nooksack river Fishing Report 2023

Capt Mike Pritchard from the Tribute gave us a wrap for todays trip, it was a light load of only 11 anglers and it turned out to be a great day on the water. We ended the day with limits of Yellowfin Tuna, 44 Yellowtail and 1 Bluefin Tuna. We have another 1.5 day trip leaving tomorrow night, if you want some Tuna or Yellowtail for your 4th of July BBQ now is the time. Give the Seaforth Landing a call at 619-224-3383, the weather forecast is looking really good. Hope to see you on the water.

May Luna-Sea Bendo at the Ranch Afire with neon blue, the marlin shimmied and snaked its way into the wake and the spread, coming in dead off the starboard side. Everyone saw it at once and made noisy note. "He's gonna eat it!" hollered Ben, holding the rod with the drop back bait, a small jack. It was already 30 feet back. "He's eatin' it, he's eatin' it!" Ben swung on the fish, winding on the little silver reel, and the black rod bent hard. The marlin headed off right into the sun, back the way he'd come into the spread of trolled baits and lures. Things got interesting in a hurry, with three men trying to use cameras, two men trying to get the rest of the trolled rigging out of the way before the fish fouled itself, and Ben, who was braced with one leg up on the rail, alternately pulling and winding on the fish. It was a big cockpit, but at the moment there were traffic jams on both sides of the unused fighting chair. The marlin had disappeared off up past the deckhouse, but the skipper and John Ireland were shouting on the bridge that it had jumped. When we got the invitation from Jack Nilsen of Accurate to join him at John Ireland's Rancho Leonero to do a product shoot, Paul Sweeney and I packed our cameras and our bags. We traveled light, with little fishing equipment, since I knew Jack would have plenty of reels. I brought a couple of my new Super Seeker rods and a bag of jigs and Mustad hooks for light tackle fishing May 20 to 22. We taxied from Los Cabos airport, arriving at the beginning of a sweet tropical Sea of Cortez evening to enjoy three days of first-class style angling aboard Ireland's 50-foot Mikelson sportfisher Luna-Sea. Rejoicing in the warm, light sea breeze, we saw the Ranch was lovely as ever, with improvements since our last visit a year ago. Ireland has renovated much, notably the bar/dining room, which has been opened up to be even more spacious and airy. For the first time, a wide-screen TV hangs on the wall at the far end of the bar, showing off a high-def satellite picture for those who want to keep up with things like the NBA conference finals. Bartender Jorge and the rest of the staff were still there, so the place felt as homey as ever. A hurricane last year took out a couple of the wall-mounted fish hanging in the dining room, and I noticed the old lion skin was gone. But there was a new covering for part of the dining patio outside, and all the beds had been replaced with fancy new big pillow-top models, making for comfortable, healthy sleeping in the air-conditioned rooms and stone walled thatched bungalows. There are several resorts at East Cape, and each has its own flavor and style, but I keep coming back to the Ranch because the place is smaller and more relaxed than most (Ireland calls it intimate), and it's set away from the rest of the resorts, up on a small headland that gets sea breeze from two sides. If you've got shade, the breeze keeps you cool at the Ranch, and the view flat out cannot be beat. Food is good, and varied daily here. Wells tap plenty of cool, clean water, enough to keep the grounds so green the resort looks like a little paradise, where mountains and Baja desert meet miles of white beach and the deep blue waters of the Cortez. Fishing begins about ten yards from the beach, and you seldom have to ride more than a very few miles before you can find something biting, like marlin, tuna, sailfish, dorado, snapper, roosterfish or two dozen other sporting species. Jack Nilsen and Ben Secrest, Accurate vice president of sales and marketing, wanted Paul Sweeney and I to get video and stills of some new gear. They had three spinning reels: named 30, 20 and 12, and two-speed Boss conventional reels with them, from the tiny 197 up to the 665 series. They also had a new line of Accurate rods to match the reels, made from light, slender but strong high-modulus graphite. Accurate makes two-speed, (with and without the pre-set drag mechanism) twin-drag reels all the way up to the 130 International size, but for this event the gear was small, light and easy to handle. Small doesn't mean little in terms of line strength, however. Most of the reels were loaded with 50 to 80-pound Spectra, with a short topshot of mono or fluorocarbon, a leader that could be easily changed to match the targeted species. Our first morning of fishing was spent catching snapper and cabrilla, which were plentiful just a quarter mile from the portable loading pier where anglers board their pangas and cruisers each day around seven a.m. Several types of snappers are available here, and some get so large they can be a serious challenge on heavy tackle. Snapper are about the only game fish I've caught that are even better at getting into the rocks as yellowtail. On this morning I got a couple on my new 665 F Super Seeker with an 870 N two-speed Accurate and two with the light version of Jack's new spinning outfit. Fish were thick on this rockpile. We found plenty of Pargo Amarillo, or yellowtail snapper of two to six pounds. They bit best on 20 to 30-pound mono and a 1/0 hook. I like to use a ringed Mustad circle hook for this type of fishing, and with a larger bait, I'd size up the hook. The local guides make their own ringed hooks by tying a loop or perfection knot, which gives the bait a similar mobility. Pargo and their cabrilla buddies bit well on