islamorada tarpon Fishing Report 2025

Sept. 29

Well today was more of the same. We woke up to coffee, machaca and eggs and a Tom Cruise movie. Then we rigged up our heavy gear and did our tuna seminar. Then we trolled it up for a bit and looked at a couple of kelps for some neck tie size dorado which we let go. Then we had a nice taco salad and some kind of a room temp soup which was good and then some chose to take a nap while others chose to listen to football and do what guys do while we listen to football. After that it was dinner time and then a quick nap before arriving to the bait grounds at 11:00 PM. Bait fishing wasn't a great success but we did manage to catch 13 nice size squid that will fish beautifully on the kite. Hey, that's 13 200+ pound tuna as far as I'm concerned. Now everyone is in bed and I'm up driving and writing this.The weather couldn't be better and we're about half way there so a little more relaxation before we get down and dirty for several days straight.

The Polaris Supreme Crew.

"The X-Raps were working real good on the slide," said Polaris Supreme skipper Tom Rothery July 21 at Fisherman's Landing. "It seemed like the best colors were silver or bonito color. The zucchini colored skirted jigs were working real good on the troll. Fishing was good; we got enough fish, with good yellowtail at the islands and good albacore fishing offshore." David "Sammy" Samuelson of San Diego won first place on the trip, for his 37.4-pound albacore. He said he got it with a sardine on a 2/0 hook tied to 30-pound P-Line, a Saiwa reel and a Calstar six-foot rod. Bob Pollack of San Diego won second place for a 33.4-pounder, and Dick Emerson of Rowland Heights won third place for a 32.8-pound albacore. Jonathan Kendrick of Oakley stood in with the winners to show his 37-pound dorado, caught on a Zucker's jig in Mexican Flag colors.

Out with a light load last night so, Captain Shane decided to go fish for Big Bluefin. As of 5 pm, they had 12 Bluefin on board, most 80-140 pounds, 2 at 180 and a 315! Pictured below is regular Shane wrightson with a limit of Bluefin, one at 180 pounds and one at 315. Captain Shane can catch fish, but may need to work on his picture taking

Wednesday, April 10th, 2013

Hello. Our first, full travel day was somewhat uneventful by normal standards but by our standards, it was a riot. We worked out, ate breakfast, fiddled about various boat/rigging projects, held a couple of seminars, rigged more tackle, and then, we ate lunch, napped, ate some more, rigged more tackle, and enjoyed dinner and a movie. That was pretty much our day in a nutshell.

Highlights of the day for me: 1. Mark trolled all morning for not even a sniff of a jig strike and then I relieved him of his duties so that he could eat lunch. I took my shirt off, sat in the chair for what I'm guessing was thirteen minutes and then, bam! Jig strike! How you like me now, Clark? Granted, it was about a an 8 lb. Yellowtail but the rest of his buddies were pretty hungry and we broke up the ride by pulling on some of his companions -- so that was fun. 2. Putting a bunch of dead bait and other nonsense into a food processor to feed to our bait. It's most likely the happiest bait on the planet right now as they were fattened up all day. I'm serious, they're getting the "bluefin tuna in the pens" treatment. They are happy. 3. The movie "Flight". I only was able to catch the first half of what I first thought was "Requiem For A Dream Part II" but then the airplane stuff started. I'm sorry if this statement is insensitive but Denzel Washington can sure make a cocaine-using, alcoholic, cigarette-smoker look so good in a movie. Great actor. Can't wait to see how the rest of the film plays out.

Anyhow, not too much to report today other than my usual idiotic banter. Oh yeah, before I forget. After twelve years in this business, I finally got to examine and learn about a new species of fish I've never heard about nor seen: a "Mid-Shipman (?)" I believe is what it is called. Of all the places to examine and identify this new creature, it was dead on the fuel dock. That's the advantage of having a stud biologist on the boat. Thanks, Scootch. Basically, this thing looks like a Catfish without whiskers and that's what we were calling it until Uncle Scootch swooped in and set us straight.

