#3 Lucky One

Saturday 3/14/26

In the morning the fog was thick. We launched out of Dana Landing around 8 am and pointed north. On our way to La Jolla we found what appeared to be a fishy zone off Mission Bay, worked it for a few. We saw good marks, but no luck on the troll. When we got to La Jolla the ocean already seemed different than it did earlier in the week. Today there was bird activity and bait popping. Water temp was 63 and there were more pockets of clean water than there was earlier in the week. We followed the birds and the bait, trolled through it, stopped and threw jigs at it, but no luck. We decided to keep trolling, trying to find the zone. We followed the birds. Then out of the blue, hook up! A nice yellowtail couldn’t resist the rapala. We must have found a spot of fish because while one of us fought the yellowtail, another line with live bait went off and found a bonito. We kept the lucky yellow and let the bonito swim another day. We could have called it a day when the fish hit the deck at 9:30, but we fished a little longer. We didn’t see anything else happening, and many boats were fishing whitefish. The wind came up, so we decided to call it. We were back at the dock by noon.

Our lucky one! This yellowtail weighed in at 35 lbs on the scale at home.