smith river montana Fishing Report 2024

Sep. 15

First off I'd like to give a shot out to my Phillidelphians. What up Philly. Your just going to let the Chargers roll in there and get it done. Uhhhh. That's right. You and your candy cane looking uniforms, Xmas all year long here in the mlb of Philly. And here's another thing, your cheese steak sandwiches stink. That's right, I said it. No hard feelings Philly. That's the way I feel about every team the Chargers go up against.

Now onto fishing. Today was awesome. I mean it was just a blast. We started it off early with a jig strike/sonar school and it was game on. Early on it was nothing but small fish. Small yellowtail, small yellowfin, small dorado. So we shook, shook, shook. Release, release, release. Then we caught a nice one. Then another. And another until pretty much everything we hooked was a 30-40 pound yellowfin tuna. Nice! Take that Philadelphia! Well we caught a bunch of them during that 1/2 day stop and it was fun. It was like fishing in a giant aquarium. Everywhere you looked it was tuna. You could choose which fish you wanted to hook if you were fast enough. You had to be quick though. After that we fished some kelps, some that were holding pretty good amounts of dorado, and we trolled around for some more tuna but we were spent after the first 1/2 of the day. I'm telling you, that was fun fishing.

Anyway, the weather today was mostly good. It got a little breezy there late but no complaints. We're sliding down and we're going to look at the yellowtail grounds tomorrow and decide on where to go from there.

Nov. 15

                Not much to report from us today.  It was a pretty uneventful day.  We traveled all morning until after lunch when we arrived to the Islands, and we never saw a yellowtail.  It was dead as can be at this place.  We took the tour, well as much as we could in a few hours, and ended up back here in the lee.  We were and still are catching calico bass and things.  We did hook something big, a yellow or a big halibut or even a seabass, but we'll never know because the hook straightened out right before we could see it and the fish got away.  And that's it.  We're going to try and keep our anchor hung right here and see what kind of conditions we have here in the morning for our last day of fishing.  As soon as the wind backs off enough for a tolerable ride offshore Tuesday morning, we'll be on our way home.