santa cruz Fishing Report 2025

Hello everyone, Last night was awesome for Yellowfin tuna, the guys stayed up most of the night into the early hours of the morning catching these good grade tuna. When daylight came we did not have the same luck on the tuna. However we did manage to land some Wahoo. Hopefully tonight we have a similar experience with the tuna. Wish us luck, Team Supreme

Hello Everyone,

Today we started the day trying for Yellowtail and 20-40lb Bluefin Tuna. It was a great start. We had excellent fishing. We had to leave them biting at 9 am. From then on we changed gears to target larger Bluefin Tuna. Around lunch time we found them. Ranging in size from 70-200 lbs, most ranging from 130-150lbs. Most of them bit the kite, but the bait fish that we caught were landed on 100lb flyline with a size 2/0 Gamakatsu Nautilus HD hook. Getting a bite on heavy line required a small strong hook. If the hook was too big then there was a small chance at a bite. If the line was too light then there was a slim chance at landing the fish. It took the perfect combo for fly lineing to get a bite and to land one of these fish.

We will try for these big boys again tomorrow.

Wish us luck,
Team Supreme

Looks like we have some very strong winds coming on Friday and Saturday. If you plan on fishing this weekend. Sunday will probably be the best day.

Good evening everyone, Today we had Yellowfin tuna in our cross hairs. The morning started off slow and picked up as the day went on. With the increasing yellowfin action came more skip jack action as well. Eventually we were weeding through skip jack and small tuna to get to the nicer 12-25 lb tunas that were around. Mixed in with the tuna life we had a few Dorado and Yellowtail as well. The weather forecast looks good for tomorrow. We are excited to see whats in store for us! Wish us luck, Team Supreme

The Apollo had great fishing today. Limits of Red and Chucks including 24 Lingcod. Plus a nice bonus 24 pound Halibut. The weather is great, finally!

Yellowtail fishing fell on its face today we had about 1 around. But we managed to keep busy have fun and catch some killer table fair. Thats right Rock Cod. You should see the rock cod fishing we had, it was pretty darn good. We where lucky the yellowtail and the Rock cod grounds are one in the same and we could do both while waiting for the yellows to bite. The lings and reds made up most of our catch today. All of us are looking forward to dinner tonight, it is going to be fresh tuna we caught a few days ago. We will be back in the tuna grounds tomorrow to finish off our trip. Tommy and Crew.

~~Oct.16-20
 So for the last few days, I was either too busy to write a report or just too tired.  I knew these blogs wouldn't be making it out here until tomorrow anyway so I figured I would just do a 4 day report to explain the remainder of our trip down below so here it goes.

 When I left off, the sharks backed off and allowed us to have a great afternoon and we were hoping the sharks would do the same thing they did last year after the first couple of days which is leave.  That didn't happen.  It was a sharky trip for sure.  Brown Reef Sharks were in the picture for the remainder of the time we were down there.  Sometimes they were relentless and we'd have to pull anchor and go trolling for wahoo and other times they would back off just enough to allow us to scratch at the tunas and then other times they would back off completely.  They weren't tuna eaters though.  They let us wind in what we hooked, but they loved our kite baits.

 Anyways, we still had an excellent trip down there sharks or no sharks.  There were a lot of windows of opportunity and there were some slow windows as well.  There was almost always a window where we would get at least two cows before sunrise, and after that it never stayed consistent.  If we didn't need to sleep it would've been convenient.  I know we missed plenty of tuna bites in the dark hours through out the night but that's when we would sleep.  Like I said though we had an excellent trip and here are the numbers to prove it.

 130 yellowfin tuna and 60 wahoo for 8 guys for 6 days.  54 tuna kept.  11 over 200 lb's, 5 that may go when we weigh them on the dock scale, 6 between 170-180 and the rest were 100-150 pounds with much fish being in the 120-130 pound class.  We also released 76 of those too!  One release estimated to be around 200 pounds and several in the 150 pound range and like I said, many in the 120-130 pound range.  Our largest was 240 and next in line was a 234 pounder kept.

 Here are the team jackpot totals: 1st place goes to Charlie and Craig with 2 fish totaling 453 pounds.  2nd went to George and Scott with 2 totaling 414.  George also had 5 tuna over 200 pounds by the way.  One per day besides the last day.  3rd place went to the Jer-bear and JC with 399 pounds, and Brian and Bernie finished just behind them with 396 pounds.  None of this is official.  We still need to weigh them oin land.

 And that's basically how fishing was down there.  Here are some things that stand out to me while we were down there.  First of all I'd like to talk about KC.  I'm not saying he was scared, he just didn't seem too pumped on fighting one of these fish we call cows.  He wasn't the first or fifth for that matter to jump on a spot on the kite for example when one was available.  On the third day it couldn't be avoided.  He got up on that kite and when he did this particular time he hooked a big one and he handled it as well as anyone.  I mean he kicked that fishes @$$.  He came to battle and he won.  It taped out as a 193 pounder.  After that it wasn't hard to get KC up on the kite when a spot was presented.  It went from where the heck is KC, to him not leaving the rail at all.

 I let Mark know the Raiders lost.  I did it in a mean way too.  His birthday was the 16th I believe, and Chef Mike baked him a cake and we all sang happy birthday and when it was over, I gave him my birthday present which is spilling the beans on lying about the Raiders beating the Chargers.  Ha ha Mark.

 The weather was a lot less steamy the last few days down there.  It was still hot, but once the clouds went away it didn't feel like a sauna there anymore.  Although myself and a few others got the worse case of burnt lips we ever had.  I did it in a dumb way too.  I knew I should go get my chap stick from my room on the first day down there but my lips did;t feel like they were getting chapped so I thought, because of the humidity my lips weren't drying out and I didn't need protection.  Dumb, stupid and idiotic.  My lips may not have dried out but they still got as burnt as ever.

  So that's it.  We now travel for a few days.  The crew has plenty to do.  Clean, clean clean and sleep.  The passengers will be sleeping and celebrating a wonderful trip.  We'll be trying to break up the ride on our last day of travel by looking for a dorado kelp but that's still not for a couple more days.
      

 

We departed today with Chaparro's annual lite load charter. This is his 10th year! A fun group as always and the guys are anxious to get their lines wet. We got a nice load of bait and headed out west looking for albacore and yellowfin with only a few landed.

There were plenty of seiners. Our weather continues to be good. As we dine on steak and lobster we are looking forward to tomorrow to do some kelping. Our web master who handles all our updates will be out fishing himself for the next few days, so there won't be any reports posted until Thursday. Give Susan a call if you have any questions. Thanks and wish us luck.

Tommy and crew