Late Summer Slam: SoCal Islands Unleash Tuna, Halibut, and Bass Bonanza

This is Artificial Lure with your Pacific Ocean, California, fishing report for Friday, September 26, 2025. We’re heading into early fall, but the bite is still screaming summertime up and down the coast. Let’s start with conditions: sunrise came in at 7:01 AM this morning, with sunset dialed for 7:00 PM. Tides are showing some solid swings—high tide rolled through at 2:39 AM and again at 1:36 PM, with low at 7:35 AM and a second drop at 8:53 PM. That’s a good bit of movement, setting up both early morning and mid-afternoon windows for prime action, with a tidal coefficient up near 70, meaning lots of current and a strong bite window most of the day, especially around those changeovers, according to Tide-Forecast.com and Tides4Fishing. It’s been a classic late-September out here. As reported by BDOutdoors and the Southern California Bight update, yellows and halibut are still hitting at the islands, with steady bass fishing all along the coast from Marina del Rey down to Dana Point. Offshore, the story is all about bluefin tuna, yellowfin, yellowtail, and dorado. The Thunderbird and the Fury have been getting standout yellowtail overnight, and the Pacific Queen wrapped up a multi-day with limits of bluefin and yellowfin south of the border edges and out by the outer banks. Here in NorCal, boats out of Berkeley and Emeryville are stacking impressive numbers—California Dawn II ran 50 lingcod up to 22 pounds for 15 anglers, 250 rockfish, and 200 sanddab. New Easy Rider and Sea Wolf in Emeryville are posting over twenty lingcod apiece and plenty of rockfish. Monterey groundfish are still chewing, too, per Chris’ Fishing Trips. Stardust Sportfishing out of Santa Barbara reported a “damn good” haul of whitefish, rockfish, and a flurry of lings earlier in the week. Hot spots right now? For the big bendo, try the Farallon Islands or any of the deepwater reefs off Marin and San Mateo when the weather lets you cross out. In SoCal, Catalina and the northern Channel Islands are the move if you can get a boat ride, with halibut and yellowtail around. On the coast, the kelp beds off Palos Verdes or the boiler rocks off La Jolla and Dana Point are cranking out bass and occasional bonitos. Best lures and bait? Offshore, nothing’s beating a sardine flylined or a 130-gram Colt Sniper for yellowtail or dorado. At night, bluefin are responding well to knife jigs in 180–250 grams—dark blue or sardine colors—slow-pitch works. Calico bass along the coast are inhaling hardbaits like the Daiwa SP Minnow or Lucky Craft FM110, especially on a steady wind with a twitch. Dropper loop with live anchovy or squid gets it done if you’re fishing bait on the local sporties, and for rockfish, you want a shrimp fly or a glow squid-tipped with strip squid. Fish numbers are looking healthy: bluefin in the 30-80lb class, yellowtail mostly mid-grade with a few real tanks, regular limits on rockfish and lings, the occasional halibut mixed in the channel edges, and calicos running s This content was created in partnership and with the help of Artificial Intelligence AI.