lake norman striper Fishing Report 2025

Polaris Supreme Trip Report 08-13-2016 We had another fun day today! Today was a little different though most of the fun was catching fish not traveling. We had very good yellowtail fishing all day, we started off right at the crack of dawn with flurry fishing which progressed into a wide-open bite for several hours and then flurry fishing again! After a midday low it all started up again through the rest of the day. We were catching fish mostly on bait. Fly lighting was number one with dropper loop fishing coming in a close second. We didn't have a lot of jig fish but that probably was contributed to the fact that we didn't have anyone fishing jigs most of the time. Weather is excellent and were hoping to do this again tomorrow. Thanks for tuning in the Polaris Supreme Team!

~~This is the after picture of the port side navigation system. If you notice, the monitor itself is a daylight monitor. The sun is shining directly on it and you can still see the screen. This system has radar, a plotter, and a fathometer. And it's all AIS capable. (Automated identification system) All ships that have AIS, can be tracked on a website, called www.marinetraffic.com. All of the systems can be overlaid so you can have your plotter, radar, and depth viewed at the same time

 

 

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This is the starboard side navigation system. Which is identical to the port. In addition to the previous mentioned features, the monitor can be switched to a computer system which has Nobel Tech times zero catch navigation fish finding and my favorite, bottom mapping system on it. You can, and we have been, making our own bottom maps for the previous three years. Cool stuff. In addition it has live weather from Weather Works XM Weather. Also it has SeaView Ocean Imaging capabilities to where we can download water temperature, chlorophyll, sea height, ect. The port system also has its own computer.

 

~~The monitor on the left is a sound activated fathometer for fish finding. And the monitor on the right is a daylight monitor for our sonar, for fish finding. In the front is one of our pairs of Gyroscopic binoculars

~~All of these electronics need new antennas. And this is how they get there. We literally pulled out a third of a dock cart of old wiring

 

 

~~Say good bye to the old radars.

~~Drew grinding away on a little cancer on the deck.

~~The roto hammer is one of our favorite tools for chipping up cancerous areas on the deck, but the noise is unbearable to our neighbors in the boat yard.

~~The deck hatches had to be completely stripped

~~We re-skinned the outside of the galley doors. They now have a nice white formica finish.

~~Creative, yes. But I bet he spent a half hour looking for that office chair in the boat yard!

~~The boat looks kinda small in some of these upcoming pictures without Tommie in them for perspective.  ~~Jed's missing from these shots because he was taking the pictures.

 

 

~~Drew resealing inspection plates for exhaust

~~Tommie detailing wood work

~~Tommie prepping for paint

~~Final coat of deck paint. Looking good!

 

 

Polaris Supreme Update Nov.5

 

We weighed jack pot yesterday. Big fish went like this. Bernie 218, Charlie 208 I think, Jeremi 206. So once again myself and the crew thank George and his guests for another fun trip. J.C. thank you for the sun glasses. We'll see you guys on the golf course if we ever get it going. If not we'll see you in Big Sky. Can't wait!

I'll leave this trip with a story about a few of the crew and my friend," big fish" Charlie Middleton. At the beginning of the trip Mark the crow member Clark thought it would be a good idea for the crew to have a personal jackpot for the tuna they catch during they're watch. The rules were simple. To qualify your fish had to be caught between 8 at night and 5 in the morning. They allowed passenger Charlie Middleton to join them too. Immediately I'm out. I know better then to go up against that man but the rest of the crew did not. Unfortunately the fish didn't bite this time during those hours but Charlie managed to get one the second to last morning at 4 30 in the am. On the way home the crew finally paid him. I come to find out the morning we got in Charlie gave the crew they're money back and they excepted it. I am very disappointed in Jed, Gunny and Mark. They excepted it! Can you believe it? If it were me I would have burned the money before taking it back from Charlie. I know that's illegal but come on. I think that was in Charlie's plans the whole time. To just demoralize these crew members.

