padre island national seashore Fishing Report 2023

Hello there Polaris Supreme fans,

                                              Today was another travel day for us, this morning we had or seminar on fishing for giant YFT.  The crew went over fly lining, big bait , jig fishing, sinker rig, and kite fishing. We also handed out all the loaner gear and the guys started rigging up. Around 1600 we made a drive by the Rocks and found two 25 lb YFT willing to bite the jigs now we have fresh tuna for tomorrow nights dinner! Speaking of dinner its about time for me to go get ready for dinner so until tomorrow tight lines!!

 

Gunny and the Crew.

June 29

We started our day today offshore tuna fishing. We were staying pretty steady jiggin em up. Onesie twosie for a few hours. We weren't seeing any volume though. Just handfuls of fish around here and there. No schools. The fish were also on the smaller side of things. We could've made a day out of it and ended up with a decent catch but the fish were on the smaller side of things. 8-12 pound yellowfin tuna and that's just not what we were looking for. So we decided to wind in the jigs and v line it down to the yellowtail grounds with the hopes of a sea bass mixed in.

The yellowtail grounds were very poor. There were two of us looking around there and we had a combined score of 0. Mr. Pfleger did get a white sea bass so we were stoked. Fish tacos in a couple days.

The weather today was fantastic and the forecast shows good weather for the rest of the week too so that's always good news. We're going to stick with the plan and go look for White Sea Bass tomorrow in some White Sea Bassy water. The ribs are smelling good so I gotta go.

 

Tom Rothery docked his Polaris Supreme July 18 after an eight-day trip with 16 anglers aboard. His group found some good fishing at Alijos Rocks and Alijos Bank.
"Yesterday we had good fishing on wahoo in the morning," he wrote Sunday July 15, "and excellent fishing on tuna in the afternoon. The average weight on the tuna ranged from 45 to 70 pounds. Our weather is still good. Chef Tommy put out some great meals again. Lunch yesterday was yellowtail served over fresh spinach, surrounded by black beans with a spicy avocado cilantro sauce. And dinner was Cornish game hens topped with a spicy apricot sauce on wild rice with grilled asparagus on the side.
"Fishing this morning has started off again with wahoo biting and this afternoon we will fish the tuna again. We still have some open spots on Sept. 8th an 8-day trip, if you want to come get some of these wahoo. Give Susan a call at 619-390-7890."
Boat builder Harold Davis fished on the trip. "It was a great group," said Harold, "and we had four guys who had been skippers on the Bongos boats in Newport Beach. The whole group was good fishermen; we didn't have many tangles or much shoulder bumping. We had excellent food, too, like prime rib, rack of lamb, Ahi steaks with wasabi. My best fish was a yellowfin tuna, but I got some wahoo on bombs; purple bombs."
Zander Rodriguez of Loveland, CO made his first long range trip with the group. Zander is entering the University of Colorado this fall as a baseball pitcher, at age 18. He also plays golf. He had the second-best yellowtail at 44.2 pounds, a wahoo, and also got a white seabass on the 13 Spot.
Skipper Rothery weighed the best fish on the certified scales at Fisherman's Landing. Daniel McCaffery of Norco won first place for a 60.8-pound yellowfin tuna. He said he fished a sardine on a 2/0 Super Mutu hook. He used 40-pound Big Game line on a TLD 20 reel and a seven-foot glass Calstar rod.

Bob Wolfson of Dana Point was second, for a 56.4-pound tuna, and Harold Davis, the boat builder from Morro Bay, won third place for his 52.4-pound Alijos yellowfin tuna.

The Apollo will be running an open party over night trip out of Santa Barbara. This trip will depart on Friday night March 27th at 9pm for fishing Sat. This will be a freelance trip hoping for squid and sea bass, with rock fish. If you are interested the cost will be $140 and you will need to contact Sea Landing at (805) 568-0460. to make a reservation.

~~July 13
 How about this... Today was awesome! We fished the yellowtail grounds today and it worked out. From about 8 am to 4 pm we were hot and loaded! 14- 28 pounds was the grade and they were snapping. After a slow couple of days like we had iit was perfect. Long drifts with 1-6 fish always on the line. Very little moving. Mostly all drifting and catching. Smiles for everyone and relief for some, myself included. It was a fun day. Windy as heck but we still drifted well and nobody cared. We left at 4:30 because the fish weren't really in the mood anymore and we wanted to gain some latitude to extend our fishing time tomorrow.

 

 We'll be offshore tomorrow hunting for yellowfin tuna. We're stuffed with the Jacks and now we want tuna. Wish us luck back home. Here we go...
 

 

35 pass. 140 yellowtail 33 bonito. I know some of you are wondering why we have fish in burlap bags. At the end of the trip we take our fish out of the fishhold and put them in bags so our customers don’t have to carry their fish home in their backpacks. Their core temps are 35 degrees.

Capt Mike Pritchard checked in with this report from the Tribute. "Another great day of fishing here. We have limits of Yellowtail. Now we are in search of some Bluefin. We have caught one so far.

Pretty good sign of yellowtail for the first few hours in the morning. They were up boiling around good and showing on the machines but we were having trouble getting them to settle with the boat. We'd hook a few here and a whack there but nothing steady. We saw a couple more schools through out the day but it was the same thing. Nothing would settle. It was racing up and down the island. We ended the day 5 fish a rod of the jumbo quality and decided to head up the line to fish albacore the day after tomorrow. We should have good working weather so we're hoping the fish are chewing when we get there.