E. Pacific Fires Up: Karina + Lowell + New Wave Flushing Warm-Water Fish North 🎣🔥
Friends, the Eastern Pacific is lit up again this Saturday morning, August 29th.
The National Hurricane Center is issuing advisories on two named storms and watching another wave that is very likely to become a tropical depression this week.
Tropical Storm Karina is sitting about 710 miles southwest of the tip of Baja, near 15.6N / 117.6W. She is moving northwest at 12 mph with 65 mph winds. Forecast is for Karina to become a hurricane this weekend and she could be a major hurricane early next week. Good news for land: she is expected to stay well offshore and turn more west. The not-so-fun part: her swells start working southwest Mexico and the Baja Peninsula this weekend, so watch the south swell if you are running down the coast.
Tropical Storm Lowell is way out there — well east-southeast of the Hawaiian Islands — with 45 mph winds, drifting west. She is also forecast to strengthen and could become a hurricane. Hawaii interests should keep an eye on her, but she is still a long way from land.
South of southwestern Mexico there is a tropical wave with a 40 percent chance of becoming a depression in the next 48 hours and a 90 percent chance over the next seven days. That one is the one I am watching closest for our fishery. It is forecast to crawl west-northwest to northwest at 10 to 15 mph.
Here is why this matters to every angler from Ensenada to San Diego to the Channel Islands and even up the coast.
These tropical systems do not have to hit land to change our fishing. They mix the water column, pull warm tropical water north, and push bait and the fish that follow it. We have already seen it this month.
Wahoo have shown up near San Diego — that is a rare fish for our local water and a classic warm-water signature. Blue marlin have been hooked. Striped marlin numbers are way up. Dorado and yellowtail are stacked. And just two weeks ago a 151-pound striped marlin was caught about 40 miles off the Washington coast and looks to be a new state record. When a billfish is that far north, the ocean is telling you something.
San Diego harbor water was sitting around 76 degrees this morning. Local reports have been 73 to 75. That is tropical-flush water. The long-range boats are coming home with mixed bags of bluefin, yellowfin, dorado, yellowtail, the occasional wahoo, and released marlin. That is not a normal late-August local menu. That is Eastern Pacific heat getting shoved our way.
I am not a weatherman and I am not telling you to run into a storm. I am telling you what these systems historically do for us: they keep the warm-water species in play later and farther north than most years. Keep the wahoo gear on the boat. Keep a marlin outfit ready. Watch the kelp paddies and the temp breaks. And if you are running Mexico, respect the swell Karina is about to send.
Check http://friedmanadventures.com for Captain’s audios, landing and boat counts, bait availability, Friedman Adventures AI, Kids Corner, and lots more.
FREE End-of-Summer Surf Fishing Festival
Saturday, September 12, 2026 • 9am–12pm
Anderson St & PCH, Sunset Beach • noon raffle
Park across PCH. Big Fish Bait & Tackle in Seal Beach for bait and gear.
Stay safe on the water. The ocean is giving us a gift right now — go enjoy it.
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