So that's all. Tomorrow, we'll be driving by Rocas Alijos and we'll give it a try for some Yellowtail for tacos and roe to feed the bait. We'll make our intended destination around lunch time and then we'll be headed back on our merry way. Thanks for checking in.

-The Supreme Team

Nov. 9

                We had a pretty good day today.  We were due in the zone at 8:40 AM but we didn't make that ETA.  We got caught up in a stop a few miles prior that bit pretty well for us.  Then we spent maybe too much time in that zone looking for another deal that never came.  So we mosied on down and found another little zone which gave us our best stop of the day.  That was a good stop.  We caught a couple tuna reaching close to 40 pounds on that one.  And then the life pretty much disappeared until late.  So from lunch until 5 or so we didn't catch anything.  Then wouldn't you know it, before dark we started seeing life again and stopping the boat and catching fish again.  I guarantee you us catching fish right before dark and nothing since lunch wasn't a coincidence.  The fish were down hanging low where we couldn't see them and came up late.  All and all it was a good day.  A nice little starter for our 10 day trip.  15-25 pound yellowfin mostly with a few we let go and some nearing 40.

 

                The weather held up for us today too.  It got a little breezy in the afternoon but then it came down late again.  We're heading down tonight and we're going to try our hand at some yellers tomorrow morning and take it from there.  We're hoping we get a weather window in the morning.  It looks like we should but the wind should be with us tomorrow night on through hopefully only the next day.

 

                I'm supposed to let mama bear know that your forever cub is kicking butt.  He got himself a nice one and plenty others today.  He won't stop yappin about how much he loves and misses his mommy though.  Frankly, we're getting tired of hearing it.

                                                                                                               

Aug. 17
    Today almost went as planned except for the lack of yellowfin.  We were supposed to scratch pretty good at the yellowfin in the morning, like 40 or so and then get on that big bluefin, and then scratch out another 30 or so yellowfin in the evening.  Well we did the middle part but the numbers were lower on the sides.  We saw plenty of that yellowfin, it just didn't bite well.  On with the cool part.  We found a mega school of that 70-100+ pound bluefin mid morning.  It's been a long time since I've seen a mega school and every time I do I forget about the time before and I think it's the biggest school I've ever seen and that's how today was.  Of course it didn't bite, but for me up in the wheel house where I can see it well it was incredible.  Just the area of fish was monstrous, and when you add in all the shiners and thousands of black backs swimming through, it's amazing.  We fished it for 4 hours on different attempts.  On the first, the youngster Brendan hooked up and landed about an 80 pounder.  On the second, his dad Scott hooked up and lost it and we hooked and lost another one.  On the third, Scott hooked up again but this time he landed his 107 pounder. So far it's looking like we'll have a father- son jack pot.  On the next few tries we got no reaction so we let it regroup for a while and a couple hours later we found it again and we hooked two more and lost them both and we missed a bite on the kite.  We tried it one more time after that for no reaction before we left it for good.  We're going to fish again tomorrow.  We'll make a small move and relocate but as things are right now, we don't need much more yellowfin so we'll concentrate on the other kind of tuna.
                                    

 

Captain Ryan Bostian called in with an audio update from the San Diego out of Seaforth Sportfishing in San Diego, CA. Today we had every intention of fishing for Yellowtail. We checked our usual spots and could not find any fish. The water rolled at the Coronado Islands. So we headed West and we ran into Bluefin Tuna. We say large schools of tuna in the 50 to 100 pound range.

We ended up catching 6 of these trophies (up to 65 pounds). They were biting on 40 pound fly-lined sardines. You might also get lucky on surface iron or popper action. We are going to be running Bluefin Tuna trips. There have been some fish caught up to 245 pounds this year.

San Diego Anglers private charter wanted taco meat, so we put the yellowtail fishing on the back burner. We enjoyed the day and caught limits of calico bass 112 vermillion rockfish 13 barracuda. Back on the yellowtail hunt tomorrow.