sardinas. These baitfish look very much like western herring or eastern pilchard, with a single dark spot aft center of the gill plate like the row of spots that run down the sides of sardines. The guides suggest stunning the bait, to make it easier for the snappers to run down. I tried baits both ways, stunned and not stunned, and found the guides knew what they were talking about, though I also caught a couple of snapper on speedy, unimpeded baits. After we were done with the snapper and cabrilla we moved southward, and Ben and Jack made some deep drops in 200 to 300 feet with knife jigs, which produced whitefish and a bright orange-red popeye catalufa. It could have been a glasseye, but I can't tell the difference. They had outfits set up for the purpose. We tried slow-trolling mullet for roosterfish next, off the lighthouse at Punta Area. We got one looker but no takers. Two anglers in a skiff showed us a 30-pound yellowfin they said they had caught right there, but we saw no tuna sign. This is a great place to find jack crevalle, but on our days here those fish didn't show. Many shore anglers love this place for its proximity to deep water. A determined beach fisherman might manage to hook a marlin or a tuna here because of the drop-off and the currents circulating up to the sandy spit. We spent the rest of our time fishing for marlin, so we could document the use of the new light Accurate gear on larger, more powerful fish. That first afternoon, we drew a blank. The next day, we could sense a change coming, as the breeze picked up a bit earlier, from the east-southeast. It died and then went to the south. We trolled live mullet, rigged dead ballyhoo, and skirted jigs. During the afternoon, we raised two marlin. Both came into the spread, but refused. Just shopping. On our last day there was a big change. The breeze came up shortly after dawn, and reached 15 or 20 knots, out of the south. The palms around the pool pointed their fronds downwind, and whitecaps danced over a sloshy chop. "It's going to lay down," predicted both owner John Ireland and foreman Gary Barnes-Webb. We boarded Ireland's Luna-Sea again. Not knowing what to expect, we moved off toward the waters a few miles out from the lighthouse, where we'd come close to billfish the day before. As predicted, the breeze lay down. But that didn't help the fishing. The water smoothed off, but we couldn't see a fish anywhere, not even the jumpers we'd been watching and chasing the past two days. Before lunch, the wind suddenly picked up again. Within an hour, the cobalt Cortez was capped with white as far as you could see. The chop got up to three or four feet in a jiffy. If we'd been in a panga it would have been dangerous to fish. In a small cruiser it would have been uncomfortable. On the 50-foot Luna-Sea we weren't much affected, although we sometimes lurched a bit in a head sea. I enjoyed my lunch of a dried beef burrito and a ham and cheese sandwich, with chips, an apple and a diet cola. The breezy, choppy, sloppy conditions made a marlin miracle. We started seeing tailers, jumpers, even feeders in the white-capped blue waves. It wasn't long before that first one took that dropped-back bait. Ben Secrest worked the fish over while our skipper Gaspar ran the boat to his best advantage. The new Accurate outfit Ben fished with worked just like it should, putting pressure on the striper, picking up any slack with its high-speed gear ratio, while Ben shifted to make the most of any situation. Paul kept the Sony HD camcorder winding, recording on tape while Ben was winding line, and three cameramen worked around each other on the deck as Jack shot his photos from the bridge. It was only 10 or 12 minutes before Secrest had the marlin whipped enough to get it boatside for a release. We all celebrated, and began to relax; our mission was at least partly accomplished. We kept seeing marlin tailing and we sidled up to many to show them the goods, but the wind slacked off and they seemed to lose interest accordingly. Then there was a long period, maybe an hour without a sighting. I napped in Ireland's leather-lined salon, on a long sofa-seat at the table. I awoke to shouting. Another fish had come in for a nibble, but we missed him. I went out on the after deck to see the wind had picked up again. We began to see more marlin, some jumping in the distance, a few feeding and slashing at the choppy surface, and more tailing downwind. We were about out of time, said Ireland, who needed to host at home that evening. Then we hung another fish. Secrest had it on a lighter outfit, and this one looked to be a bit bigger. It gave us little aerial show, and like the other fish, seemed to want to sidle off up toward the bow, across the wind and chop. Backing into the chop brought water splashes up over the transom, and soon Ben was soaked on his front side, but in control of the fish. A couple of turns by the skipper and Ben's hard pulling had the marlin up to the boat, where all the shooters tried to get a shot before it was released. It was over before I could get in there. Moments later we got one more bite, and LA County fireman-engineer Wayne Shimabukuro played the fish for a moment before it freed itself. We had what we needed, and it was late in the afternoon. We saw more than 40 marlin. We tried to present to at least eight of them. We had some good looks, a couple of whacks, and Ben got a brace of beaks to the boat. It was a satisfaction. The ice chest produced cold bottles of Pacifico beer and limes. We toasted our good fortune as skipper Gaspar pointed the big Mikelson downwind and north toward The Ranch. The ride flattened out and the wake wave rose nearly to the height of the transom. The shadow of the big bridge kept us in the shade as we kicked back to enjoy a smooth ride, thanks to Jack Nilsen and John Ireland, and the end of a good adventure.

