tauranga harbour Fishing Report 2025

Aug 11

I'm not sure how i feel about today. I know at 3:30 I felt real bad. Extremely frustrated to say the least. 2 of the boats we were fishing with found schools early in the morning and drifted with it most of the day scratching away at the bluefin the whole time while we drove around seeing nothing. The other 2 boats we were with connected around 1:00 in the afternoon and were gettin um, so I was feeling sad and mad. I told Mark to switch gens and broke out the volt meter to see if we had a short somewhere. I figured there had to be a reason we were the only boat not drifting. We were looking in the same water with the same machines trolling the same jigs but just not seeing it. The truth of the matter is there was nothing wrong with the boat, her captain or the crew. Sometimes your just that guy. Sometimes your front row and sometimes your nose bleed.

OK, enough wining. The day turned out just fine. At 3:30 we found a boomer school and drifted on the 25-45 pound bluefin almost till dark. Everyone caught at least one with top dog Phil boating 6 of those beauts. The weather was great in the morning but increased wind velocity throughout the day and it was pretty choppy at dark. So with the weather coming up and our bait situation worsening, we're heading down to fish for yellows and try for some macks.

32 large bonito today. Weather is keeping us tied to the dock for a few days. Next available trip is Friday. Make those reservations.

Nice yellow Pablo! Made a little bit of squid and things were looking pretty fishy. Got one fish and saw some more. Game fish scene is straightening out.

Sunday night we spent the day targeting trophy bluefin with tall of the boys from fish 101 restaurant. We had some very good opportunities through out the day. Landing 12 fish biggest was right at 300lbs then closely followed by a beautiful 275lber and the rest where in the 60-80 lb range. 

Today we fished yellowfin tuna. Fishing was good, when the dust settled we had 113 fish in the hole all being 12-18 pound fish. We did also see a couple nice schools of bluefin but didn’t not hook any unfortunately. Back out tonight ! 

Sunday, August 26th, 2012

Hi friends. Typical day aboard a long range boat today. All of the deck crew was up at 0230 hours dealing with a maintenance issue that took a couple hours to resolve, back to bed for roughly an hour, wake up and start our day--hey now, that Ice Cube tune just came on 90's on 9 as I type again and yes, today was in fact a good day--off with some jig strikes on those beautiful 25-50 lb. yellowfin with only a handful of those 12-18 pounders in the mix. We hit a couple of schools throughout the day, had our normal slow time around lunch and in the afternoon time, just as I was half way through my strawberry popsicle, we got on a breezer, I reluctantly ditched my popsicle, and we drifted the rest of the day nailing those big yellowfin tuna. After drifting for the rest of the day, we put out the sack with a couple hours of daylight and the six people who were at the rail continued to catch fish on the sea anchor all the way until dark.

Excellent fishing on that really good grade of tuna. With only a few handfuls of that small fish and dorado, those big fish really were on it today and we'll be here tomorrow to try this all over again. Hopefully tonight we'll make some squid and this weather will come down a little bit. It's a little rolly out here but as long as we're catching beautiful tuna, we won't complain too much. See ya.

-The Supreme Team

25 pass. 17 bluefin 16 yellowfin. Most bluefin were 30-50lbs. The savvy angler would bring a 20lb rod and a 30-40lb rod with assortment of hooks from size 4-2/0. We are very light on reservations all next week. Call 619-224-3383 and make those resos. Bluefin is way better than turkey for Thanksgiving.

Wednesday, April 10th, 2013

Hello. Our first, full travel day was somewhat uneventful by normal standards but by our standards, it was a riot. We worked out, ate breakfast, fiddled about various boat/rigging projects, held a couple of seminars, rigged more tackle, and then, we ate lunch, napped, ate some more, rigged more tackle, and enjoyed dinner and a movie. That was pretty much our day in a nutshell.

Highlights of the day for me: 1. Mark trolled all morning for not even a sniff of a jig strike and then I relieved him of his duties so that he could eat lunch. I took my shirt off, sat in the chair for what I'm guessing was thirteen minutes and then, bam! Jig strike! How you like me now, Clark? Granted, it was about a an 8 lb. Yellowtail but the rest of his buddies were pretty hungry and we broke up the ride by pulling on some of his companions -- so that was fun. 2. Putting a bunch of dead bait and other nonsense into a food processor to feed to our bait. It's most likely the happiest bait on the planet right now as they were fattened up all day. I'm serious, they're getting the "bluefin tuna in the pens" treatment. They are happy. 3. The movie "Flight". I only was able to catch the first half of what I first thought was "Requiem For A Dream Part II" but then the airplane stuff started. I'm sorry if this statement is insensitive but Denzel Washington can sure make a cocaine-using, alcoholic, cigarette-smoker look so good in a movie. Great actor. Can't wait to see how the rest of the film plays out.

Anyhow, not too much to report today other than my usual idiotic banter. Oh yeah, before I forget. After twelve years in this business, I finally got to examine and learn about a new species of fish I've never heard about nor seen: a "Mid-Shipman (?)" I believe is what it is called. Of all the places to examine and identify this new creature, it was dead on the fuel dock. That's the advantage of having a stud biologist on the boat. Thanks, Scootch. Basically, this thing looks like a Catfish without whiskers and that's what we were calling it until Uncle Scootch swooped in and set us straight.

So that's all. Tomorrow, we'll be driving by Rocas Alijos and we'll give it a try for some Yellowtail for tacos and roe to feed the bait. We'll make our intended destination around lunch time and then we'll be headed back on our merry way. Thanks for checking in.

-The Supreme Team

Its always nice to have great fishing to report about and I really wish I did but I don't. It started off looking great with a morning bite of the good grade Bluefin on the sea anchor but shut off after about a hour and a half. We spent the rest of the day catching a little here and a little their. All the components where their. We had 4 good to huge schools. Numerous poppers balls, stacks and bunches of fish, but it just never happened. The weather was great and Toms anglers worked hard at it. The highlight of the day was when Joe Gigliotti made his signature home made pizza for snacks. It was killer. As far as fishing goes this was just one of those days that make it all that much sweeter when they bite. Thanks for tuning in and we will see you tomorrow.

Tommy and the Polaris Supreme crew.