Now we've left on Lon Mikkelsen and this years co charter master John Esler's 10 day adventure. We have an awesome load of bait on board. Best of the year. We're going to have breakfast in the morning, have our seminar and then we're going to spend tomorrow pulling on nice yellowtails. It makes more since to Tommy to fish this species early in the trip as apposed to later on in the trip due to where the rest of the fishing will take place later on in the trip. So that's the game plan to start. Check back tomorrow for more details. As I was typing this I thought of a Hedburgh joke. If I lost 9 fingers I would still type just as fast. So true for me.

See yah. Drew

Today our 22 anglers landed 44 Yellowtail and 19 Bonito.  Tomorrow is a definite go with a light load.  Get out and enjoy this fishing before the bad weather starts.

July 28
    Today we had about as good of yellowtail fishing as you can get.  Quality to quantity ratio, holy Toledo.  18-25 pound fish and they were biting pretty much as full speed as yellows bite for a couple hours and after that it slowed down but they were still biting well for a couple more.  If you have read my past reports you know that surface iron fishing on big yellows is my favorite kind of fishing and it was pretty much wide open on the surface iron.  Holy Toledo!  I'm not the only one who felt this way either.  We have a Polaris Supreme first timer on board, his name is Josh and he may love it more then me.  He named his dog after a surface iron.  Tady.  How cool is that?  We've had a tank of mackerel on board for about 3 weeks and we finally let them go today.  On hooks that is before getting eaten by yellows.  In the late afternoon ewe looked for bait and found some a couple hours before dark and caught a tank full of nice mackerel.  We restocked our supply.  We made a couple drifts along a kelp line while the sun set and tugged on a few calico bass and now we're headed up to fish tuna tomorrow.  Sweet dreams.
                            
    Oh yeah, Happy Anniversary to Renee.  I think you know who that's from Renee.
                    

 

Polaris Supreme Trip update 11-25-2019 We woke up this morning to a beautiful calm day and a gorgeous sunrise! It looks pretty similar to the sunset we had yesterday. We had some good fishing on small grade yellowtail and a few more tuna for the boys. The Wahoo were definitely absent yesterday and today. Tomorrow that is going to be our main target species. We most likely will be coming in a day early on this trip sometime Friday or Thursday late. We've been watching that storm coming in over Thanksgiving Thursday and then continuing through Friday and we want to avoid getting caught in the middle of it. You can do these kind of things when you have a private charter! Right now the forecast for departing on Saturday looks like excellent weather as far as we can see on the forecast through the fourth of December. Thanks for tuning in! The Polaris Supreme Crew!

J. J. Gerritsen docked his Apollo at Fisherman's landing January 21 after a trip of a day and a half to the Colnett area. "We fished the high spots," he said, "when we saw really good sign of yellows on the sonar. We had good action on drifts for 26 yellowtail, most on yoyo jigs in blue and white or scrambled eggs color. "About 9:30 a.m. we moved into deeper water to rockfish on slow drifts. We had excellent ling cod fishing on lings up to 20 pounds. We got 78 of them, mostly on the dropper loop with sardines, but some on jigs, too. We filled out our limits with reds anmd some large bonito. There were a lot of bonito around, up to 14 pounds. "We also had a flurry of Humboldt squid, which hindered the yellowtail fishing until they left." J. J. said he would be running these trips every Friday night at right p.m. through the end of February.

Skipper JJ Gerritsen returned with his Apollo to Fisherman's Landing November 21, after an eight-day, ultra-limited trip. The boat's ten passengers fished Guadalupe Island before taking off for Magdalena Bay to fish big tuna on their final day. "All of our long range trips are ultra-limited," said JJ. "It takes away competition factors, we won't do more than ten passengers. We got limits of yellowfin, Guadalupe's been great our last six trips, but we did something different this time; we headed out for a shot at these big ones. All of our fish are kept in refrigerated saltwater, so they still look great." Matt Bowland of Encinitas took home the best tuna; a 224-pound yellowfin that fought "long and hard." Matt used a 6/0 Owner ringed Super Mutu hook, on an 80-pound P-Line topshot, 100-pound Spectra, a Tiagra 30 reel and a Calstar Grafighter 765 H rod. "I butt-hooked the sardine," said Matt. "The fight lasted two and a half hours." Drew Card of San Diego was second with a 196-pound tuna, and Craig Biddick of Rancho Santa Fe was third for a 164-pounder.