lake mendota Fishing Report 2024

Polaris Supreme Trip Update 09-27-2018 #2 Well is our second report for today! We left yesterday nice and early after unloading our beautiful three day catch! We have traveled all day today doing the usual rigging and eating! We really don't have a whole lot to report. We will be fishing first thing tomorrow morning and looking forward to dinner a good night sleep and waking up to a good weather and great fishing tomorrow. Wish us luck. The Polaris supreme crew..

Capt Mike Pritchard called in last night from the Tribute last night with an update, they were on day 2 of a 4.5 day trip. They arrived Colonet around 10 am, very good Yellowtail fishing from 18 - 28 lbs. We did have a lot of casualties and ended the day with 53 Yellowtail and probably lost just as many. The Yoyo fishing was the most fun, but we had a hard time getting them off the bottom with 50 lb rigs. So far today we have 25 Yellowtail, as the weather gets nicer we are going to head offshore. We will check back in again later.

Sien On and his charter group got a quick shot in the bottom of the ninth. They landed 31 yellowfin 8 yellowtail 2 bonito. A small hook and 20lb fluorocarbon got most of the bites.

~~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.
      

Friday, May 11, 2012

Hi friends. Our week consisted of us mainly preparing for the final major painting projects to be completed. We completed the necessary steps for the bait tank and bus stop to receive a new paint job. Tomorrow, Jamie and myself will be down at the boat to scuff up the first coat of gloss, wipe down, and hang out as the painters finish up the final coat. We'll have Sunday off and then on Monday, it'll be time to hustle up and get the boat back in the water. A few other chores on the list before we say farewell to Knight & Carver Yacht Center include sanding the rails to be refinished at another time, put the liferafts back on the boat, install all the new zincs and pray the we're back in the water Tuesday or Wednesday. Drew, Tommie, Mark, Jamie and myself are really looking forward to getting the boat back in the water and once back at the docks, our dirtiest chores are pretty much over and all the remains are little "knick knack" cosmetic things, putting the new freezer box on the upper deck, painting the deck, refinishing the rails and a few mechanical repairs. We're starting to see light at the end of the tunnel and it's a beautiful sight.

In other news, Jed went under the knife on Thursday to have his tendon repaired in his thumb and all went well and from what he said, it will be six to eight weeks of recovery time followed by some physical therapy. Jed's doing just fine and here's to a speedy recovery to have him back on the boat sometime in August.

With that, our weekend is looking good for some relaxation, Clippers/Lakers game sevens, Kings/Coyotes hockey and the Gator By the Bay festival at Spanish Landing in San Diego Bay. We hope you all enjoy your weekend as well. Take care everyone!

We're off to a very god start here this morning," said Mike Pritchard. "We're down here at about the 100 mile mark with very nice weather. We're doing well on the kelps and have some open water jig strikes. So far we have 71 Yellowfin Tuna, 61 Yellowtail and a handful of Dorado & Skipjack, for 26 anglers.

"We do leave on a 1.5 Day trip tomorrow night there is still room and the weather should be good. We'll check back later."

July 18 We couldn't get in our groove today. Stops for 1,1,1,1,1. Saw plenty of fish. Nothing I would call a school but descent balls of fish that just wouldn't react for us. And that's all I have to say about that. Arrive depart tomorrow on another 5 day. July 17 We made awful time coming up the line from Cedros last night then all day we got tied up with all the tons of bluefin schools we passed along the way. 60 miles of the fish. We also scratched yellows on the kelps we went by. The albacore evening area moved up 20 miles and we didn't get to the grounds until 3:15.

 

 

 

We did manage to find a couple hungry biting schools of albacore before dark and put some more meat on the boat currently chilling at a comfortable 30 degrees. Weather is fine and we're going to enjoy some delicious lamb chop for dinner and hit the rack. We'll be here tomorrow to finish up the trip. We are far away from home but we'll stay as long as the fish are biting. Sorry Tommy, we might be getting home late on Monday. July 16 For the past 2 weeks if you were a long range boat at Cedros you just rolled up to a certain spot on the island, shut down and made a day of it. Not today, that certain spot was not happening today. We had to fish. It took a while to locate them but around 11:30 we did. 6 schools up at a time. Unfortunately they were not biting fish. We'd stop on a big school for 6, stop on one for 3,1,0,6,12, like that. At 5:30 we stopped on the mother load school and had them almost jumping in the boat they were so thick but yet again, it didn't bite like advertised. We did get quite a few there and hit a couple more schools before dark where we caught some fish. Perfect weather today and should remain that way for at least a couple more days. We're going to take advantage of the glassy sea and head back offshore for the remainder of the trip. Good night. Drew and the famous crew of the Polaris Supreme. July 15 We started off at the night before hot evening bite area with the fleet. We drove 20 miles to far before light. A code boat who had a later jump passed through that area at daylight and found some biting albacore. So the fleet slides up 20 miles. When we got up there we had time for a couple of stops before the door slammed shut. From then until we left, SLOW. We started to slide down. 20 miles later we're back where we started and we see the fish. 1 good stop, 3 short stops and 1 great stop later, we're headed down to the Island for some great yellowtail fishing and sun block wearing weather. Oh yeah, the weather today was just fine. Drew and the crew. July 14 Good afternoon viewers. We arrived at the dock early this morning and weighed up jackpot. 1st was Tim Ryan with a 36.6 albacore. Second was Kirk Kirkpatrick with his 34.6 pounder and bringing up third was Dennis Mc Neely with one at 33.6. We are now rolling down in beautiful much overdue sunny weather. We have a full load of fantastic sardine and passengers eager to use them. I'm just sitting in the wheelhouse starring at my water charts and listening to my code boats trying to figure out where to be tomorrow. We're going to start somewhere offshore tuna fishing. The reports don't sound to great so we might have to do some fishing tomorrow and try and relocate these albacore. The weather forecast looks great so we have that going for us. It's almost seminar time and shortly there after dinner time.

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 .