I took a look yesterday at the reported fish counts for the various Sportfishing landings between San Diego and Santa Barbara. I was a little surprised at how bad many of the catches were. Given the cost of trips today it really brings up the question of if such trips are worth the time and money. Southern California has the largest and best fleet of such boats but you wonder the health of the industry. The same in the north where salmon and sturgeon cannot be caught which in some cases leaves little else to be caught for Sportfishing boats except for halibut, sharks and rockfish (which appear in good numbers but see various regulation changes during the year). As for Sportfishing boats in more inland areas, what are the options?
Fish counts...
- Thread starter Ken Jones
- Start date
Based on some of my personal experiences with party boats, it seems like part of the reason counts are low is because the crews of the boats choose to spend the entire trip targeting "trophy" fish, such as Yellowtail, Bluefin Tuna, and White Sea Bass instead of "sack fillers", like Rockfish, Whitefish, and Sanddab. Although this results in the boat catching far less fish overall, the fish that are caught result in excellent photo opportunities for social media, which the crews and landings heavily publicize to attract more customers to their landing.
Perhaps true in some cases but those larger species are only common in some areas and bluefin tuna in particular are mainly the target of 2+ day trips. For many landings the 1/2 day and 3/4 day trips only saw a few fish per angler while the full day trips showed a few more fish depending upon the location, i.e., fishing offshore islands or deep-water reefs for rockfish.