ocmd Fishing Report 2024

Sunday, June 17th.

Hello everybody. First off, we here on the Polaris Supreme would like to wish all the dad's out there a happy Father's day and we would like to assure all the mother's back home that the young men on-board are beat. Tired and happy as can be from an eventful first day of fishing. Worry not about them, they are sleeping soundly and are looking forward to doing it all again tomorrow morning.

We arrived to our destination on schedule due to our phenomenal weather and proceed to look around for a bit. To no avail, we made a move a little ways to some fresh country and upon arrival, spotted a breezer of Bluefin tuna. Most guys went out with their 30 lb. outfits as we hadn't yet seen a boil to get a size estimate. After a couple minutes of drifting, the ocean, which was peaceful and calm for the past twenty-four hours, was now full of big, beautiful Bluefin tuna erupting all around the boat and it was a classic scenario of hunting elephants with deer rifles. We hooked a few on the lighter gear and actually managed to land a couple and as for the rest, you all can guess what happened. Once we started fishing a little bit heavier gear, the bites diminished a bit but what we did hook, we landed and they were some real beauties. It was one of those classic Bluefin deals that warrants a stealthy, 50 lb. rig with the best bait you can find and although we had very little wind (which is a problem when trying to fly a kite) we did successfully hook a couple on the balloon rigs and what a show that presented. We drifted for four hours and came out with a couple handfuls of gorgeous 50-100 lb. shortfins but that wasn't without a few heartbreaks as well. Like I said, a short topshot of fluorocarbon with a 3/0 hook, two-speed reel and a strong, castable rod is the best bet for landing these trophies. It was truly a spectacular show that these fish put on for us as fish were blowing out all around the boat. Kind of gets frustrating at times seeing all those fish and not hooking them like you should but that's how Bluefin fishing is sometimes. We're just thankful that we had our shots and connected on a couple o trophies. Some of them are bigger than the kids that landed them. Pretty cool.

Anyhow, the rest of our day consisted of a spot of jumpers that produced some 25 lb. Bluefin, a couple Yellowfin tuna jig strikes and a kelp loaded with rat Yellowtail. Going from 100 lb. Bluefin to 3 lb. Yellowtail might disappoint some, but the kids sure weren't disappointed, they were pumped! We had a good ole time catching and releasing all of the juveniles to grow but like I said, it was the most fun the kids had all day. So with that, our day was complete and we've decided to make a move into some more coastal waters to not only elude the wind that is forcasted for tomorrow but to also try for some Yellowtail of greater size than the ones we caught today. Fun day, awesome weather, we're out. We'll chat with you tomorrow.

P.S. Mark would like to tell Ana, " ti amo". Happy Father's Day once again to all the daddy's out there. Chat with you tomorrow.

Monday, May 7th, 2012

Hi folks. Short day for Drew, Tommie, Mark, Jamie and myself as all we did today was drill zinc plates and tarp off the boat to prepare for the painters to spray the strontium on the bare aluminum today and the primer tomorrow. The vinyl lettering was applied to both sides of the bow and the stern today. From the looks of it, we've gone back to the old school font and color ...scheme. Instead of the lighter blue and orange which has been on the boat for the past six or seven years, the Supreme has gone back to a "royal blue" which looks moe like navy blue and orange. Things are starting to shape up and with the bait tank, bus stop and inside bulwarks hopefully being completed this week, we're looking forward to the end of our stay here in National City sometime next week.

Anyhow, short day for us today, an off day for us tomorrow for painting, and we'll be back at it on Wednesday for, you guessed it: more sanding. Take care and hopefully, everybody's Monday is treating you all kindly.

-Team Supreme

Thursday, May 17th, 2012

Hi friends. It's been a busy couple of days for us here on the Supreme as we completed our stay at Knight & Carver Yacht Center and our annual haul-out. On Monday, we sanded rails, replaced zinc plates, put the screens back up on the hull and got ready to be put back in the water the following day. Tuesday was a beautiful day. At around 1300 hours, we splashed down and with no leaks to our thru-hull valves, shaft and rudder packing, our mains and generators fired up without a hitch and we set sail back to our slip at Fisherman's Landing. It's great to be back home but although the scenery has changed and like Drew and I both said the other day as we exited the engine room; sweaty and with grease all over us, "boat-work is still boat-work" and most of our projects now will be a lot of mechanical projects, galley upgrades and wheelhouse upgrades.

With that, we have a few days off and on Monday, we will be south of the border dealing with some work permit issues and we'll be back at it on Tuesday. Take care everybody and enjoy the photos.

-Team Supreme

 

Oct. 13

Well we struck out on the bluefin today. It wasn't a called third strike, I mean we went down swinging but they definitely beat us today. We saw one good school in the dark hours of the a.m. that didn't stick and then found one deal that didn't react all that bitchen after daylight. We only landed five but they were beautiful fish. 35-50 pounders. Our afternoon was spent traveling down. We left that zone after lunch because we didn't have high hopes for the afternoon based on what we and the other boats had seen.

Our weather was good today. Cold, but not a whole lot of wind. We're going to be fishing for yellowfin tuna tomorrow at first light. They'll be a few of us looking around there so hopefully we get them located early.

In other news Mark tried to tell me that Steve Nash was as tall as he was and I called him out on it, bet him 20 dollars in which he agreed upon, and then I had to call my lovely wife to get her to Google it. I was right, he's 6'3" and now I'm 20 dollars richer. Here's the thing though, I spent almost 20 dollars in the phone call to win that bet so was it worth it? Absolutely. I would gladly spend more money then I'd win against Mark, he's fat, just to prove my point and make him 20 dollars less rich.

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 .

This morning we stopped on a school of yellowfin that was smaller than some schools that we have caught 200 off of. This afternoon there was 30-80 lb bluefin in every direction we looked. Both species were a little reluctant to bite. 31 yellowfin tuna,8 yellowtail,1 bluefin tuna.

Oct. 6

My sea anchor trick didn't work today. I had dreams of drifting beautifully on the sea anchor catching wide open yellowfin, bluefin and dorado but those were just dreams this time. We caught a handful of yellowfin and then had to pull it. The rest of the day was very slow for most the fleet. There were a few fresh kelps found today, and I mean a few but all the rest of the fish caught today were on kelps being fished all week long. Boats were waiting in line to fish them and I just can't do that. Not that there is anything wrong with it. These local guys are very very good at what they do and some of that involves keeping track of kelps for weeks at a time and that takes a great talent. We didn't have a whole lot of fish on board at 4 O'Clock but then we found the kelp of the day for us. It started off straight trout size yellows, then the skip jack started mixing in, then the yellows backed off and it went straight skipjack, then the tuna started to mix in, then the tuna overtook the skipies and it was straight tuna for a while. Not wide open but a steady pick of 3 to 4 going for a while. The day maker. And that was our day.

Tune in tomorrow for another exciting day aboard the Polaris Supreme.