(left) Happy young angler with a jackpot-winning 17-pound sheephead caught while fishing aboard the Dolphin half-day trip.
(right) A decent fish caught during a solid nighttime bluefin bite for the Old Glory to cap off a week of otherwise slow tuna fishing.

Dock Totals 4/21 – 4/27: 1110 anglers aboard 51 half-day to 3-day trips out of San Diego landings over the past week caught 25 bluefin tuna, 16 bocaccio, 9 bonito, 7 calico bass, 29 halibut, 106 lingcod, 4890 rockfish, 6 sand bass, 127 sculpin, 33 sheephead, 121 shortfin corvina, 330 whitefish, and 93 yellowtail.

Saltwater: While the bluefin continue to be picky when found, rockfish and yellowtail have been biting well. Might just have been a full moon thing, as that sometimes seems to slow the bite. Either way, the 1.5-day to 3-day boats are finding schools of bluefin holding deep but have been having a hard time getting them to turn on. As was the case last week, the tuna trips are getting some time in on quality rockfish when the tuna refuse to cooperate, with many limits caught.

Yellowtail have been biting more on the inshore high spots off Ensenada, Colinet, and San Quintin, as has been reported by panga operations and private boaters in the area. The problem there has been several days of strong wind out of the northwest, creating lumpy conditions and making it hard to get to the fish. On the calmer days between blows, the northern Baja fishery has been producing well on 15- to 25-pound yellowtail, rockfish, and lingcod. 

On Sunday April 21, the Pacific Voyager found some action on their 1.5-day coastal Baja trip, with limits of 75 rockfish and 51 yellowtail for the 15 anglers aboard. The Tribute ran outside with 27 anglers aboard for bluefin and wound up fishing the bottom after finding very slow action on the tuna, finishing their 1.5-day with 162 rockfish, 16 lingcod, and 2 bluefin tuna. Through the week, a few boats had a brief shot at bluefin, but it was a slow frustrating business, with only 25 total caught for the week. 

With the bluefin bite being slow and yellowtail off and on considering conditions, anglers are a bit hesitant to book trips, though there were over a thousand who went out this past week, reaching the four-figure mark for the second time so far in 2024. That will change soon; by summer we should see the normal 4000-5000 anglers per week riding out of the four main landings. As I am writing this, the Old Glory is reporting they had a solid night bite into the early morning, so I expect we will see the bluefin numbers climbing during this coming week as conditions lay down and more boats get out to the grounds. 

The best bet this time of year, when it can go from dead to wide open, is to book a trip that will arrive at the grounds with time to be able to fish through the dark hours, as bluefin tend to feed through the night in the spring. With the fish fairly close — near the Corner and south from 30-50 miles off the coast — most trips of 1.5 days and longer will be metering for schools and stopping on any promising marks through the nighttime hours as they head south/southwest. These boats have bunks, and they all advise to bring your own bedding, though anglers may want to catch a nap before the trip because, as is often the case this time of year, it may get hectic from around midnight until sunrise. 

Along the beaches and inside both Mission Bay and San Diego Bay, halibut have been biting very well. Recent grunion runs and the beginning of the halibut spawning season has sparked quite a bit of action for those seeking them from shore, kayaks, and private boats. The Dolphin finished up their annual halibut derby, which runs Wednesdays from February to the last Wednesday in April, with a flourish, posting up some nice catches over the last two weeks that included several legal halibut and nearly 150 shortfin corvina caught within San Diego Bay. The top three fish caught over the two-month derby: third-place winner Brad St. James’ 20.9-pounder, second place winner Danny Gonzalez’ 21.8-pounder, and Richard Parker’s first place 23.1-pound fish. Those are some quality halibut coming out of the bay.

Along with occasional batches of halibut along the beaches (whether they're spawning or sliding in behind grunion), barred surfperch have been biting well, with a few more chunky females in the mix. As the water warms, perch are also showing signs of spawning and are hitting mostly on sandcrabs, Gulp sand worms, and crankbaits like Lucky Craft 110 Flash Minnow. A few California corbina are also being caught from the sand, though it is still a little early for them. As sandcrab populations increase through the spring, we should see more corbina moving into the shallows to feed, and that's where they can be sight-fished. So far, most of the corbina caught have been incidental catches by anglers targeting perch. 

The best time of year to target the hard-pulling California corbina is through the summer into fall, when sandcrabs are plentiful and we have more sedate swells and conditions that allow them to feed all the way into the swash. Corbina are very strong swimmers, living a good part of their lives feeding in turbulent surf, but will also cruise back into intertidal zones in bays and lagoons to feed on ghost shrimp. With their down-turned mouths, they can blow shrimp out of holes in the clay by pumping their gill plates and pushing a rush of water strong enough to dislodge several inches of mud. California corbina are one of a very few fin fish that feed in this manner; it's more common to rays and shovelnose sand sharks. I like to check the flats on low tides for the signs of feeding. It is often easy to tell what predators were there by outlines in the mud: rays and sand sharks will leave their imprints as they lay deep into the mud, whereas corbina leave a hole from blowing and a groove where their slender body hangs tight to the bottom. Reading low tide-exposed ghost shrimp beds can give the angler a good idea of how active a spot might be during the high tide, and what species to most expect. They’re out there, so go get ‘em!