southwest florida Fishing Report 2024

The fall fishing season is on, as could be seen in the catch brought back from Alijos Rocks and The Ridge by Polaris Supreme owner-skipper Tommy Rothery, who docked his rig at Fisherman's Landing September 16 after an right-day trip. "Wow, what a great day!" wrote Tom on September 13. "We had an awesome morning bite on the Dorado; big bulls and cows. We took a break at lunch and Pedro prepared a Southwestern 10 oz. burger that was delicious. He really nails the menu with his creative spices and herbs. Back out on the deck, we had excellent fishing on the wahoo throughout the whole day. And then to finish up the day we caught some yellowfin tuna. It was just a great, fun day. Dinner tonight was a spicy ginger shrimp curry; another great dish. Our weather all day has been beautiful. I hear it's been crappy up above and hope it lies down before we start up the line." Jeff Theurer of Pismo Beach got the best dorado, a 44-pound whopper that will now be the season's best. "I got it in 15 minutes," he said, "on 40-pound line. This is my best dorado and the best on the boat this trip."
Chris Fitzgerald of Lake Elsinore won first place for a 70.2-pound tuna. He caught it with a sardine, he said, on a 3/0 Mustad hook, 60-pound P-Line on an Avet 5-2 reel and a Seeker Black Steel 6470 rod.
Wayne Campbell of Huntington Beach was second for a 70-pounder, and Bill Vogel of Oceanside won third place for a 62.6-pound Alijos yellowfin tuna. Jeff Camplese of Helena, MT took the best wahoo, a 55.4-pounder, and brought it into the lineup shot.

Sunday, September 11th, 2011

Hi friends. Flat calm weather, sunshine, and Yellowfin tuna was on our wish-list today and our wishes were granted. It took the fish a little while to wake up this morning but when they showed their faces, we located them and introduced ourselves. We caught fish all sorts of ways today; jumpers, puddlers, breezers, jig strikes, meter marks, sonar marks, and the fishiest birds of all, Tern birds, were helping us locate schools today. We never had a really great stop but we pieced together a lot of good stops and we ended up with a fine catch for our anglers. Throw in some Bluefin and a few nice Dorado for color and you have the recipe for a fantastic day on the water. I honestly feel that with a little less boat pressure, the schools would've been more bountiful but it's hard to find much more to complain about today other than that. Everybody had a shot at a good school and we feel fortunate to be in the zone when they did pop up. It was easy to see them pop up from just about anywhere with the weather we had today. Jock straps and sun visor weather for sure.

So that's all. We're headed up the line and wish to arrive sometime around 0900 hours in the morning. We'll see what kind of speed we make rolling up. Our next report will come to you on Thursday evening as we depart on a 1.5 day trip. Take care.

-Team Supreme-

Saturday, September 10th, 2011

Good evening folks. We arrived this morning at 0800 hours, unloaded our fish and guests, and departed the docks @ 1300 hours to embark on our 2-day trip. Our bait looks OK, plenty good enough for some offshore fish to accept our offerings. The reports from the area are different. As of 1830, the boats were just now starting to get some jig strikes and see more sign of fish. Nonetheless, we'll be there first thing tomorrow morning to give it a full day and see what we can come up with. The weather here and for most of the coast is absolutely gorgeous, so we like that a lot. We also like that the forecast calls for more of the same. We're hoping the weatherman is correct and the fish pop up here for us tomorrow. Wish us luck and have a great day.

-Team Supreme-

Jodie called in to let us know that the Berkeley 1 Day Trip is a go. It will leave tomorrow night at 9:00 PM.

If you are interested in that trip call Sea Landing or call Jodie at 858-220-1593.

~~Sep. 16
 Yesterday morning I was looking at the positions and forecasts of positions and conditions of hurricane Odile and it sure looked to me like we'd be able to go around it that night.  So after consulting with Tommy, he did some research and he agreed.  And by dark yesterday I was 95 percent sure we could do it.  Not enough.  We need 100 percent out here.  So we headed straight west most of the night until I got an update on the storm at 2:00 am which made me 100 percent sure we could easily make it around the storm.  So we hung a left and we've been traveling all day heading for Alijos Rocks.  We had some choppy weather this morning but we couldn't tell by our ride because we were going with it.  Down swell = a good ride.  The weather is nice now that I write this and we're expecting the same the next few days at least.

 We usually expect a couple travel days on an 8 day trip and today was one of ours.  We did try really hard though to find a nice big dorado kelp but we were unsuccessful.  The only kelps we found weren't big enough to hold a school of mahi.  So we'll have to do it tomorrow or the next day.  Or the next, OK.  We'll be concentrating on wahoo first thing tomorrow. We'll be saying our wahoo prayers tonight.  I'll check back later.
         

Captain Ryan Bostian checked in this evening with an update from the San Diego out of Seaforth Sportfishing. Today we had 24 anglers catch 1 Yellowtail, 1 Bonito, 30 Barracuda and 44 Rockfish. We see schools of Yellowtail but most of them are totally addicted to one inch anchovy and difficult to hook. We are going to stick with the Islands for awhile and tomorrow is a definite go.

Say what????? Limits of Yellowfin (25-45 pounds) the last day of November and after our last storm. Yup! Great sign of 100-200 pound plus Bluefin too, but the couple bites we had got away quickly. We have a few more trips this week before we go to the boat yard.

19 bluefin 6 yellowfin 22 bonito 1 yellowtail. Encouraging sign for our first day back offshore.

Sep. 4

Another good day for us today. Most of the first half of the day was spent traveling. We did some trolling and stuff and stopped on a kelp and took advantage of the mackerel we got. There was a ton of tiny yellowtail and small tuna on it but as soon as I talked everyone into using mackerel we started getting bigger tuna and some dorado. Shortly there after we found a school of those cow bluefin but all we got out of it was a couple boils. No bites. We looked around for a while after that only catching tuna that we wouldn't put a tag on because they were too small. Then out of the blue we had a problem with the boat that made us need to be drifting to take care of it so our friends on the Spirit Of Adventure were getting ready to leave a drift to make it to new grounds by morning time so we took it over. Perfect timing too. We needed to stop so why not stop on fish. That's what we did and they snapped for us until dark. The issue was taken care of and we're now drifting and will stay that way until sunrise tomorrow. The weather was good today. Compared to the last 5 days it was windy and rolly as hell but we've been spoiled the last 5 days. It's normal good weather now.

Drew