for good fishing weather with Santa Ana winds and calm seas this weekend, so there really isn’t any reason the fish shouldn’t still be biting. This Navionics chart shows what was happening before the weather.…

The big bluefin that had gone MIA about a month ago where recently relocated by boats making the run south to fish yellows at Punta Colnett. There had been a few scores by both yachts and long range boats, but the first good score was aboard a trip on the Shogun last week. According to their report the boat fished Colnett before heading to Guadalupe Island and found  a good temp break about 30-miles off the beach. The decision was made to leave the island a day early and look for bluefin along the break. According the boat’s report, the…

Cue my weekly broken-record report that the bluefin are still biting for boats fishing the offshore banks out of San Diego. And if I had to guess, I’ll be reporting the same thing when I sit down next Thursday to hammer out my column. Looking out as far as the marine forecast goes, which is to Saturday the 30th, there’s no significant northwest wind scheduled to blow any time soon. So, why not head out there and catch a Christmas bluefin? Or if you’d rather wait, go next week and get a shot at catching the first tuna of 2018.…

While wide open 15 to 30-pound bluefin might not sound all that exciting after the last few seasons we’ve had, the fact that they’re biting just a few days before Christmas and in flat calm weather makes it something special. Remarkably, the bluefin aren’t the only pelagic species still around. Over the last week boats found kelp paddies holding yellowtail and yellowfin on dolphin. My friends, Captains Brian Greene and Mitch Christensen fished earlier this week on a private boat and scored limits of both bluefin and yellowtail while fishing the offshore banks below San Clemente Island. On Wednesday sport…

Well, it looks like the prediction I made last week was at least partially correct. The tuna did bite over the weekend and the fishing was pretty good with most boats finding easy limits. Regarding the big fish showing back up in the counts, I was wrong. The Aztec out of Seaforth Landing did find some on Sunday’s trip but they were unable to get them to bite. Speaking of big tuna that were unwilling to bite, I found some of my own on the way home from San Clemente Island on Saturday while fishing with Jimmy Decker. The fish…

While it’s not quite yet December, I’m actually writing this on the morning of November 30th, I’m confident that the bluefin and yellowfin will still be biting when this article publishes on December 1st. In fact, I’ll venture a guess that they’ll be biting better than they are today. Since I’m in a guessing mood, my next one would be that we’ll see some of those jumbos back in the counts over the weekend if Sunday night’s full moon does what it’s supposed to. In other good news, the bluefin biting on the 60 Mile Bank aren’t the only game…

If the last few years of incredible offshore fishing have taught us anything, it’s that having the right pair of binoculars can make all the difference in the world when it comes to finding schools of biting fish. What constitutes the “right” pair? Well that depends on the size of your boat and your style of fishing. The biggest factor in choosing binoculars is knowing how far you’ll be looking. This image shows the math involved with calculating at what distance the curvature of the earth allows us to see given our height above the water. Yeah, I don’t understand…

The November new moon kicked off several days of what is undeniably the best big bluefin fishing any living person in Southern California has ever seen. Captain Marcus Medak, owner/operator of the New Lo-An, reported had this to say about the bite, “Insanely good fishing! There’s no other way to describe the bluefin fishing that’s going on right now. The average grade is 120 to 150-pounds, with a mix of 170-plus pounders and the occasional sub 100. The fish are biting heavy line with 80# and 100# top shots. We even got two on 200# fluoro. Don’t miss it!” It’s…

Well, the windy weather forecast for this week ended up shifting out to the west providing for comfortable seas on the tuna grounds. I’m not sure if it was due to the weather forecast or because people aren’t thinking offshore fishing the week before Thanksgiving, but not too many boats made it off the dock. One of the boats that did run this week was the New Lo-An, albeit on a crew goof off trip, The trip ran into the big bluefin that had been MIA for a while and ended up hooking 16 but only landing 5 due to…

It was another week of good late season tuna action for the few boats that got off the dock. The photo above is from Wednesday’s overnight trip aboard the Old Glory out of H&M Landing. The 17 anglers aboard tallied 16 bluefin tuna from 48 to 60-pounds and the captain reported, “we sure wish we could have stayed there until dark as we left them all around the boat boiling”. The boat has a 1 1/2-day trip running on Friday night with space available. Private boaters have also been getting in on the tuna action. I spoke with Captain Gerry…

I noticed the first hints of fall’s arrival in Southern California on Sunday morning while heading to San Clemente Island. The first indication was the sky still being pitch black as we made our way out of Newport Harbor at 6:30 in the morning. This was followed by the realization that the board shorts and sweatshirt I’d donned for the trip were woefully inadequate during the crossing. Final confirmation came when the 69-degree water at the island felt warmer than the air temp all day long. What does all this mean? It’s getting late enough in the year that I’m…

Editor’s Note: Erik Landesfeind explains how to wire a trolling motor in this detailed summary of the process he used to fix a electrical problem on his boat. If you’re an inshore angler like me you probably rely heavily on your bow mounted trolling motor when fishing bass. And if you rely on it long enough, sooner or later it’s going to stop working. The good news is that more often than not the fault isn’t with the expensive trolling motor itself, but with the inexpensive wiring that brings it power. I ran into just that situation last month when my…

