arnesens Fishing Report 2024

Polaris Supreme Trip Update 09-28-2019 We had a nice day on the Wahoo with a few good grade tuna and a little grouper thrown in. The fishing started around 1 AM in the morning on mostly small yellowfin tuna and continued on until after daylight. Their is definitely a lot of pulling and jerkin going on with that small grade fish but not a lot of tagging for the amount of fish were landing. The weather has been giving us some serious grief. Last night it was up to and exceeding 20 kn. Mid day it slowed down to where we could troll around and it wasn't too bad but by sundown it was snorting again! It looks like we're going to have 2 to 3 more days of this. I guess this is us paying for those two beautiful days traveling down. It's not too bad on the anchor but trolling around isn't too fun early in the day and late in the afternoon. The guys are hanging in there and looking forward to tomorrow. The Polaris supreme crew!

~~July 14
  We had a bumpy ride last night.  It was windy.  So we didn't make the best of speed which translates to not having a whole lot of time to fish our last day when we were coming from so far away.  We found our edge pretty quick after daylight and we were getting a few strikes on small tuna but like I said, we didn't have a lot of time to fish it.  We were able to follow it up the line for a couple of hours getting the occasional strike before we had to call it a day and call it a trip.

 

 

  

The weather has been getting progressively nicer throughout the day and now we have a pretty darn good ride.  Everyone is doing what you do on travel days.  We had a nice fish taco lunch and last time I was in the galley the passengers were taking it way back and were watching the  90's classic "Deep Color" movie staring Tommy Rothery and the Polaris Supreme.

  We'll be in bright and early tomorrow and we're going to be turning back around on another 5 day trip.  Tommy will be going home and I'll be taking her out.  Gunny is hanging in there strong like the Marine he is and we're hoping he'll be back within a month.
           

~~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.
      

 

Captain Ryan Bostian checked in tonight with an update from the San Diego out of Seaforth Sportfishing in Mission Bay. Today we caught 2 Bluefin Tuna, 30 California Yellowtail and 1 Pacific Bonito. We never found the big yellowtail blowout we were looking for but we did see sign of Bluefin.

Ok guys I just got the final report from captain Brian Kiyohara. Brian has been driving the San Diego occasionally while the American Angler is shut down. Brian reported seeing 5 or 6 really nice schools of yellowtail today. Most of the schools would pop up to the surface long enough to get the binoculars on them but would vanish by the time he got the boat to them. We have seen this behavior in the past. A mid-day drift however did produce 3 bites from these 15-20 lb. fish. In the end the final talley for 24 anglers was 2 yellowtail 9 barracuda and 1 calico bass. Like I mentioned in my earlier report, these fish should bite better with the improving weather. The coastal eddy that we have had for 2 1/2 days is breaking down. Looks like a lite load tomorrow, make those resos and come on down.

Capt. Ryan

The Pacifica out of Seaforth Landing in San Diego, CA wrapped up a 2 day trip with 24 anglers.

Fish count:

43 Yellowfin Tuna

13 Skipjack Tuna

26 Bluefin Tuna

1 yellowtail 9 calico bass 165 reds 70 assorted rockfish. Excellent bottom fishing and a token trophy.

Our first day of Larry Brown's fathers day 5 day trip was spent offshore hunting the elusive albacore and blue fin tuna. We came up short. Although we were in good water most of the day, we did not find any tuna at all. Much travel needed to be done today to put us in position for our day tomorrow. Weather is good.

Drew and the super crew.