John Ho

The sportfishing vessel Dolphin heading out with a light wintertime half-day load. These trips are a good place for a beginning angler to learn the fishery and regulations.

Dock Totals 2/13 – 2/19: 578 anglers aboard 28 half-day to 1.5-day trips out of San Diego landings this past week caught 3 bonito, 149 calico bass (74 released), 1 halibut, 52 lingcod, 2 lobster (18 released), 38 perch, 1 sargo, 3 spider crab, 896 rockfish, 229 sand bass, 275 sculpin, and 112 whitefish.

Saltwater: Long range boats are having a great season off the southern Baja coast this winter. Cow yellowfin tuna, wahoo, yellowtail, and grouper have yet to disappoint those riding 8-day to16-day trips to more tropical climes, while locally, calico bass, sand bass, and sculpin are being targeted by the half-day boats. Mid-range overnight and full day runs are targeting rockfish in Mexican waters from the Coronado Islands south to the high spots off Colonet, with occasional yellowtail coming over the rail. All in all, this is typical winter fishing.

Bluefin tuna are undoubtedly somewhere out there, but weather, boats in maintenance, and low angler counts aren’t allowing much investigation into that bite. As bluefin migrate to eastern Pacific waters annually then stay for several years until ready to return to the western Pacific to spawn, they will be there, and I am sure will be back in the counts as newly-fitted vessels find weather windows and angler loads to justify the long trip out to the banks southwest of San Clemente Island.

To those who do not fish out of San Diego landings, several hundred anglers aboard a couple dozen trips might sound like a busy week for our passenger vessel fishing fleet, but this is the slowest time of year with around ten percent of the average ticket sales during the summer-fall seasons. Many boats are doing annual repairs and refitting, and those running are restricted in targeted species with the rockfish closure from January through February. This coming week, that restriction will be lifted, and rockfish will be open again in our local waters. By the first week of March, more boats will be running, and more anglers will be boarding. By June or July, the San Diego fleet will be running hundreds of trips and carrying thousands of passengers per week.

Many of those anglers are tourists and newcomers to the fisheries in California and off the Baja coast.

I occasionally see posts on social media showing protected species kept, over limits, and gear that is not legal for recreational angling. One sees it often in Baja; where tourists fishing on a Mexican license post their catches and harvesting of species while assuming there are few rules due to lack of enforcement as well as reinforcement of seeing others, including Mexican citizens, doing the same with no recourse. Piles of clams dug from the sand; lobsters caught by hand while freediving; over limits of finfish and other restricted or prohibited practices that are so rarely enforced due to a lack of sufficient Mexico’s National Aquaculture and Fishing Commission officers. The Mexican Navy also will enforce fishing regulations. I have seen them pull illegal gill nets and other gear used by poachers.

Fish Plants: February 24 – Lake Poway, trout (1,500), February 25 – Santee Lakes, trout, (1,500)