shenandoah river Fishing Report 2024

Aug. 4
 Here we go again.  This time for 4 days.  Tough decision for me today.  Do i make a left or a right?  As always, they both have there advantages and disadvantages, but in the end, one outweighed the other.  So I made a left.  I hope I made the right decision  Good timing is everything.  We're bombing her down below.  We've been flying down all day and night and we"ll be fishing after lunch tomorrow.  One of the boats caught some tuna down this way today and we're going to try and get in on some of that.  We should have good weather for the trip as long as the forecast holds true.  We're hoping for lots of fish the next couple days.  I could use the pressure release.
       

Friday, July 26th, 2013

Hi friends. Tough day out here for us on the local Bluefin grounds. The weather gave us fits all day but we did manage to get a few handfuls of Bluefin this morning and a few off of a kelp later in the day. There's not too much to say about what happened today. The weather made things rather sporty but we gave it our all and are happy that we at least had a few stops to show for our efforts. The gang hung tough and we appreciate that from them. They definitely treated the last day like the first.

At around 18:00 hours, we had to call it a trip and begin our end of the trip chores. Chef Shawn just kicked out the Fillet Mignon and crab cakes, Tommy put the slide show on the 50" flat screen, and we enjoyed our final dinner together. Paul's group is always a pleasure to fish/dine/chat with and we had a ball once again. We'd like to say thanks to Paul and company for being the bomb.

Anyhow, our ride is decent as we travel up towards home. We'll be into the docks at 06:00 hours and the guys will be turning around for another 5-day adventure. Look for Drew's reports to be sent out tomorrow evening. Take care.

-The Supreme Team

 

Thursday, August 30th, 2012

Good evening, friends. Typical arrive/depart day for us on the Supreme today. We unloaded a beautiful catch of RSW-fresh yellowfin, bluefin, yellowtail, and dorado up to the top of the docks, unloaded the Joe Beck/Bob Vance group, headed to the fuel dock for fuel as well as an oil and fuel filter change, loaded up lots of groceries, and brought on the Garry Roberts group as well. After clearing the point with a decent load of bait, we enjoyed lunch, rigged tackle, and took some naps. A normal travel day for us with the exception of taking an hour at the end of the day to try and catch a few bluefin tuna. We didn't connect on any shortfins, so we continued our journey south and feasted on our standard prime rib departure meal. That's our day in a nutshell. Our weather is flat calm, sunny, and we're digging every second of it. We've gone from farmers tans, to tank top tans, and now it's time for a full-on shirtless bronze for this 9-day adventure.

Anyhow, to start our trip off, we'll be giving the offshore yellowfin/bluefin scene a try on Friday with the hopes of connecting with some of that better grade of fish. We're just going to take things day by day and we're closely monitoring Hurricane Ileana and her whereabouts. We'll chat with you tomorrow and fill you in on our day and our plan for the next. Wish us luck.

-The Supreme Team

~~Sept. 3
        I slept in this morning.  Travel day.  I awoke at 5:00 and went straight to the
computer to see if we'll be bluefin fishing tomorrow or yellow-finning up.  Bluefin
it is.  10 knot flags out there all day tomorrow.  Nice.  So we didn't fish at all
today.  No reason to.  We traveled through 4 other boat wakes from yesterday and
they didn't stop the boat so we weren't going to cost us tomorrows fishing time to
try and prove them wrong.  I trust our code boats.  The weather traveling up has
been ideal all day long.  The passengers did what they do, movies, books, and
relaxation while the crew took it easy and did some chores at a reasonable pace.
We did a lot of organizing of things.  We went through crates and boxes and nuts
and washers and bolts and things like that and just made sense of it all.  The crew
even got around to detailing our beautiful teak rails.

        The bluefin reports sounded good today so we're excited about getting up there for
a couple of days to finish up the trip.  We'll either spend 2 days blue-finning or
we'll do 1 day here and go get our yellowfin on for the last day.  I'm not sure.
That's what's so exciting about it all!
I may not sleep well tonight I'm so excited.  Maybe it's because the 1.5 hour after
lunch nap I took and/or all the coffee I've drunken since then.  Not because I'm
tired, I just love coffee.  I'm kidding.  I'm sure I'll sleep fine.  I've been doing
this a long time.

        My daughter turned 5 months yesterday.  People say the time flies and they're
right.  It sure does.

Oct. 7

Hello out there in the internet world of the Polaris Supreme. It's been a while since I have been able to write to you all. This is because down there in the lower lower latitudes our satellite service isn't available therefor I am unable to send out any emails. So this will be a trip wrap up of our time spent down below...

First of all we had a great trip. Of our 5 1/2 days down here we landed 50+ tuna over 100 pounds. 15 of those went over 200 pounds and 1 of those will most likely go over 300 pounds. It taped off at 297. A real beaut. We also released at least 17 tuna over 100 pounds and threw in 50+ wahoo as hole fillers. That's not a bad fish count for 20 anglers. We had 8 anglers. Fantastic.

We got a little nervous when we first arrived down there at 4:00 a.m. of the 2nd. We stopped the boat first on some flying fish to try for some of them to put on the kite and during the drift we could see many sharks swimming around and chasing the flyers. We got the anchor down around 5 and it wasn't getting better. A big shark problem is what we had on our hands. They were making it unfishable. We had a 1 hour window that morning when the tuna were more aggressive then the sharks and managed a handful of big tunas with the Jer-Bear getting one over 200 pounds but it was short lived. The tuna backed off and the sharks took over again. We had enough and tried pulling the anchor but it got stuck and we lost everything. Damn. While we were putting one of our spair sets on we trolled it up for wahoo but we couldn't get past the 50-80 pound tunas to get to the wahoo. On most trips that would be good but on this trip we release those babies. After doing that for a while we got the anchor back down and things never really got rolling. We had a shark problem. Like I said we, were a little nervous after the first day.

