Predicting ahi prices for New Year’s sashimi and poke is like gambling.

"If we could, we would be in Vegas," Brooks Takenaka, assistant general manager of the United Fishing Agency, said Thursday. "We don’t know. We’ve been actually short of fish. The high-end stuff has been high. … The demand is significant. There could be a lot of fish coming in tomorrow. Two days in this situation can be significant in terms of numbers."

Among the variables that determine prices are the weather, which has included big surf and lots of wind recently, Takenaka said.

Mary Lou Wood wasn’t about to roll the dice. She went down to the fish auction Thursday morning and bought a 50-pound ahi for $1 a pound.

"It’s not as fresh as that," she said, pointing to the premium ahi in the refrigerator case at Tamashiro Market, but "good enough" for the poke she will make for her New Year’s party using Hawaiian salt, chili pepper water, limu kohu and green onion.

Early this month some industry observers predicted lower prices because longline fishermen were free to continue catching since they had not reached the annual limit of nearly 8.3 million pounds of bigeye tuna in the Central and Western Pacific.

As of Dec. 27 an estimated 8,040,259 pounds — 96.9 percent of the limit — had been caught, according to the National Marine Fisheries Service’s online data. Once the limit is reached, the agency can shut down longline fishing.

Guy Tamashiro, manager of Tamashiro Market, said today’s prices for premium ahi will likely be about the same as last year but that the range of available sashimi-grade fish has been better than so far.

Fran Lau, 61, who is of Japanese ancestry, bought a pound of premium-grade toro (fatty) ahi.

"It’s just traditional, really," Lau said. "I grew up with it. My parents were always (saying), ‘We have to get the good sashimi.’ It’s something we do every year."

At Tamashiro last year the best ahi was $34.95 per pound.

"I’m guessing we’ll get some in the same price bracket, judging from what we’ve had to pay in the last couple days," Tama-shiro said. "We heard that the good boats are coming in tomorrow" — four fishing vessels with a combined estimated longline catch of 70,000 pounds, and possibly three more boats.

With a catch of that size, which likely includes a variety of fish, there’s no telling what percentage is ahi and whether the supply will meet the demand, he said.

"Seventy thousand is low for Hawaii’s needs," he said, but added that exporters, who are competing for the same fish, won’t be sending any to Japan Friday and Saturday, "so we have a chance" for high-end fish.

"Sometimes there’s a feeding frenzy at the auction block," Tamashiro said.