Well, it is bound to end, but trying to think what this year has brought to us is still mind blowing so far and a new wave of fresh exotics has just started showing up.
It started off with 40-70 pound Bluefin Tuna at the end of winter hitting the surface iron locally and quickly turned into an inshore Giant Bluefin Tuna bite all within 4-10 miles from our Southern California Coastline! These giants that were being caught were in the 150 to 200 pound class of fish and were no joke! Everyone seemed to be getting in on the action as even I got into a few great bites in my 16 foot bass boat!
The Bluefin kept hanging around and were soon joined by the Yellowfin tuna. Not your typical footballs, but Yellowfin Tuna in the 3- to 100 pound class with some bigger models! The long range boats based out of San Diego were not even heading down to Mexico to fish, but instead staying right off the Oceanside and Carlsbad coast and catching these behemoths! Never have I ever seen so many people kite fishing and all in SoCal waters.
One constant was the mega tons of Red Tuna Crab washing up on our beaches, in our bays and just everywhere! Surf fish, Bay fish, Inshore fish and Offshore fish were all plugged with them and it made getting a bite really difficult at times. They have thinned out as the year goes on, but all of the tuna, yellowtail and dorado all still have bellies full of them.
This continued into August when the Bluefin started to thin out and the Dorado and Opah joined the fray. The Yellowfin tuna were still a big grade of fish, but the local Dorado and Opah took center stage with numbers increasing as the month went on. One thing was certain is the water was in the high 70′s all summer and blue as can be.
Hammerhead Sharks have been very common the past few years, but they invaded the beaches this September. Beaches in La Jolla closed and warnings were put out as they were very aggressive and there were a few attacks which led to injuries. They also were playing havoc on the tuna trips as it was hard to get them away from the boat at times.
The early fall has also brought an array of other exotic fish usually only seen in Hawaii or extreme Southern Baja. Local boats started scoring Shortbill Spearfish in a consistent fashion as well as the array of other billfish being caught. A Black Marlin was caught up in the Newport area as well as a number of Blue Marlin including a scale tipping 662 pounder caught recently.
To make things more interesting, the wahoo have showed up in pretty good numbers. They are being caught on the high spots at our local banks and the fishermen just can’t get enough of what this 2015 El Nino season has to offer. Surprisingly, the Lobster season is starting up here next week and very little people are talking about it as this type of local fishing only comes around once or maybe twice in a person’s lifetime!
Be sure to get out there and see what you can catch. Whether from a boat, pier, jetty, bay or surf… all sorts of great catches are being made from every place you could vast a line out, so go get yourself some!
Until next tide, Happy Fishing.
-Latimeria
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