Every summer in Southern California means tuna season… However this season has been rough. The tuna are around however they just haven`t decided to BITE.
This Friday was my third trip of the season and FINALLY with Success. We went out on an overnight trip leaving at 10 pm and returning the next day at 8 pm.
We went on a boat called the OUTER LIMITS out of Seaforth landing in San Diego. The tuna are relatively close from San Diego and are in the 50-60 mile range. This is good because that means extra fishing time!
We woke up around 4am and were anxious to get started. First light was around 5:45 and decided to start trolling, however this season the tuna are not biting the trolling feathers. This is very unfortunate because we like to fish the Slide with AA & Optimum Swimbaits. This is a very effective method of catching tuna when there are fish being caught on feathers. It`s especially effective on Albacore Tuna.
This trip there were no Albacore but we found Bluefin Tuna and Yellowfin Tuna. The day started very slow and the captain looked for Tuna marks for the first 3 hours without any luck. But around 9am we stopped and started to fish. There were 22 Anglers on board and 14 fish were caught. I was fortunate and caught 2 fish. I caught them on an ima RO Jig using the Butterfly technique. This technique is not too popular in Southern California and other anglers were curious to what I was doing. It worked great!! And Yes the very next day we made Nigiri Sushi and Negi Toro. It was so good and I can`t wait to get back out there.

Good Luck & Have Fun!
Matt

www.optimumbaits.com