mooloolaba Fishing Report 2025

~~Oct. 11
 And here's what we did today.  The crew rigged up mucho tackle.  I'm talking the grande stuff for the grande fish.  After that and after breakfast we did our tuna seminar and I talked Tommy into doing a couple parts of the seminar.  All I know for the past 10 years is my tuna seminar.  It's nice to get a different perspective.  Anyways, after that we were finishing up tackle rigging when poof, all three trollers went off.  So we caught a couple meals.  3 nice dorado.  So then it was lunch time of street tacos.  And then some napping went down and the afternoon movie was Caddy Shack.  When 5:00 rolls around it's cocktail hour and it looks glorious.  Drinks, cigars, and friends.  Then we had baby back ribs for dinner.  Once again like the first 2 nights we tried for some giant squid to use as bait, but we were unsuccessful. 

 Still no storms brewing up down below and we're getting more and more confident we won't be getting pushed out of the fishing grounds until we say so.  2 more days of travel before we arrive.  Everyone is enjoying themselves now because in a couple days, it's going to be war.  We'll be battling it out with 200+ pound tuna and wahoo.
      

With great anticipation of a light load aboard the Apollo, all 14 of us anglers showed up at the dock early, swapping stories about past trips. We started boarding about 9:30pm and were greeted by Capt JJ Gerritsen and the rest of his crew, we signed in and had a seat for our safety briefing. Capt JJ then asked if we wanted to head offshore for Albacore which had dramatically slowed down the last couple days or head south along the coast for a shot at Dorado and Yellowfin and Yellowtail patty hopping. Without much hesitation we decided to head south and patty hop. We got the feathers in at gray light and started the troll, within 15 minutes the yell of "Hook-up" sang out, unfortunately the mystery fish got away and we were under way again. Five minutes later we heard that yell again, the mystery fish won round two and will live another day. Third time's a charm didn't hold true for us, our third hook-up is still out there in the deep blue. At that point the first troll rotation was fired (which included me) and the second shift took over. Within 10 minutes they had our first fish on the deck, a skipjack, from that point on while looking for patties we boated about 19 skipjack. We found our first patty around 10am and moved in with hopes of a wide open bite, but to our dismay there was nobody home. That held true for the next 8 patties we found, then finally around noon with a mouth full of burger, we heard the call to get ready. Never fails every time your food is done, it's time to drop a line. As soon as our sardines hit the water the patty expolded, we ended up with 1 Dorado and 2 Yellowtail. We only found two two more patties holding fish and ended up with 1 more Dorado and 4 yellowtail. It was now time to head back to port and we again set out the troll lines and managed to pick up 7 Yellowfin Tuna on the way back in. I really enjoyed sharing the rail with a great bunch of folks and look forward to doing it again soon. If you would like any of the pictures posted please email me at [email protected] .

We gave it the Dark till Dark effort and came up dry. We did however see multiple very nice schools of yellowfin that were not interested in our hooks.

Oct. 13

Good afternoon from the Polaris Supreme. We returned this morning from our 6 day trip and off loaded our candy of the ocean. I'm not kidding you. Those bluefin are so darn good I could just make a shake out of them and drink them. I had the pleasure of getting my hands on a few this year and had the big fat belly of one last time I was off and the way I did it was so darn good I'm going to tell you how I did it for the people who caught those beauties this year. Salt, pepper and olive oil on the meat side. Put the belly skin side down on the grill and cook it through. If you flip it at all only do it for a few seconds at the very end. On the stove mix soy sauce, maple syrup and a splash of water and heat warm. Pour on top of fish and enjoy.

Big fish goes as follows: The big bluefins of the trip went from 68 up to 123 pounds, the wahoo was 58 pounds, and I weighed a yellowfin at 51 pounds and we caught several of those so some good quality fish there.

We departed on Joe Gigliotti's 2nd annual 8 day accurate adventure excursion quest outing journey tour ride drive cruise stroll trek trip this morning. Our bait looked mostly good. The last box we took scaled up after our first few scoops so I had the pleasure of taking part in my first bait bucketing. That's where you use buckets to scoop the bait as opposed to nets to put it onboard. It has it's advantages and disadvantages and one advantage is that it's a good workout. Holy moly. After that we had a lovely lunch and some lovely tackle rigging. I had a lovely nap as well and I jumped on the band wagon. I now started the Suzanne Collins Hunger Games trilogy. Richie and chef Shawn have book club meetings on them and I just couldn't be left out so here we go. Plus my David Lee Roth bio still isn't in, damn you amazon.

I'm handing the keyboard off to hopefully Richie for your reading sake, Tommy's out but I sure you want to read Richie's writing. I do. See ya!

Drew

Jodie called in with this report for the Apollo. "We have an Open Party 2 Day Trip for July 4th & 5th. We will be leaving from Fisherman's Landing on July 3rd at 10:00 0'clock. We will be targeting Bluefin Tuna. They are starting to bite at 125 miles. If you'd like more information or want to make a reservation 619-221-8500."

~~Aug 5
 The pressure is off.  We never made it down to any Island today like we planned.  At about 9 am or so the sonar went clunk, clunk and we went sideways for an hour.  It wasn't the best grade but it definitely wasn't the worst.  It was this years middle grade. 8-14 pounds with a sprinkling of 16-22 pounders in the mix.  Like I said, not the best but not the 2-6 pounders either.  But for a stressed out 4 day captain, it was lovely.  They bit good for about an hour and then they backed off.  After that we dedicated ourselves to that zone.  We figured that school of 14-25 pounders was just right over there.  It wasn't.  We didn't see another school of tuna.  However, we did find a nice kelp loaded up with big yellowtail.  They bit really well for a while too.  In fact , they were on the corner like tuna get on the corner for a good 20 minutes and when they backed off the corner, they still bit good for a while.  Other then that though we didn't see much other then the occasional small tuna on the trolling jigs but we're stoked for what we got today.  The pressure is off.

 We're going to stick with the plan and spend tomorrow at an Island hopefully drifting for hours.  The weather has finally backed off after a couple weeks of blowing.  Hopefully we get some descent weather for a nice long stretch and can get back to fishing where we please when we please.
     

49 yellowfin 48 skipjack. Didn’t find the right school until we were out of time, and daylight.

Something a little bit different for the first day of our 2 day charter. 26 Yellowtail so far with a few fat ones this morning up to 30 pounds and some Calicos to go with it.