lake bemidji Fishing Report 2025

Well we wound up the last day of fishing with some good offshore action on kelp patties. Everybody pulled on a lot of fish and kept 2 or 3 nice quality yellowtail and dorado to take home. Weather is absolutely superb. And so was our final dinner, steak and lobster. We'd like to thank Eric Rogger and his group for such a fun trip. ETA tomorrow will be 6am and then we will be departed on another 5 day. Thanks, Tommy and crew

"Fishing today was absolutely excellent!" wrote Polaris Supreme skipper Tom Rothery August 23. "The albacore bit all day and the weather has laid down and is good. All the albies were in the 25 to 30-pound range. For lunch we had swordfish in a butter, lemon, and caper cream sauce. For dinner we had a rack of lamb with a blue cheese port wine sauce. Yummy! A couple of boats headed to Guadalupe to no avail. We still have a spot here and there on some of our upcoming trips. Give Susan a call in the office if you can get away and come fish."
Rothery docked his boat at Fisherman's Landing August 24. He spent his fishing time on the four-day trip on the albacore grounds, with a half-day at Cortes Bank, where second skipper Drew Henderson reported big numbes of large bonito biting. The bones were eight to 12 pounds, he said. John Windling of Portland, OR won first place for a 41.4-pound albacore. He said he bagged it with a sardine on a 3/0 Mutu hook tied to 40-pound fluorocarbon leader and 60-pound Line One Spectra. He used an Avet JX reel and a Calstar 765 XL rod. David Schulz of Yorba Linda was second, for a 38.6-pounder, and John Thompson of Phoenix, AZ won third place for a 37-pound albacore.

Ryan Bostian checked in from “The San Diego” this afternoon with an update from Seaforth Sportfishing in Mission Bay. The Bluefin Tuna are 20 to 120 pounds. Please make sure you are prepared. The Yellowtail are 5 to 10 pounds. Please bring one light rod and one heavy rod. A light rod would be 25 pound or 30 pound test. A heavy rod should be nothing less than 40 pound outfit a 50 or 60 would be better. The Bluefin are biting on a flat fall jig. A perfect out fit for he flat fall jig would be a Talica 12 filled up with 65 pound spectra with a short top shot of 80 pound fluorocarbon. Today we had Captain Cameron running the boat. He had a very respectable day offshore in a crowded ocean. FISH COUNT: 56 anglers caught 2 Bluefin Tuna and 52 Yellowtail.

~~Sep. 6
 I think I'm going to start naming my reports.  This one is called "We should have stuck with the game plan".  The plan was to start where we did, and if it didn't look good run up 40 miles to the next spot arriving just after lunch when it's bite time there.  Well we started off slow.  Conditions were a little funky.  We saw some fish, but they didn't really bite.  We caught a few yellows and the biggest ling cod I've ever seen brought up on this boat, but it wasn't good enough to stick around.  So we started off sticking with the plan when we left and went north but then we decided to do some radio fishing.  I heard 4th hand and then 3rd hand that a boat had a couple really good dorado kelps the day prior almost in striking distance and then really good yellowtail in the afternoon definitely in striking distance.  Then I saw on my water temp chart that same water just a few hours below us so we made the move.  Obviously by my whining you can tell it didn't work out.  We didn't find much kelp in the good water.  We found one OK kelp but we only caught a handful of flats.  There was a few wahoo swimming around it but we didn't catch any.

 So that's OK.  We're not worried.  We still have yesterdays afternoon yellowtail hot spot to fish.  Not today.  Should have been here yesterday. Maybe that should be the name of the report. We saw some and caught a few but it was nothing good.  So here we sit.  I'm not sure if we stuck with the game plan that it would have worked out.  There already was a boat on the spot we were headed to and it's kind of a one boat spot so maybe we didn't miss anything.

 It's funny.  I haven't written this long of a report in a long time.  If fishing was good today I probably would have written one paragraph.  I needed to rant.  Anyways we're going to stick it out here and regroup and try it again in the morning.  Hopefully we find some yellows to work with but either way we plan on looking for a dorado kelp in the afternoon.  Hopefully I only write one paragraph tomorrow.
       

 

This season has been full of extreme conditions. Our weather has been either flat grease calm with air temps pushing triple digits or victory at sea borderline dangerous. Our fishing has been either crazy wide open or scary slow. Today’s trip had a little of everything. Strong South wind in the morning followed by calm seas in the afternoon. Empty kelp patties in the morning followed by crazy wide open bonito smash. We never found a wide open dorado kelp but managed to scratch 27 along with 8 yellowfin tuna and a handful of yellowtail and skipjack.

Hello Everyone, Today we had a great day chasing the bigger Bluefin Tuna. We were able to land some great quality fish. Most came on the kite, but the one we landed on a fly line outfit bit 80lb with a great designer hook. Our landing ratio is great, we only need a few more of these quality Bluefin Tuna to make it so everyone has landed a fish over 120lbs. Hopefully we can get it done tomorrow. Wish us luck, Team Supreme

POLARIS SUPREME TRIP REPORT 09-24-2020 Beautiful day traveling today. Be at the fishing grounds in the morning. Sea ya then. The Polaris Supreme Crew!

Aug 26

We had a pretty good day of yellowtail fishing today. It wasn't wide open and it wasn't slow either. Just some steady picking through out most of the day. It didn't rain so that was cool. I'm really drawing a blank on what to write here so I think I'll keep it short. There's nothing significant to tell you all about. Mark didn't wear the dunce helmet today and nobody fell in the water or told a good joke. Just some steady picking of the yellows. We're heading back to the bluefin grounds to give it another try at those beauts. The weather rolling up is just fantastic and we're expecting more of it tomorrow. Oh yeah! The seared bluefin we had for dinner tonight was very very good. It was paired with edaname, these super tasty green beans and some just delicious tasting mashed potatoes so there you have it. Sweet dreams all.