Day number 2 didn't start off any better. We had a shark problem. Every bait we put out hooked a grinner. We didn't give it too long before we got to trolling again and this is what we found out. The cows were biting the marauders. We were trolling them up! ? That was a first for me. We were getting fish from small ones we would release to fish up to 215! You never know with fishing. It's a crazy game. So we had it all figured out. For the rest of the day this is what we did. We would troll around with our marauders and our yummy flyers on the kite and catch tuna and wahoo. The 4 remaining anglers not trolling were getting them fishing sardines on the slide. We stayed very busy. 15 fish over 100 that day with 2 of those over 200. The weather picked up that day and would stay windy for the remainder of our time here.

Day 3 was more of the same except the sharks disappeared and we were getting more tired. The fish were getting harder to pull over the rail. We also lost our Matt to an injured knee. We're not sure how it happened. To much of banging it on the rail scooping flyers and he may of hit it on a tuna some how but however it went down he was done. He could barely move about the boat let alone gaff a 200 pounder. Also our fearless leader, and I mean that, hurt his back prier to the trip and has had a hurt wrist for some time now was of little help gaffing 200 pounders as well so we were down to 3 of us and a "Gringo". That's our galley assistant. That's right Gringo fans, he's been back for some time now. Any hoo around 5:00 p.m. things started to really liven up with tuna flying out of the water everywhere so we threw the anchor over and had pretty much wide open fishing on the bigguns till about 7:30. We landed 12 over 100, most of those closer to 200 with 4 of them over that mark. Nice.

Day 4 was different. The tuna stopped biting on the troll and things got back to the way we're used to. Anchor fishing and we did well. The fish started biting at 1:00 p.m. for a little while then things slowed down until around 5:30 when things went ballistic similar to the night prior. 11 fish over 100 with 4 of those over 200 and George getting his personal best which went 297. We're hoping it goes over 3 at the dock. We'll see. When I'm giving these fish counts keep in mind we are releasing many fish if they aren't in the 200 pound range.

Day 5 was pretty much spent on anchor. We had a late night with Brian being stuck on a big one for hours. We didn't get to bed until 11:00 p.m. so when the crew woke up at 4:00 a.m. nobody was awake except Charlie. Here's why. He had a 186 pounder completely wreck him. I mean he got his but kicked like I've never seen him get his but kicked before. This happened the day before so he went to bed early that night and was up with us bright and early. Anyways he had a 207 landed before anyone else was even up besides the crew. He hooked another one shortly after that too but after a long battle the fish one and lived to fight another day. We had more action throughout the day but there were many lulls in between the action but it was a slower day for sure. Not a slow day though. We had 7 over 100 with 3 of those going over 200 pounds. Tommy had been keeping an eye on the storm that's been brewing the whole time we were down there and decided on this night to start heading north to keep us all safe. The storm became a tropical storm and was still getting stronger and closer so we had to take off leaving 1 day to fish somewhere north.

Here are some firsts for me and most others on this boat that happened while we were down there: I have never seen a shark problem that bad and then seeing them disappear like they did. One hour it was not fishable and that afternoon they were pretty much all gone,. I have never seen a 200 pounder let alone so many 200 pounders and just big tuna in general bite the trolled marauders like they did for a few days down here. I have never seen a 186 pounder jump completely out of the water right next to the boat after being on the line for 5 minutes or any amount of time for that matter. The fish must have thought it was a dorado. I have never seen Charlie not at the rail 100% percent of the time the fish were biting and it's because of A. he's reached the age of 60 but mostly B. I have never seen fish fight as hard as they fought on this trip. I mean they were brutal. Mean mean fish. I have seen 350+ pounders come in much easier then the 160+ pounders we were hooking. We lost a lot of big fish on this trip. We think about 50% of the big ones we hooked we lost. Not because of angler error but because these were just mean mean fish.

Here are some of the pricey things that happened during the trip. We lost one set of anchor gear, we lost 2 big giant 12 volt batteries, our refrigerator broke down , we lost and broke 3 gaffs, fuel prices are nasty, but the look on Matts face when I offered him a sponge bath because he couldn't stand up in the shower was priceless. Oh Mathew. He's doing a little better then before. The swelling went down a little and there is a little less pain then he had before but the poor guy has got to be just borred out of his mind and just bummed he missed out on some great big mean tuna fishing.

We will keep you filled on the ride home .

131 Yellowfin Tuna 200 Skipjack Tuna.  Bring a 30-50 lb bait rod to fish big sardines and a 20-25 lb bait rod for small sardines.

Polaris Supreme Trip Update 10-02-2018 Today was absolutely gorgeous weather! We had good current, the water temperature, the water color was fantastic. Yeah I know you see it coming! We only caught 15 yellowtail for the day. Great sign and great conditions the fish just were not there. It looks like we're going to get a great day of traveling tomorrow. We're finished up and heading for home! Tomorrow will be a breakdown cleanup get ready for the dock day on Thursday. The guys have a beautiful catch to unload. The Polaris Supreme Crew!

Polaris Supreme Trip Update 11-23-2019 We left yesterday on an eight day private charter with 10 anglers! We got a nice load of bait in San Diego and had really smooth sailing down all day. Today the same program on the weather it was absolutely gorgeous all day and of course the usual rigging good food napping and camaraderie amongst crew and passengers. Looking forward to getting to the fishing grounds tomorrow! Seriously watching a gnarly storm coming in over Thanksgiving! May slide in a day early just to avoid a serious beating. Standby for more on that one were watching it closely. Looks like it's going to be a lot of good rain for California though. The Polaris Supreme Crew!