riggins Fishing Report 2024

Polaris Supreme arrived August 2 under skipper Drew Henderson's hand. Drew docked at Fisherman's Landing and offloaded his fish and 21 anglers, following a five-day trip. "We fished offshore and at Cedros Island," he said, "and the water at Cedros was clean green and back up to 69 degrees. The yellowtail are huge at the island, and a lot of these guys had their best ever. Albacore fishing is still tough, but the water's gorgeous." Scott Oberg of El Centro won first place for a 44-pound yellowtail he bagged with sardine on a 2/0 ringed Mutu hook on 40-pound Seaguar fluorocarbon, 40-pound P-Line, a Trinidad 20 reel and a Calstar 760 rod. Russell Ortez of Garden Grove won second place for a 43-pounder, and Don Carson of San Diego won third for a 32-pound yellowtail.

Monday, July 23rd, 2012

Good evening friends. We arrived back from John and Ed's family 3-day trip this morning at 0600 and were back out to sea around 1030 hours embarking on our 11th annual Paul Hess 5-day adventure. Paul has brought his usual cast of renegades along with some Polaris Supreme first-timers. We're missing a few of the familiar faces but we'll see you all next year and we'll dedicate this trip towards y'all. Anyhow, the reports are sounding promising a little further south for the fish that get my blood pumping like no other, the Bluefin tuna. So we're motoring on down there and we'll be in the zone sometime in the morning and as for the weather, it's very fair right now and we're liking it.

So that is all. We'll be giving it a go for some tuna fish tomorrow and we'll base our decision for day two when the sun settles below the horizon. We're all a happy bunch. The passengers are well fed and sleepy and with our new subscription to SiriusXM radio, we're a happy crew. Things are just peachy and we'll hit you up tomorrow.

P.S. Special thanks goes to Dave and Sandra. Thank you for the cookies. Drew and I left the passengers with roughly a dozen and the seventy-nine that we ate before dinner were especially delicious. Dave: I miss your hot-white boots and Sandra, I miss identifying birds with you. We'll see you next year.

~~Nov.15
 Well today went as expected.  We woke up on the anchor after a lovely nights sleep and shortly after daylight we started scratching tuna.  It didn't take long to meet our quota.  Some already had it and were dropper looping for yellows and getting a few.  Anyways a little after 7 we pulled anchor and trolled around for wahoo.  One  more than half the boat caught a wahoo by lunch time and we took off for Alijos Rocks.  We traveled the rest of the day while we looked for something floating with dorado under it but we never found anything as expected.

 So like I said, we'll be at the stones in the morning.  We're going to try for some more wahoo before starting north to finish off our trip.  You never really can have enough wahoo.  There is 2 or 3 passengers left on board who have not caught a wahoo so we're going to make sure they get one before anyone else tomorrow.  We call it the troll of shame and Glenn, if you're reading at home, I always think of you when we do this.
         

 

41 yellowtail 1 barracuda 1 calico bass. Steady picking all day long.

The Lupe was poop. Heading up for a couple days of albacore fishing.

Drew Henderson brought Polaris Supreme home July 5 after a five-day trip with 24 anglers.

"We fished Cedros again a half day," wrote Drew July 3, "and had a nice drift in the morning but then the fish went down quick which has been the routine. We put our anchor down and had a nice pick on the yellows and all the other fish you could catch. We had to bail out at 11:00 a.m. and made a couple stops on the way up the line then we had to go full cruise to get ourselves to the tuna grounds.

"The next day started off painfully slow but right around 1:30 we had our first school and shortly there after we got on another one that we drifted on until dark."

At the dock, Drew summed up his last day of fishing, the 4th of July: "We spent the day looking offshore. We got about 75 fish, and mostly we had three or four going for several hours."

Bob Morehouse of La Crescenta won first place for a 54-pound yellowfin he bagged with a sardine on a 2/0 Mustad hook, with 30-pound Big Game line, a TLD 1`5 reel and a Calstar six-foot rod.

Chris Stavaridis of Venice was second, for a 48-pound tuna, and Tony Sabatino won third place for a 46-pound yellowfin tuna.

Aug. 14
    Arrive depart today.  We offloaded a beautiful catch, got fuel, changed oil + fuel filters, swapped out some crew and left the dock by 10:00.  We're good.  We left on a very long running charter called the Heil charter.  I won't go into our bait loading, I'll just say we have some bait on board.  We were in the fishing grounds before 3:00 this afternoon.  The couple boats that departed yesterday had some good yellow finning.  When we got there it just had that "should've been here yesterday" kind of feel to it.  We didn't see much.  We had one long drift where we picked up 14 but other then that it didn't feel like we were going to get a hit so we rolled out of that zone.  Below there didn't look much better until right around 8:00 when the sun fell we had a good old fashioned blind jig strike that resulted in a good stop.  We always fish till the end over here and tonight we were rewarded.  The fish bit full speed but only for a flash but it was long enough to get everyone on board at least one with many getting three or more.  They were snapping.  I call departure fish free fish because we weren't even supposed to be fishing.  They're free.  Anyways we're going to fish again tomorrow.  See you then.
                             
     Oh yeah, the weather is still sooo nice.  We're going to have to pay for this stretch.

The guys are out at the islands with just 11 anglers this morning. They have 30+ yellowtail so far with lots of fishing time left. Capt Matt suggests a 20 or 25 lb bait rod a 40 lb yo-yo rod and your favorite jigstick and bass rod.