Author: Joe Sarmiento

Joe Sarmiento continues his northward journey, sampling a variety of fishing as he goes. Steelhead, salmon, and lingcod are just a few of the fish he has crossed paths with on his trip.

Joe Sarmiento is taking a road trip, but don’t worry, he’s taking his gear with him and the fish reports continue from the venture northward up the West Coast.

Joe Sarmiento checks in from the road on the local fishing reports that include more bluefin tuna encounters to go along with great rockfish reports.

Despite the high winds off and on, the rockfish opener and some yellowtail reports are coming to light for the few boats that made it off the docks. Joe Sarmiento has all the details.

Joe Sarmiento spent the winner learning and improving his winter bass fishing techniques and looks ahead to the upcoming rockfish season.

Joe Sarmiento offers some sage pre-season fishing advice and some direct fish reports from his recent sportboat trips.

Joe Sarmiento shares one of his favorite recipes for blackened lingcod. It’s simple and delicious.

Joe Sarmiento offers his thoughts on preparing for the upcoming fishing seasons with a year-long guide to fishing.

Last Friday, Joe Sarmiento rode the Tradition out of 22nd Street Landing in San Pedro for some winter saltwater bass fishing. He was really glad he went!

Joe Sarmiento has some great advice for beginning anglers and newbie guests. Try out a sportboat’s winter hours for an extended halfie as a way to test the waters.

Joe Sarmiento takes a look at 3 great tips to get organized in the tackle department. Learn some tackle storage and organization methods that work for him.

I wrote last week about Fishing Resolutions.  One of my resolutions for last year was to go on more of other people’s charters.  My hope was to maybe ride some boats I haven’t ridden before and meet some new anglers on the water.  It was with this idea in mind that I rode on the Pacific Dawn on a Wil’s Tackle sponsored trip last Monday, December 30th, on an overnight trip fishing New Year’s Eve. Trip Report: Santa Rosa On The Pacific Dawn The trip was scheduled for a 10pm departure, but I was surprised to be honest that we…

When it comes to this time of year, especially when it’s cold and rainy, some nice hot soup feels really good. One of the things I like to do during rockfish season is bring home a few reds whole (gut & gilled), so I can boil down the carcasses to make fish stock. I freeze that stock in a square container and then have soup fixings when I want it. I got this recipe last year from my buddy Jaysen Park. He said he had a version at a Thai restaurant and said, “I bet that’d be really good with…

The 2020 fishing season is almost upon us. Now would be a good time to RENEW YOUR FISHING LICENSE.  Remember that for the sportboat fishing that we do, you need to also purchase the Ocean Enhancement. It’s also a good time to take stock of the year that was.  For me, it’s pretty easy.  I can review my articles and social media posts for a reminder of how the year went.  For those of you who don’t have such a public record of your year, just dig deep into your phone pictures. When I set about writing a trip report,…

Things are winding down on the 2019 fishing season in SoCal.  Several of our favorite boats are off the water doing boat work in preparation for next year.  The New Seaforth found those yellows again this last week, but overall the scene has been dominated by anglers getting in their last shots of rockfishing before that season shuts down at the end of the year. My first charter of next year, our annual Colonet trip on the Pacific Queen is already sold out.  People are asking me what they need to bring for the trip.  Here’s your primer… Yo-Yo Yellowtail!…

Friday, December 6th, a couple yellowtail were caught on the PM ride of the New Seaforth, half-day boat out of Seaforth Landing (right). This boat may be my favorite half-day boat in the entire Southern California sportboat fleet.  Half-day boats are the gateway drug for sportboat fishing here in Southern California.  They are often frequented by rent-rodders, and typically focus on catching easy numbers (vs. targeting game fish) to accommodate the large percentage of novice anglers often found aboard a halfie. This boat is different. The two captains of this boat, RJ Hudson and Brian Castleton do a great job. …

Are you over it? This last week was tough on the water.  We had some wind and lots of rain.  The best fishing of the week happened before the big storm hit midweek.  One of the high points was a 1.5 day trip on the New Lo-An.  Capt. Adam Williams returned on Tuesday morning (December 3rd) with 5 nice bluefin tuna (above) and 101 yellowfin tuna for 23 anglers.  Adam reported a heavy casualty rate.  They ran into some bigger bluefin early Monday morning that resulted in a lot of bent and broken hooks.  Adam was recommending 50# or…

Going into the weekend, the plan was to head out Friday night aboard the Pacific Islander out of Channel Islands Sportfishing in Oxnard.  Come Saturday morning, we’d be at Santa Rosa Island.  If we were really lucky with the conditions, we’d be on the approach to San Miguel, the westernmost island in the chain.  Neither situation came to pass. The trip was cancelled due to expected heavy wind gusts at the outer islands on Saturday. I pondered going out of Marina del Rey on Saturday thinking that fishing in Santa Monica Bay might offer some protection, but I didn’t end…

I was up in Seattle visiting my mom again this last week. I managed to get in one very cold morning (below freezing) of fishing on the Puyallup River.  On the advice of my buddy Jason Brooks, who among other things is a contributor to the outdoor programming on ESPN Radio up there, I went looking for chum salmon going upriver to spawn (above). Gearing up to go, I stopped by my go to shop, Sportco in Fife, Washington.  There I found out that along with the chum salmon (not good table fare), I might get a shot at chinook…

Way back in 2011, I was still relatively new to Southern California style saltwater fishing.  I went on my first offshore tuna trip aboard the Eclipse (now the Tomahawk) in September of that year.  Prior to going, we weren’t sure (or it could’ve been just me that didn’t know) if we were even going to find tuna.  The talk in the previous weeks was that there was a biomass of fish moving up the line that was about 100 miles south.  It was a day and a half trip and we ended up 55 miles south to fish around the…

I talked last week about how this late-season tuna bite had me re-thinking my November fishing plans.  Typically, this time of year, I’d be making the road trip north to the Bay Area for a rockfish/Dungeness crab combo trip (right). I hadn’t gotten a bluefin this year though, and the opportunity looked more than worth the effort. So change of plans… Trip Report – 1.5 On The Thunderbird Last Wednesday (Nov. 6th), I boarded the Thunderbird out of Newport Landing in Newport Beach, CA.  Not to be confused with the T-Bird that I rode a couple of weeks ago out…

Typically, this time of year, it’s time to move on from offshore fishing.  When there’s a chill in the morning air, and we turn back our clocks, it’s time to change things up and get back to rockfishing.  My annual Ling-A-Palooza trip is coming up at the end of the month.  My plan for the month was to get up to the Channel Islands, ride with Capt. Steve Virtue on the Pacific Islander and pre-fish my end of the month trip so I can get the inside dope on what’s working this year for big lingcod. Now I’m thinking I…

Yes, you read that right. You may recall from last week’s post, I shared about how I was on a typical Catalina Island trip aboard the Enterprise, when all of a sudden we ran into some bluefin tuna on the way home.  That’s obviously very cool, but randomly running into these fish and landing one is a far cry from intentionally targeting tuna on a local trip and having success catching them. Yet that is exactly what happened last week. To lend some context to this story, at the front end of our last El Nino, I had the good…

Things are definitely changing out there.  I got out a fair bit this last week, and although none of the fishing was wide open, there are still good opportunities available for saltwater anglers.  I’m not the kind of guy that ever puts away the gear for “the season,” but for those of you who do, it’s not quite that time yet. Trip Report – Full Day Catalina Trip On The Enterprise I got out last Monday (Oct. 14) with Capt. Mitch Christensen, relief captain on the Enterprise out of Pierpoint Landing in Long Beach.  The attraction for me to get…