Wide Open Bluefin Tuna Fishing in Bodega Bay.

10-13-23

Today we charged out looking for albacore and ran into some solid bluefin foamers on the way out near an area we call the football west of fort ross. We trolled a few laps around them with the madmacs and continued to head west in search of albacore, we found the temp break and trolled for albacore and had a bite within 20 minutes and it unfortunately shook the hook, we kept trolling for a few more hours for nothing so we headed in for bluefin, we instantly ran into well over a dozen foamer patches within 200 yards and many many dozens more within a mile, bluefin were absolutely everywhere on the surface and non boat shy and we could even watch them swim under the boat as we passed, we tried flying the kite for no luck and dropped jigs, but the fish were really picky feeding on small baits, we switched back to madmacs, even with the largest number of tuna I’ve ever seen in my life they still were picky, There was simply miles of foamers. I’ve posted some videos of the insanity to our Facebook and Instagram pages. We eventually managed find a dumb and hungy one to eat and get it to the boat in about 25 minutes. Even though we didn’t hook into many fish, its was a surreal day seeing that many fish since there was a 6 mile stretch of fish, and a few boats did very well in the am south of where we fished.

10-15-23

We left the dock with some pretty high hopes after the last trip and found zero visibility in the fog and some more picky fish that were much harder to find. We managed to find a handful of foamers but no biters and settled with rockcod by the early afternoon while being completely surrounded by bluefin while catching some rockcod. Overall a bit of a frustrating day but everyone took home some white meat and you cant get them every day. A few boats did very well in the late evening about 6 miles west of the football, no foamers but hit a good blind strike bite about 4pm, so we had hopes for the next day.

10-16-23

We charged out on a pure bluefin trip, to the area the boats did well the day before, about 15 miles out the fog broke and we had 10 miles of visibilty, allowing me to use my important tool for finding tuna which is my gyros. While running I saw a group of birds and pulled a 90 degree turn and saw a few fish busting, nothing great but fish around. We did some laps and I fired up the gyros and saw a black horizon at about 8 miles out from where we were, at first I thought it was another fog bank, then I focused a little better and relized it was miles of birds chasing fish making the sky go dark, we trolled out there quickly and instantly got hit on the Nomad madscad 190 AT at only 30 seconds behind the boat. All around us was fish and dolphins leaping out of the water. One thing about the madscad AT is that Ive been very excited to try this lure. After finally getting nomad to allow me to test it, I was sent one to try out. It was hit within the first 5 minutes of touching norcal waters so that’s a pretty great sign that we have another tool to add to the tackle box in addition to the madmacs.

The first fish taped in at a fat 188lbs . We put lines back in the water and quickly picked up a second 120lber on my favorite pink madmac. We had a 3rd fish quickly hit again but pulled the hook before getting to the boat. Unfortanlty the bite slowed down but the fish stayed up and gave us a good show for the rest of day. We chased foamers all day long and weather wouldn’t be better. Epic day and 2 other charter boats I was working with joined in on the excitement and picked up some great catches as well so the excitement was wide spread and we can confidently saw its the best haul the sport dock at Bodega Bay has ever seen. I personally believe this is just the beginning to an epic season.