Bodega Bay Albacore Tuna Report 9-8-24

After hearing some very good reports from the previous days out of Bodega, we decided to tow the Sorta Salty back down and fish Bodega Bay for the weekend. I just finished prepping our new 28′ parker the Bigeye. I wanted to take her out on a ride and spend a day fishing before I brought clients aboard. Josh took the Sorta Salty form bodega and I took the Bigeye from Tomales Bay and we headed southwest toward Cordell with high hopes and to search along with many buddy boats. I picked up a double of 8lbers pretty quickly within half an hour of setting lines, and not to much longer after Josh stuck a nice single 30lber. For both of us and most boats out there that was it for the day, pretty tough fishing and most boats had 5 or less fish with the average of maybe 1 fish per boat. Darn tuna have tails and really like to use them.

Bodega Bay Albacore Tuna Report 9-9-24

After talking to our group the night before on if they wanted to gamble a long drive or postpone the trip, they voted to make the long run and we pointed to an area called the rooster north of point arena. After a 70 mile run into the swell we threw lines out and trolled for what seemed like endless hours, no signs of life except a few big marks on the screen that looked like bigeye tuna and no bites until 1pm, we found a temp break from 60 to 62.5 degrees. It felt good to see 2 rods go off and some fish to show on the sounder. We got 6 really nice albacore to the boat before the fish went down and disappeared. At this point I was just a few miles shy of where we loaded the boat last week from fort Bragg, which was about 90 US miles from Bodega Bay. At 3pm we pulled the plug and made a somewhat smooth ride cruising home at 33 knots. Another brutal day compared to the past few weekends. On the bright side when I got back to service my phone got flooded with bluefin pictures from guys at the Farallon Islands doing very well on the bluefin front. It was a bit bittersweet feeling after a over 200 mile round trip to see pictures and stories of many lost bluefin at the boat, all in the opposite direction of where we went. But if this wind for the next week doesn’t blow the water away we will be down there chasing them unless the albacore bite picks back up. The area north of the football that held a lot of fish last year is PACKED with life right now, whales, birds and miles of anchovy are all ready for the bluefin to mix into. We didn’t troll but I spent some time looking for bluefin and marks on the screen, and they don’t seem to be on that bait, or at least in big enough numbers to charter fish yet. I think if the winds remain reasonable we are in for one hell of a bluefin year, and hopefully the albacore show back up in numbers as well, as some tuna combo trips would be great. Until then we will be getting the new boat onto the slip and getting both boats ready for more tuna action.