st pete beach Fishing Report 2024

Aug. 23

Let me wine for a few sentences please. With the exception of a 3 day window in the second week, we haven't had two days of good weather in a row in the whole month of August. It's tough to even make it a full day with good weather. Windy August 2013. Screw you August. Needless to say it's not very comfortable traveling right now. Good weather early turned to blown out pre lunch, then backed off for an hour , now blown out again.

OK, I'm done now. Slow fishing today. We had three deals today that didn't bite all that well. 8 out of 1, 14 out of another and then we had 1 for 1 and then we called it a trip. Oh well, we still had an awesome trip. We'll be in tomorrow after 7:00 in the morning and the big guy will be taking it out for a 5 day trip.

For everyone on board this trip who is reading this report later, thank you. You make our world go round.

Aug. 9
    Good evening folks from the bridge of the Polaris Supreme.  Let me just start off by telling you how beautiful of a night it is out here.  First of all the ocean is flat calm.  Just a super light breeze and no sea.  It's almost like we're in the bay right now.  The moon is full, huge and bright as can be and it's lighting up the night.  

    We left today on an Eric Rogger 5 day charter.  I think it's in the 30's on number of consecutive years he's been doing this one so our hat goes off to him. Owner/operator Tommy is back on board so I'll be running as second captain this trip.  I think the sardines grew about 90 percent in length and weight since the last time we got bait 3 days ago.  They're lunkers.  They'll make great yellowtail bait and I'll bet the bluefin will dig them, we'll have to see about them yellowfin.

    I guess you can tell by my questioning of the last paragraph that we didn't get in them this afternoon.  The darn fish just moved too far away for us to reach on our departure day today.  We got there minutes late but there was some pretty darn good hits this evening so we're excited about tomorrow.
                        

 

 We are implementing a new satellite buoy tracking system to better assist us with re finding productive kelp patties and other floating debris that may hold fish! 

Check it out:

https://www.facebook.com/longrangefishing/videos/2239378316087165/

30 pass. 89 yellowtail 32 kelp bass. 1 flyline setup with 20-30 lb and 1 yoyo setup with 40 or 50 lb is all you need.

~~Aug 2
 Today was a bit on the slower side.  Until the end but I'll get to that.  We woke up in hopes of getting a sea bass bite going but that was only a fairy tale.  We got a few yellows is all.  After, we made some grouper drifts and caught some more of those Broomtail Groupers.  Something like 4 or 5 of them along with some calico bass and yellows while we drifted along.  And for the rest of the day we pretty much hung out in the lee of the island and drifted here and there and caught a handful of yellowtail here and there.

 Like I said, we fished the lee today.  No wind for us.  It was lovely.  We had plans for dinner at 7:30, so at 7:00 i hopped in the shower to get cleaned up because I was serving, and while I was in there, I heard some cheering, and then again some hooting and hollering hen I was getting out.  It turns out the first round of cheers came because of a nice sea bass they brought in.  The second was for a yellowfin tuna that was landed.  I went down and got the tables set and while I was doing this they kept catching yellowtail, tuna and seabass.  After we made first call we had a whopping 1 person come in to eat.  Team galley understood though.  We knew that there may possibly be no fishing time for the next day due to bad weather running up the line.  So we kept catching fish and one by one, passengers would come in and scarf down some dinner, which was a lovely meatloaf that was fantastic, and then go back out and catch some more fish. 

 This lasted until after 9:00 and then we took off.  We ended the stop with 30 yellowtail, 5 white seabass up to about 40 pounds, and something like 6 or 7 on the tunas. We prepared the deck for a rough ride home, and set sail toward the beach  to try and improve our conditions.  The swells always less on the coast rather than offshore.  I doubt we'll have any time to fish tomorrow.  Travel day.
      

Sept. 25

Today we got nasty aboard the Polaris Supreme. And I mean nasty. When I use the term nasty I mean it in a good way. Unless I'm talking about the weather. If I say the weather is nasty I mean it was nasty. And by the way the weather was nasty today. It was windy windy windy and the swell was up and it was steep and we were rolling baby. It didn't bother us though because we were getting nasty on those bluefin tunas. Shortly after firing up after daylight Jed called down from above "tern birds pickin starboard bow". So I turned toward starboard bow and there was tern birds a pickin and when we rolled up on them, wouldn't you know it there was a big school of bluefin under them. I love those beautiful little white tern birds. They're the best of the fish finders. Find tern birds and you usually find game fish. For two hours it was game on. I mean they were snappin! 35-50 pound tunas? Yup. After the initial two hour whack things became civil and we scratched at them for another five hours. We could of kept picking at them but we had enough and the weather was getting worse so we headed east for the rest of the day and found nice weather in there. Night and day compared to what we had out west. We didn't catch much in there, a few small yellows and dorado but we didn't care. We had a heaven of a day already. We're on our way in. We have one night in and then we're back at it again. See you then.

The 21st annual Eric Rogger charter arrived at Fisherman's Landing August 16, after five days with 18 anglers aboard Polaris Supreme. Owner-skipper Tom Rothery was at the helm. "Wow!  What an incredible day," wrote Tom August 12. "This albacore is in the cooler 76-degree water.  It wants to bite wide open. Can't say enough about how much fun today was catching big fat jumbo albacore. They tired our anglers out. By the end of the day only a few fishermen were still standing.  Chef Pedro fixed a spicy teriyaki albacore lunch that was fantastic.  For dinner he served some delicious veal chops. Today was just a great. This is what albacore fishing is supposed to be like." John Lindsey of Newport Beach won first place for a 41.4-pound albacore. He took it with a sardine on a Mustad 2/0 94150 hook on 20-pound Blackwater fluorocarbon leader, 20-pound P-Line, an Accurate 197 reel and a nine-foot rod of unknown make. "He fought hard," said John. "He fought for 20 minutes."
Cole Pearce of Huntington Beach was second, for a 36.4-pound albie, and Brian Harnack of Culver City took third place for a 36-pound albacore.

4 bluefin 4 yellowfin 14 yellowtail. We looked at bluefin all day, they were just in a funk. Tomorrow is new day.