caloundra Fishing Report 2025

Tom Rothery docked his Polaris Supreme July 18 after an eight-day trip with 16 anglers aboard. His group found some good fishing at Alijos Rocks and Alijos Bank.
"Yesterday we had good fishing on wahoo in the morning," he wrote Sunday July 15, "and excellent fishing on tuna in the afternoon. The average weight on the tuna ranged from 45 to 70 pounds. Our weather is still good. Chef Tommy put out some great meals again. Lunch yesterday was yellowtail served over fresh spinach, surrounded by black beans with a spicy avocado cilantro sauce. And dinner was Cornish game hens topped with a spicy apricot sauce on wild rice with grilled asparagus on the side.
"Fishing this morning has started off again with wahoo biting and this afternoon we will fish the tuna again. We still have some open spots on Sept. 8th an 8-day trip, if you want to come get some of these wahoo. Give Susan a call at 619-390-7890."
Boat builder Harold Davis fished on the trip. "It was a great group," said Harold, "and we had four guys who had been skippers on the Bongos boats in Newport Beach. The whole group was good fishermen; we didn't have many tangles or much shoulder bumping. We had excellent food, too, like prime rib, rack of lamb, Ahi steaks with wasabi. My best fish was a yellowfin tuna, but I got some wahoo on bombs; purple bombs."
Zander Rodriguez of Loveland, CO made his first long range trip with the group. Zander is entering the University of Colorado this fall as a baseball pitcher, at age 18. He also plays golf. He had the second-best yellowtail at 44.2 pounds, a wahoo, and also got a white seabass on the 13 Spot.
Skipper Rothery weighed the best fish on the certified scales at Fisherman's Landing. Daniel McCaffery of Norco won first place for a 60.8-pound yellowfin tuna. He said he fished a sardine on a 2/0 Super Mutu hook. He used 40-pound Big Game line on a TLD 20 reel and a seven-foot glass Calstar rod.

Bob Wolfson of Dana Point was second, for a 56.4-pound tuna, and Harold Davis, the boat builder from Morro Bay, won third place for his 52.4-pound Alijos yellowfin tuna.

What a delicious meal whipped up by Chef Roger and galleyman Gringo! Simply outstanding!

We had an excellent day of yellowtail fishing today. Jumbo yellows up to 46 pounds on our scale. Great weather the whole time. Hot and sunny and flat with a light breeze. Now we have to head north to get home. We're going to mess around with bottom fish for a couple hours in the morning then shoot offshore and try to find our lucky kelp.

~~July 31
 Good evening folks and welcome to the last July 31 of 2015 ever aboard the Polaris Supreme.  The water we fished today just didn't have that right feel to it if you know what I mean.  The whole set up changed since we were there 2 days ago.  It was 2 degrees cooler for one thing.  Maybe we weren't in the right zone , but I don't think so.  I think things were off as far as the tuna and Dorado goes.  We were finding bull kelp areas instead of nice bushy kelps and catching only dinker tuna.  I only saw one tuna over 10 pounds today and 10 pounds was a lunker.  Needless to say we let every single one of them go.  So at 7:00 pm, it was looking like we were going to chalk this one up as a travel day.  I was just about ready to shower.  I mean I literally had all my clothes on the floor with the shower water running when I heard the call.  "We have a real nice kelp up ahead".  I thought about it and decided I better suit up again just in case and it was the right move.  Easily the best kelp of the year.  Until well after sunset things were busy and exciting aboard the Polaris Supreme.  The whole boat was bit.  Every single person.  Wide open 14-25 pound yellowtails.  It was good.  4 fish per rod that stop.  Uh huh.  Dinner was much more satisfying than it was flling like it was going to be.

 Another reason dinner was so lovely would be a fella, my friend Herb Yamanaka.  Very possibly the nicest man in the world.  At least tied for the nicest man in the world.  Every year he spends I don't even know how much time behind the lathe machine, making everyone on board an original wooden bowl or things like it, and they're wonderful.  He works for the Oregon Ducks origination so go Ducks!!!

