michigan dnr Fishing Report 2024

The last few days we have been inshore mixing it up fishing Rockfish the first half of our .5 day trip and Calico bass the second half once the current starts to flow. The results have been amazing with limit style fishing of Calico bass in the 1-4 pound range. Most are 16-18" fish. I honestly haven't seen it this good in years. Through the fast action we didn't get many photos, but here is one of out Furuno DFF-3D filled with bass. 

Nov. 12

Not too much to report today, but we got our lines in the water, and ended up with a few varieties of fish chilling in the refrigerated sea water. We ended up at sort of a one-stop-shop in that we caught the three species that we were targeting all on the anchor. That is not typical fishing, down this way. We usually find the fish one species at a time. Half the boat caught a wahoo today so that's not a bad start and we caught quite a few 15-30 pound yellowtails too with a handfull of call them 25-40 pound tuna as well. Weather continues to be nice, with a bit of wind that popped up later on in the day. It was great to finally use some of that tackle today, that we've spent so much time rigging over the past few days. Now we can get down to the serious business of (hopefully) catching some creatures from the deep blue sea to bring home, and share with our families at the dinner table.All is well aboard the Polaris Supreme, and it's first call for our evening meal consisting of pork chops, apple sauce, and assorted goodies. This is your nameless guest correspondent signing off, until tomorrow...

Captain Ryan Bostian checked in via satellite phone at 11:47 AM. We have caught four Bluefin Tuna (115, 108, 103 and 101). We hooked 8 and landed 4. You need to make sure you bring the correct gear. CURRENT TACKLE RECOMMENDATION
A Shimano Talica 12 or 16 two speed filled with 65 or 80 lb spectra. Connected to 5 feet of 80 or 130 lb flouro and a 250 gram flatfall. A sinker bait rig fished with a Talica 16 or 20 two speed filled halfway with 80 lb spectra than topped off with 60 or 80 lb mono to a short leader of 80 lb flouro. A 2/0 or 3/0 circle hook and a 4-6 oz torpedo sinker. We will check back in later tonight after we finish the day!

~~July 2
  Good evening everyone. We're out fishing again on a wonderful 2 day trip. That means we fished this afterrnoon and we have all day tomorrow. I was pretty pumped when we left the dock. The bluefin reports were good and the local guys were catching yellowfin close to home. We got a pretty good load of bait and took off on the hunt. We got the goose egg today. The very unfortunate 0. It was definitely a time of day thing because we saw a couple schools and plenty of loose fish, they just wanted nothing to do with us this afternoon. We're going to gather ourselves and get set up on the bluefin grounds tonight and hopefully make up for today tomorrow.

 The weather today was great and as always we hope for the same tomorrow. Also I love our new electronics. Wait till you see it.

Wow what a great day! We had an awesome morning bite on the Dorado. Big bulls and cows. We took a break at lunch and Pedro prepared a Southwestern 10 oz. burger that was delicious. He really nails the menu with his creative spices and herbs. Back out on the deck we had excellent fishing on the wahoo throughout the whole day. And then to finish up the day we caught some yellowfin tuna. Just a great, fun day. Dinner tonight was a spicy ginger shrimp curry. Another great dish. Our weather all day has been beautiful. I hear it's been crappy up above and hope it lies down before we start up the line.

Oct. 7

Hello out there in the internet world of the Polaris Supreme. It's been a while since I have been able to write to you all. This is because down there in the lower lower latitudes our satellite service isn't available therefor I am unable to send out any emails. So this will be a trip wrap up of our time spent down below...

First of all we had a great trip. Of our 5 1/2 days down here we landed 50+ tuna over 100 pounds. 15 of those went over 200 pounds and 1 of those will most likely go over 300 pounds. It taped off at 297. A real beaut. We also released at least 17 tuna over 100 pounds and threw in 50+ wahoo as hole fillers. That's not a bad fish count for 20 anglers. We had 8 anglers. Fantastic.

We got a little nervous when we first arrived down there at 4:00 a.m. of the 2nd. We stopped the boat first on some flying fish to try for some of them to put on the kite and during the drift we could see many sharks swimming around and chasing the flyers. We got the anchor down around 5 and it wasn't getting better. A big shark problem is what we had on our hands. They were making it unfishable. We had a 1 hour window that morning when the tuna were more aggressive then the sharks and managed a handful of big tunas with the Jer-Bear getting one over 200 pounds but it was short lived. The tuna backed off and the sharks took over again. We had enough and tried pulling the anchor but it got stuck and we lost everything. Damn. While we were putting one of our spair sets on we trolled it up for wahoo but we couldn't get past the 50-80 pound tunas to get to the wahoo. On most trips that would be good but on this trip we release those babies. After doing that for a while we got the anchor back down and things never really got rolling. We had a shark problem. Like I said we, were a little nervous after the first day.

Day number 2 didn't start off any better. We had a shark problem. Every bait we put out hooked a grinner. We didn't give it too long before we got to trolling again and this is what we found out. The cows were biting the marauders. We were trolling them up! ? That was a first for me. We were getting fish from small ones we would release to fish up to 215! You never know with fishing. It's a crazy game. So we had it all figured out. For the rest of the day this is what we did. We would troll around with our marauders and our yummy flyers on the kite and catch tuna and wahoo. The 4 remaining anglers not trolling were getting them fishing sardines on the slide. We stayed very busy. 15 fish over 100 that day with 2 of those over 200. The weather picked up that day and would stay windy for the remainder of our time here.