The other day I received a message from a reader asking how long I thought the offshore action might last. My response? Good question! We’re coming into the last weekend in October, it’s 100-degrees in most of Southern California and the extended forecast is calling for at least a couple weeks of stable weather. Add in the November full moon rising a week from this Saturday, and things are looking pretty good. There’s enough bait around to keep the fish interested, so if I had to guess, I’d say the offshore action is going to keep rolling along until we…

One of the problems with fall offshore fishing is that the wind can sometimes be an issue. That was certainly the case in the latter part of this week as the wind is blowing steadily across the San Clemente Island bluefin grounds and it’s strong enough to keep boats from reaching the yellowtail that have been biting at Tanner Bank. The good news is that the weather is forecast to come down over the next couple days and by Sunday boats should have an opportunity to get back on those big Tanner Bank yellows like the ones above that were…

Considering that we’re well into October, this has been a pretty damned good week of fishing. As you can see in the pic above, there are still some big bluefin being caught by those willing to put their time into targeting them. At 293-pounds, this fish barely missed making super cow status but was still the highlight of a 2-day trip, aboard the Pacific Dawn, that also tallied 62 big yellowtail. The Aztec was another boat that scored big bluefin this week and Captain Greg Gawitt had this to report after a recent trip. “Well that was fun. A nice…

Well, as of Thursday morning it looks like my prediction about tonight’s full moon bluefin bite was at least partially correct in that the bluefin bite has improved over the last few days. But as of the time of this writing, I was incorrect when predicting the big ones would be biting as most of the fish currently being caught are considerably less than 100-pounds. The good news is that there were some jumbos caught this week and I’ve still got about 8 hours left until the official October full moon so I’m going to hold out hope. Finger crossing…

As expected, the big bluefin bite dried up again once we got off the new moon. The good news is that fish were found in a new area, much closer to home, before the bite dropped off, so there’s a good chance there will still be fish to catch as we come into the October full moon. There are no guarantees but if you want a shot at one of these trophy fish, I’d be looking at booking a trip a day or two before the full moon. There are still small yellowfin biting for boats out of San Diego…

If the last three years of incredible fishing have proved anything it’s that lunar cycles play a big role in fish behavior. It was only a few weeks ago that I wrote an article about the September full moon spurring what might have been the best big bluefin fishing Southern California anglers have ever seen. Well after a bit of a slump since then, the big fish bite came roaring back in the lead up to Wednesday night’s new moon. Most sport boats and long range boats got shots at big bluefin this week and some capitalized on their opportunities.…

As expected, the big bluefin bite waned right along with the full moon that spurred it. There are plenty of fish still around and the bite is likely to improve again as the new moon approaches. Several sport boats got small scores on big bluefin this week and some of the private boat guys are getting them as well. According to Fishdope, Captain Dave Hansen had 10 bites while trolling the flyer on Tuesday and and landed two fish over 150-pounds. The fish are tougher to find right now but the good news is that if you do find them…

If you’re a regular reader of this column, you know that I’ve spent a lot of time talking about bluefin tuna this year and it’s been a love/hate relationship. The big ones showed up early and bit well, then even more fish showed up and they quit biting altogether. After a while they started biting the kite a little and eventually boats caught them on flat falls and finally sardines. Throughout the year, the average size of fish being caught, jumbos aside, quietly kept getting bigger and bigger. What had been mostly sub 50-pound fish crept up to those pushing…

One of the perks of being a part of the Team Rainshadow Pro-Staff is that I get an opportunity to field test their latest and greatest rods. As the stack of rods in my garage can attest, Batson Enterprises is constantly working towards staying at the cutting edge of tackle technology. But after over eight years of fishing Rainshadow Rods Matt Kotch and my “go-to” quiver had become pretty well established and we were confident that each of the rods we used where the best for that specific application. But as the company’s owner and master rod tinkerer, Bill Batson,…

Good news! Southern California’s summer fishing season is almost over. All we need to do is get through the next three days and the amount of private boat traffic is going to drop dramatically as most of the serial sport boat followers and chum line violators call it a year and go back to whatever it is they do when they’re not making our fishing lives miserable. But before we consider the summer post-season, we’re going to need to figure out how to get through the holiday weekend first. The good news is that there are fish biting in plenty…

I was on vacation on the California Delta last week and didn’t keep close tabs on what was happening in our local waters. As my trip was winding down I decided to check back in to see what was happening on the fishing front. I wasn’t too surprised that the big bluefin were still biting, though the counts have dropped a bit. The yellowtail, which had been quietly biting in the background, filled the tuna void by biting wide open in several locations along our coast. While the yellows are biting everywhere from the Channel Islands to below the Mexican…

This is the third installment of a multi-part story. Part 1 here. Part 2 here. Day two on Crystal River started out much like day one, dark, humid and ripe for attack by swarms of biting insects. As on the previous morning, a group of tired Cast and Blast attendees had assembled and as they milled about by the great fiberglass manatee, box lunches were again the main topic of conversation. But this morning’s tone was different, darker, rumor had it that a particular side dish had made someone sick and people were scared. When eating my sandwich the previous day I’d…