Searcher’s 100-mile move pays off with big bluefin at night

Searcher Sportfishing’s Trip #4 left Fisherman’s Landing on Tuesday morning, May 19, 2026, for a 3-day limited-load run that covered May 19 through May 22, and the payoff came after the boat made a 100-mile move. The crew found big bluefin biting at night, the kind of window that rewards a captain willing to burn time and fuel instead of waiting for fish to come to the boat.

The report from Capt. Mike Todter’s Searcher Crew said the move put the boat on fish that were biting as good as they bite, with multiple opportunities at 100-plus-pound bluefin. For anglers watching the San Diego scene, that matters because it shows how quickly the fishery can shift from routine to trophy-grade. A limited-load trip raises the stakes even more, since every hookup carries more value when the boat is running lean and the focus stays on quality rather than crowding a rail.

The same picture was showing up in Fisherman’s Landing’s May 20 fish-count update, which said bluefin, yellowfin and dorado were all being caught within 1-day range. That update also pointed to the gear that was producing: most fish were falling to 25- to 30-pound flyline setups with fluorocarbon and smaller #4 to 1/0 hooks. It also said bluefin in the 80- to 130-pound class were already being seen and caught, confirming that San Diego boats were dealing with both school-size fish and heavy hitters at the same time.

Fisherman’s Landing had already flagged the strength of the bite on May 18, when it said bluefin fishing was going strong and a last-minute spot had opened on the Searcher trip. That detail fits the bigger lesson from Trip #4: when the fish are moving and the grade is there, the boats that commit to the run are the ones most likely to cash in. On this trip, the 100-mile move was not a gamble in the abstract. It was the move that put Searcher on big bluefin after dark, and in a fishery like San Diego’s, that is the difference between hoping and loading the deck.