Day 3 was more of the same except the sharks disappeared and we were getting more tired. The fish were getting harder to pull over the rail. We also lost our Matt to an injured knee. We're not sure how it happened. To much of banging it on the rail scooping flyers and he may of hit it on a tuna some how but however it went down he was done. He could barely move about the boat let alone gaff a 200 pounder. Also our fearless leader, and I mean that, hurt his back prier to the trip and has had a hurt wrist for some time now was of little help gaffing 200 pounders as well so we were down to 3 of us and a "Gringo". That's our galley assistant. That's right Gringo fans, he's been back for some time now. Any hoo around 5:00 p.m. things started to really liven up with tuna flying out of the water everywhere so we threw the anchor over and had pretty much wide open fishing on the bigguns till about 7:30. We landed 12 over 100, most of those closer to 200 with 4 of them over that mark. Nice.

Day 4 was different. The tuna stopped biting on the troll and things got back to the way we're used to. Anchor fishing and we did well. The fish started biting at 1:00 p.m. for a little while then things slowed down until around 5:30 when things went ballistic similar to the night prior. 11 fish over 100 with 4 of those over 200 and George getting his personal best which went 297. We're hoping it goes over 3 at the dock. We'll see. When I'm giving these fish counts keep in mind we are releasing many fish if they aren't in the 200 pound range.

Day 5 was pretty much spent on anchor. We had a late night with Brian being stuck on a big one for hours. We didn't get to bed until 11:00 p.m. so when the crew woke up at 4:00 a.m. nobody was awake except Charlie. Here's why. He had a 186 pounder completely wreck him. I mean he got his but kicked like I've never seen him get his but kicked before. This happened the day before so he went to bed early that night and was up with us bright and early. Anyways he had a 207 landed before anyone else was even up besides the crew. He hooked another one shortly after that too but after a long battle the fish one and lived to fight another day. We had more action throughout the day but there were many lulls in between the action but it was a slower day for sure. Not a slow day though. We had 7 over 100 with 3 of those going over 200 pounds. Tommy had been keeping an eye on the storm that's been brewing the whole time we were down there and decided on this night to start heading north to keep us all safe. The storm became a tropical storm and was still getting stronger and closer so we had to take off leaving 1 day to fish somewhere north.

Here are some firsts for me and most others on this boat that happened while we were down there: I have never seen a shark problem that bad and then seeing them disappear like they did. One hour it was not fishable and that afternoon they were pretty much all gone,. I have never seen a 200 pounder let alone so many 200 pounders and just big tuna in general bite the trolled marauders like they did for a few days down here. I have never seen a 186 pounder jump completely out of the water right next to the boat after being on the line for 5 minutes or any amount of time for that matter. The fish must have thought it was a dorado. I have never seen Charlie not at the rail 100% percent of the time the fish were biting and it's because of A. he's reached the age of 60 but mostly B. I have never seen fish fight as hard as they fought on this trip. I mean they were brutal. Mean mean fish. I have seen 350+ pounders come in much easier then the 160+ pounders we were hooking. We lost a lot of big fish on this trip. We think about 50% of the big ones we hooked we lost. Not because of angler error but because these were just mean mean fish.

Here are some of the pricey things that happened during the trip. We lost one set of anchor gear, we lost 2 big giant 12 volt batteries, our refrigerator broke down , we lost and broke 3 gaffs, fuel prices are nasty, but the look on Matts face when I offered him a sponge bath because he couldn't stand up in the shower was priceless. Oh Mathew. He's doing a little better then before. The swelling went down a little and there is a little less pain then he had before but the poor guy has got to be just borred out of his mind and just bummed he missed out on some great big mean tuna fishing.

We will keep you filled on the ride home .

In addition to the great Wahoo fishing last trip JJ was able to sneak a whole skipjack down below then to pull out this nice Grouper! Hell ya JJ!

Tuesday, September 18th, 2012

Hi friends. Yellowtail fishing was off the hook this morning -- or, on the hook, depending on which way you look at it. Fifteen to twenty-eight pound fish just kept coming over the rail and we also had a few flatheads as well. It was all you could've wanted on fly-lined sardines, yo-yo jigs, and surface jigs too but we only took a few boxes to break up the morning and from there, we ventured offshore with the hopes of finding something floating for dorado and wahoo.

Let me tell you, trying to locate kelps in eighty degree water is a difficult task and although we did get lucky and found a couple scraps, they weren't holding all that much. However, we did troll up a few legitimate ball-slappers, a marlin (healthy release), and one really nice wahoo at dusk caught by Mike Henry. His wahoo looks to be in the fifty to sixty pound range and he coaxed that fat skinny into latching onto a purple and black Marauder. Good going, Mike.

For tomorrow, we'll be fishing for all kinds of species but our main target is wahoo. We'll see what tomorrow brings. Our weather is just splendid and the all-day bronze-a-thon continues. I'm starting to look like Hulk Hogan out here. Supreme guns. Later.