Weekly fishing report

Inshore: This past week the moon phase kept our nighttime orb between 91% illuminated to full, and back to 92% from Saturday through Friday. That’s a lot of light at night, which probably inspired some squid breeding and nighttime feeding and such. The ¾-day fishing slowed down a bit, though it is still exceptional for early March. The yellows and rockfish are still down there at the Coronado Islands and the lower Finger Bank in good numbers for those heading south of the border. The half-day boats are getting mostly sculpin, with sand bass, calico bass, sheephead and seaperch rounding out the average trip. The California rockfish opener on the 1st should up the catch and number of anglers on the local inshore trips.

Outside: The first bluefin tuna of the year was reported caught off Punta Colonet during a 1.5-day Pacific Queen trip out of Fisherman’s Landing. The fish, estimated at 50 pounds, was not alone; they saw several others rolling in the chum-line. The Pacific Queen and a few others out of San Diego have been running 1.5-day trips down the coast with great success on yellowtail and rockfish. The average anglers on these trips have been getting three to five yellowtail, a sack full of rockfish and an occasional lingcod each.

2/21 - 2/27 Dock Totals: 903 anglers aboard 47 boats out of San Diego landings this past week caught 302 yellowtail, 148 calico bass, 282 sand bass, 1,862 rockfish, 12 lingcod, 965 sculpin, 14 rubberlip seaperch, 5 bonito, 60 sanddab, 30 barracuda, 45 halfmoon, 12 blacksmith, 21 sheephead and 1 halibut.

Freshwater: Ditto from last week: “Largemouth bass fishing is improving in the San Diego county lakes quite a bit for both size and numbers caught. This is lunker season and the last couple weeks of warm weather, coupled with a healthy number of trout planted has fired up the big bucket-mouths.” Here we go again, except bigger. This past week, Lake Wohlford gave up the largest bass caught in San Diego County in two years at 16.3 pounds and a near 50-pound limit of five trout-plugged largemouth bass was caught at Lake Jennings.

Scheduled trout plants (lbs): 3/7 Jennings (1000), 3/8 Cuyamaca (1100), 3/9 Wohlford (1500), Dixon (1500)