amsoil midwest Fishing Report 2025

~~Sep. 5
 Here we go again.  Arrive/depart today.  Off with the old, out with the new.  5 days.  That's how long we have on this one. 5 days.  Weather forecast looks terrific for at least the next few days so that's wonderful.  We have another first for me this trip.  Before this trip I have never loaded up with straight mackerel for bait.  Other than the last trip but that was a 1.5 day trip.  This is long range.  Straight mackerel.  That's 3 top tanks, and 2 big slammers full below deck.  All full of mackerel.  So this will be interesting.  It looks like great yellowtail bait.  Not great for chumming but great for catching the yellows, and I'm sure the bluefin will eat them too, just not as well as the sardine.  Oh well.  It is what it is.  We'll just make lemonade, that's all.

 So to start things off tomorrow we will be fishing for those yellowtails.  And most likely, we'll be doing that for the next couple of days before getting in the hunt for the blues.  Action.  We want action.  Wish us luck.
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Back to the Islands starting tomorrow (Nov 1).  Please bring a 40 lb yo-yo setup and a 25 lb bait setup.  For all you jig fisherman.  We will be targeting yellowtail and all other gamefish. Who knows, maybe even a stray Bluefin Tuna.  Passport required.

Polaris Supreme Trip Report 07-17-2016 #2 I meant to send this picture of the fathom meter this morning but I forgot about it. This is a screenshot of our fathom meter last night when we hooked the 115 pounder that Jack caught. You can see these Bluefin like to hang between 26 to 40 fathoms. That's pretty darn deep. If you look up towards the upper part of the screen, you will see two flat straight lines. One of them is in the middle of the screen at about 4 fathoms and the other is on the left side at about 11 fathoms. That is somebody under the boat using a live bait sinker rig. Also in the center of the screen you'll see a forward slash. It is light in color and broken up starting at about 4 fathoms going down to 12 fathoms. That is somebody winding a jig up. If you look between 7 to 13 fathoms you'll see a jig someone is dropping down. The point I want to make is that these fish are typically deep and you need to be able to get your bait or jig down into the deeper water columns where these fish are at. Knowing this you should be using those big heavy jigs or heavy torpedo sinker to increase your chances of hooking one of these trophy fish. The tuna did not show up. A couple of us saw schools that did not cooperate at all. We picked up a few yellowtail on kelp patties and a handful yellowfin tuna for the day. We are heading home to regroup. We would like to thank Archie Steele and the gang for joining us we had a great time with the crew and some fantastic fishing the first part of the trip. We will be into the dock early tomorrow morning to pick up Paul Hess and the gang! Thanks for reading, Polaris Supreme

~~This is the after picture of the port side navigation system. If you notice, the monitor itself is a daylight monitor. The sun is shining directly on it and you can still see the screen. This system has radar, a plotter, and a fathometer. And it's all AIS capable. (Automated identification system) All ships that have AIS, can be tracked on a website, called www.marinetraffic.com. All of the systems can be overlaid so you can have your plotter, radar, and depth viewed at the same time

 

 

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This is the starboard side navigation system. Which is identical to the port. In addition to the previous mentioned features, the monitor can be switched to a computer system which has Nobel Tech times zero catch navigation fish finding and my favorite, bottom mapping system on it. You can, and we have been, making our own bottom maps for the previous three years. Cool stuff. In addition it has live weather from Weather Works XM Weather. Also it has SeaView Ocean Imaging capabilities to where we can download water temperature, chlorophyll, sea height, ect. The port system also has its own computer.

 

~~The monitor on the left is a sound activated fathometer for fish finding. And the monitor on the right is a daylight monitor for our sonar, for fish finding. In the front is one of our pairs of Gyroscopic binoculars

~~All of these electronics need new antennas. And this is how they get there. We literally pulled out a third of a dock cart of old wiring

 

 

~~Say good bye to the old radars.

~~Drew grinding away on a little cancer on the deck.

~~The roto hammer is one of our favorite tools for chipping up cancerous areas on the deck, but the noise is unbearable to our neighbors in the boat yard.

~~The deck hatches had to be completely stripped

~~We re-skinned the outside of the galley doors. They now have a nice white formica finish.

~~Creative, yes. But I bet he spent a half hour looking for that office chair in the boat yard!

~~The boat looks kinda small in some of these upcoming pictures without Tommie in them for perspective.  ~~Jed's missing from these shots because he was taking the pictures.

 

 

~~Drew resealing inspection plates for exhaust

~~Tommie detailing wood work

~~Tommie prepping for paint

~~Final coat of deck paint. Looking good!

 

 

Today was tough for the first 3/4's of the day looking for 30-40 lb. yellowtail and we only picked up a 1/2 dozen. by late afternoon we bailed out and went for the 20 pounders and had excellent time winding up our yellowtail fishing for the trip. Tomorrow we will be strictly concentrating of Dorado and any tuna we might find. The weather is still spectacular. Thanks, Tommy and crew

Osterkamp charter had to work hard for every bite but in the end we achieved our goal. (1) made it home safe. (2) enjoy the ocean with friends and family. (3) every one of our 43 customers caught a fish as we ended with 61 yellowfin tuna.

~~Sep. 16
 It was raining wahoo around the Polaris Supreme today.  It wasn't raining wahoo on the Polaris Supreme, just around it.  We scratched out a good day though.  I told myself if we caught 40 wahoo today, it would be worth the run down here.  We caught 46.  It felt like we should of had 200, and with all the fish we lost today, that might not be an exaggeration.  We're just 5 shy of 100 for the trip.  If you add up all the halves and heads we wound in today, we might have a hundred.  The sharks were really bad out here today.  You wouldn't have wanted to go for a swim.  I say it was raining wahoo today because they were flying out of the water most everywhere you looked chasing flying fish and such.  It was an awesome sight to see.  I have never seen anything like it in my 15 years of long ranging. 

 We've really put together a very nice trip so far.  I wouldn't mind a little more tuna and some yellowtail.  We've left the stones and we're now headed up for the remainder of the trip.  We're going to check out the baja coast tomorrow in search of all the species and get in position for the rest of the trip as well.
     

Excellent, excellent fishing on 70-170 lb tuna until about 1pm. Most all of the fish were released. We looked hard late in the afternoon, but a front came up and the weather got rough. One more day for us, wish us luck.