Tuesday, July 24th, 2012

Hi friends. Not too much to report today on the Polaris Supreme. After the completion of lunch, all we did was pull on bluefin tuna, dorado, and yellowtail. Granted, the dorado's were shin slappers and the yella's were neck ties, but we did weed out a handful of nicer onces and kept the BFT's a comin'. We did see a couple flurries of that smaller 12-15 lb. fish, but for the most part, our grade was a solid 25-30 lb. grade, and they bit very well too.

To give you an idea of how good fishing was, and for some reason, I'm still kind of buzzing about this situation, but after monitoring the anglers on the bow for a while, I couldn't help but toss a line out, as there were boils ten feet from the boat and the angler participation was starting to dwindle as the end of the day was upon us and the cocktails were beginning to flow. Anyhow, I was soaking a bait for a bit, chattin' it up with an angler to my left, and here comes another angler to the bow with a fish that's close to gaff on my right. So, I grabbed a gaff, put my rod in the gaff holder, in gear, and told the angler "If this gets bit (pipe dream), grab it and swap out your rod for the hooked up one." About thirty seconds later, as my anglers fish was getting ready for the death-shot, I hear "Hey Richie! Something is--uh--happening!" Low and behold, the gaff rig is full bendo with line screaming off of it. Wowza! For all this "Bluefin require a stealthy approach and light line", we hooked one up with a half dead bait, in gear, sitting in the rack. Bottom line, excellent fishing. No reason to not tell a little story that I thought was pretty hot.

