monmouth county Fishing Report 2024

Larry Brown chartermastered the ten-day 976 TUNA Catch & Release Fundraiser aboard the Polaris Supreme that returned November 7, and he won second place in the jackpot to boot. Owner-skipper Tom Rothery handled the helm. "We released 352 fish," said Larry at Fisherman's Landing. On November 1, he posted this: "This is a two-day report, as we didn't have much fun yesterday. They call it a fishing trip, not a catching trip, for a good reason. Yesterday we had one of those inevitable days of fishing and catching a lot, but it was poor quality and most all fish where released. It makes you appreciate those other wide open days on quality fish. Today we struggled again in the morning until Tommy found the area with the good water. We had a great afternoon with epic, limit style dorado fishing on beautiful grade flat heads. Even though the quality was fantastic we released 85% of the fish we caught providing us with good Karma which came in the form of wahoo. Weeding through the dodos was a challenge, but we managed to score a decent catch of these great eating speedsters." At the weigh-in, Phillip Smith of Sebastian, FL showed off a dorado he caught on a sardine and 20-pound spinning tackle. Alex Bravo of San Diego won first place in the Supreme's jackpot, for a chunky 73.8-pound wahoo. He said he bagged it with a gold and purple Burns Bob, on 40-pound Ande line, a Trinidad 30 reel and a Penn Sabre six and a half-foot rod. "We had a jig strike, and this one bit on the slide," said Bravo. "He almost spooled me. He had me down to 12 wraps of line on the reel." Larry Brown of Playa del Rey was second, for a 48.9-pound ‚Дтhoo that he got with a Tady 9 jig in blue and chrome. John Quick of Alamdeda was third, for a 47.6-pound skinny that ate a blue, red and purple Burns Bomb. Karl Bornemann of Hemet stood in with the group with his 35-pound dorado.

~~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.
      

Mahi Mahi starting to bite ! Finally these dorados we have been looking at for over a week are starting to bite. Today we went out with 24 anglers and caught 28 dorado and 4 yellowtail. We will be fishing offshore everyday ! Bluefin tuna , yellowtail and dorado are all on the menu. Bring your fly line bait rods and come see us.

Capt Mike Pritchard checked in with this report from the Tribute. "Another great day of fishing here. We have limits of Yellowtail. Now we are in search of some Bluefin. We have caught one so far.

Aug. 14
    Arrive depart today.  We offloaded a beautiful catch, got fuel, changed oil + fuel filters, swapped out some crew and left the dock by 10:00.  We're good.  We left on a very long running charter called the Heil charter.  I won't go into our bait loading, I'll just say we have some bait on board.  We were in the fishing grounds before 3:00 this afternoon.  The couple boats that departed yesterday had some good yellow finning.  When we got there it just had that "should've been here yesterday" kind of feel to it.  We didn't see much.  We had one long drift where we picked up 14 but other then that it didn't feel like we were going to get a hit so we rolled out of that zone.  Below there didn't look much better until right around 8:00 when the sun fell we had a good old fashioned blind jig strike that resulted in a good stop.  We always fish till the end over here and tonight we were rewarded.  The fish bit full speed but only for a flash but it was long enough to get everyone on board at least one with many getting three or more.  They were snapping.  I call departure fish free fish because we weren't even supposed to be fishing.  They're free.  Anyways we're going to fish again tomorrow.  See you then.
                             
     Oh yeah, the weather is still sooo nice.  We're going to have to pay for this stretch.

Mike Pritchard called in with this report from the Tribute. "So far we have a really good sign of Bluefin. We have definitely lost a lot more than we have landed. Right now we have 7 or 8 fish. The fish are running 40 lbs. to 50 lbs. Some of the fish we have lost is just due to insufficient tackle. These are really very large Bluefin. I know there was 1 Bluefin caught here yesterday that ran about 180 lbs. So if you are coming out on a trip you want to make sure you bring the right tackle. 40 lbs. would be the bare minimum. We'll keep you informed as the day progresses.

Captain Ryan Bostian checked in this evening with an update from “The San Diego” out of Seaforth Sportfishing in Mission Bay! Today we had 34 passengers catch 7 Bluefin Tuna (20 to 55 pounds) and 12 Yellowtail. We had several heartbreaks on 75 to 120 pounders. Please bring a 25 to 30 pound rod as well as a 50 pound rod. A Talica 16 is perfect for the larger grade fish. The San Diego is online everyday at 5:30 AM. Call (619) 224-3383 or BOOK ONLINE at www.thesandiego.com.

We started off with a good morning bite where Jeff Hoover pull in a 78 lb. bluefin. We also caught some smaller grade bluefin and a nice grade of yellowfin. However it was short lived. By 9am we were off scratching for small, medium and nice grade albacore for the rest of the day. For this trip we scratched away every day and caught enough fish for everyone to take home. Our eta for tomorrow will be 7:30 am and then Drew will take out the next one which is the 2nd annual Let's Talk Hook-up Charter. Weather has been excellent. Well it's time to go down for dinner. Tonight will be surf and turf, steak and lobster. Thanks for checking in.