 Tomorrow we'll be arriving to Cedros at about 7 in the am.  We're going to plan on wind, and we're going to plan on some good tailing to go along with a good time.
      

~~Oct. 13-14
 Nothing to report on Oct. 13.  More of the same.  Though it was our last day so the cocktail hour was to a minimum.  We arrived to our destination around 1:30 in the am Tuesday morning.  We did a tour for flying fish (to use as bait) but we only caught a few.  We kicked the anchor over and most of us got a couple more hours of sleep.  Everyone got up at 0400 hours and got to work.  Some faster than others.  When I woke up George was the only one in the water so I thought I'd give him a hand.  I threw a sinker on a rig and dropped down a sardine and 5 minutes later we had our first tuna aboard.  About an 80 pounder.  It was our sashimi fish.  After that there was a whole lot of good shark and small tuna fishing going down so again during a time when no one was in the water (due to having to retie because of shark teeth), I dropped another bait down, this time on the rod Mark likes to call the OJ (no one knows why), and about 20-30 minutes later we had a 196 pounder aboard.  While that was going on George got hooked up and brought a 218 pounder over the rail.  It wasn't even light out yet.  After that the sharks fully took over.  It was pretty much unfishable so we didn't give it much time, we pulled anchor and got to trolling and for the next 8 hours or so it was steady striking on the wahoos.  Damn.  We caught about 5 per angler so I'd call that good for sure.  For the last few hours we got steady strikes on one of this groups favorite fishing methods, trolling the yummy fliers.  We caught a lot of tuna today on those and on the marauders and some on bait.  They were all mostly in the 120 pound range.

 The weather today sure was interesting.  The wind never had much strength but it couldn't pick a direction.  One minute it was coming out of the northeast, and the next it was coming out of the west.  It did that all day so for that and the sharkies giving us grief we never tried another anchor job today and we're spending the night adrift.  It also rained a whole lot this evening.  I'd say it was raining cats and dogs when I went to bed but it's cleared up now at 0100 hour as I write this on my watch.  One more hour and I'm going back to bed until 5 when we'll all be going back into battle.  Hopefully tomorrow these dang sharks leave us alone.

 

Oct. 13

Well we struck out on the bluefin today. It wasn't a called third strike, I mean we went down swinging but they definitely beat us today. We saw one good school in the dark hours of the a.m. that didn't stick and then found one deal that didn't react all that bitchen after daylight. We only landed five but they were beautiful fish. 35-50 pounders. Our afternoon was spent traveling down. We left that zone after lunch because we didn't have high hopes for the afternoon based on what we and the other boats had seen.

Our weather was good today. Cold, but not a whole lot of wind. We're going to be fishing for yellowfin tuna tomorrow at first light. They'll be a few of us looking around there so hopefully we get them located early.

 

In other news Mark tried to tell me that Steve Nash was as tall as he was and I called him out on it, bet him 20 dollars in which he agreed upon, and then I had to call my lovely wife to get her to Google it. I was right, he's 6'3" and now I'm 20 dollars richer. Here's the thing though, I spent almost 20 dollars in the phone call to win that bet so was it worth it? Absolutely. I would gladly spend more money then I'd win against Mark, he's fat, just to prove my point and make him 20 dollars less rich.

Real good fishing today in the morning on 70-125 lb. tuna. The afternoon seemed like it was going to be slow, but low and behold late in the day we got what we think is the biggest cow of the season so far. It taped out at 364 lbs. We see what the scales say.

On the recent Simpatico 6 day trip, anglers had access to fishing with Accurate rods and the new Valiant and Tern reels.

The outfits were perfect for the fish we encountered on the ridge. Wahoo, Yellowfin Tuna, Dorado, Yellowtail, and Grouper. 

Thank you Accurate for letting us try out such great gear!