So that's it. Pretty easy decision for tomorrow's activities as we're going to put out the "sack" and try have a repeat of today tomorrow. Hopefully we connect with a morning bite on the bag and don't have to pull it first thing at 0530 hours. Our weather is just okay, a little breezy and choppy but plenty workable conditions. We'll chat with you tomorrow.

~~Oct. 30
 Once again, we left today, Friday to spend our weekend on the sea.  For 1.5 days.  Friday-Sunday.  We have bait, and we're headed out.  One big tank of chovy, and 2 tanks of dine.  We're hoping to put them to good use.  We're headed out.  I feel OK about leaving my daught for her first dress up Halloween.  I got to see her in her lady bug costume and try and trick or treat it up at my wifes work.  So here we go.
       
 

Capt Mike Pritchard from the Tribute gave us an on the water update for this morning, they are off to a great start. So far they have 12 Yellowtail from 12 to 18 pounds and 2 Bluefin Tuna around the 40 pound each and this before 7am. We ended yesterday in this area with some good fishing, hopefully today will be more of the same we have high hopes. We will check back in later.

Fishing yesterday was absolutely fantastic. The grade of albacore that we were catching was beautiful with half being 30-40 lbs. and the other half averaging 22 lbs. Weather yesterday and today is excellent. This morning we are already into albacore, blue fin and yellow fin. Looks like a another great day on the water. Check our schedule if you want to come out and get into some of this good fishing. Thanks for checking in. Tommy and crew

Back to the Islands starting tomorrow (Nov 1).  Please bring a 40 lb yo-yo setup and a 25 lb bait setup.  For all you jig fisherman.  We will be targeting yellowtail and all other gamefish. Who knows, maybe even a stray Bluefin Tuna.  Passport required.

Good afternon faithful Supreme followers. Checking in from the bridge as we head south to the tuna grounds on this 2 day adventure. Tommy, Susan and the crew would like to start by thanking Mr. Robin Gledhill for putting together yet another great group for his annual Blue-White 5 day charter. He never ceases to make it a pleasurable vacation for both his anglers as well as the crew. From 0 dark thirty to night fall with bent rods and the variety of fish coming over the rail to the evenings hosted by Chef Shawn with his A+ meals and Mr. Gladhill serving up the numerous different wines that are brought along to wet the lips after a busy day of fishing. We always enjoy watching our buddy Kenny "Hammertime" Holland engage in battle with any fish he swings on because let me tell you, that's a show folks, that one intense fella! Our own Capt. Tommie "Gunny" Miles found out that himself and Kenny spent time on the same ship at the same back in the 1980's when Gunny was in the Marine Corps and Kenny was in the Navy!!! Small world!! Thanks once again Robin for a great trip and and we look forward to seeing you and the gang next year.

So as I check in here, we have her pointed south toward a nice looking pocket of water that we are hoping will be holding a nice kelp or maybe a lucky school of tuna to get the trip started. We shall find out just before dinner tonight. The weather isn't too bad at the moment, a little wind and a hint of a roll when the boat stops, but shouldn't be to bad for us though. Let's hope everything weatherwise prevails so we can have a productive day tomorrow. We wanna welcome Chef David "Shabba" Schooler back into the galley for the next couple trips after a little bit of time off. Always fun having that guy around the boat. He started things off with a real tasty lunch this afternon by serving up a cheese ravioli topped with marinated chicken and peso sauce sided with a chicken ceaser salad. And of course tonight we'll have a prime rib dinner for the guys which is always a crowd favorite.

That's it for now folks, wish us calm seas and bent rods tomrrow as well as Captain Drew to enjoy his couple days off with his wife and Domino the dog after over a month out here on the boat. I know right now as I type this up, he's glued to his TV catching up on the final season of Breaking Bad (him and I are addicted to that show!) We'll give you another check tomorrow evening after fishing and let you know how the day went.

Jed and Team Supreme