crystal river fl Fishing Report 2025

"We released over 200 fish in our four days at the Rocks," said Polaris Supreme owner-skipper Tom Rothery September 6, after his nine-day trip with 20 anglers. "They were yellowtail and yellowfin tuna."
Rothery's anglers had just over half-limits of wahoo and near-limits of tuna, the best score so far this young fall season. Wayne Campbell of Huntington Beach managed a quick limit of 15, he said, on bait and 58-pound single-strand wire leaders.
Chuck Eiser of Rancho Mirage won the jackpot for a 106.8-pound yellowfin that chowed down a squid under the kite, using one of the boat's kite rigs.
Brent Hough of Palm Springs used a sardine and 50-pound line to take a 91.4-pounder and Simon Housman of Palm Springs nabbed a 74-pounder in just 15 minutes on a sardine and 30-pound line.

Mike Pritchard called in with this report for the Tribute. "We're off to a great start here this morning. We made a move down to the Yellowfin grounds that really paid off. We have over 150 Yellowfin tuna on the boat this morning. To that you can add 150 Yellowtail. We'll keep you updated as the day progresses.

"We're leaving on a 1 Day trip tomorrow night. I know some Bluefin have been caught locally. It's a good time to go fishing. There is still very good fishing to be had. Hope to see you on the water."

Tuesday, July 9th, 2013

Good evening, friends. Awesome day out here on the Supreme. No need to get too wordy about things today, we had a super day. Well, it was more like a super 5-hour drift on 40-60 lb. Bluefin and the rest of the day was spent enjoying beautiful weather. All in all, I consider today to be just terrific and I gave Drew's mustache a high five to show my approval. Y'all should too.

From 10:00 hours until 15:00 hours, we plunked away at that stellar grade of fish and when the dust settled, we had just shy of 100 of those beauties all while enjoying a bronze in flat calm weather. You can't beat that, you can't! It was some of the better action on BFT in recent years and we had some real flurries with at least 10 fish hanging at one time. It was very nice! Everybody had a shot at a few of those bruisers and we're pumped about or day.

We didn't really have time to take a lot of photos because we were so busy. Sorry, Riddler but know that the BFT look exactly like the ones from prior trips and they are chillin' super fresh in the RSW well. Sometimes, you've just got to make a drop.

Anyhow, we're going to do this for one more day and then see about heading to one of our favorite Yellowtail spots on Thursday. Things are really looking up right now and the Yellowtail grounds are no different. Really good fishing on some 'tails right now and we're looking at that with mouths agape. But, we still have some business to attend to with my favorite fish in the ocean, the Bluefin tuna.

Awesome weather, awesome fishing, awesome blossoms. See ya!

July 18 We couldn't get in our groove today. Stops for 1,1,1,1,1. Saw plenty of fish. Nothing I would call a school but descent balls of fish that just wouldn't react for us. And that's all I have to say about that. Arrive depart tomorrow on another 5 day. July 17 We made awful time coming up the line from Cedros last night then all day we got tied up with all the tons of bluefin schools we passed along the way. 60 miles of the fish. We also scratched yellows on the kelps we went by. The albacore evening area moved up 20 miles and we didn't get to the grounds until 3:15.

 

 

 

We did manage to find a couple hungry biting schools of albacore before dark and put some more meat on the boat currently chilling at a comfortable 30 degrees. Weather is fine and we're going to enjoy some delicious lamb chop for dinner and hit the rack. We'll be here tomorrow to finish up the trip. We are far away from home but we'll stay as long as the fish are biting. Sorry Tommy, we might be getting home late on Monday. July 16 For the past 2 weeks if you were a long range boat at Cedros you just rolled up to a certain spot on the island, shut down and made a day of it. Not today, that certain spot was not happening today. We had to fish. It took a while to locate them but around 11:30 we did. 6 schools up at a time. Unfortunately they were not biting fish. We'd stop on a big school for 6, stop on one for 3,1,0,6,12, like that. At 5:30 we stopped on the mother load school and had them almost jumping in the boat they were so thick but yet again, it didn't bite like advertised. We did get quite a few there and hit a couple more schools before dark where we caught some fish. Perfect weather today and should remain that way for at least a couple more days. We're going to take advantage of the glassy sea and head back offshore for the remainder of the trip. Good night. Drew and the famous crew of the Polaris Supreme. July 15 We started off at the night before hot evening bite area with the fleet. We drove 20 miles to far before light. A code boat who had a later jump passed through that area at daylight and found some biting albacore. So the fleet slides up 20 miles. When we got up there we had time for a couple of stops before the door slammed shut. From then until we left, SLOW. We started to slide down. 20 miles later we're back where we started and we see the fish. 1 good stop, 3 short stops and 1 great stop later, we're headed down to the Island for some great yellowtail fishing and sun block wearing weather. Oh yeah, the weather today was just fine. Drew and the crew. July 14 Good afternoon viewers. We arrived at the dock early this morning and weighed up jackpot. 1st was Tim Ryan with a 36.6 albacore. Second was Kirk Kirkpatrick with his 34.6 pounder and bringing up third was Dennis Mc Neely with one at 33.6. We are now rolling down in beautiful much overdue sunny weather. We have a full load of fantastic sardine and passengers eager to use them. I'm just sitting in the wheelhouse starring at my water charts and listening to my code boats trying to figure out where to be tomorrow. We're going to start somewhere offshore tuna fishing. The reports don't sound to great so we might have to do some fishing tomorrow and try and relocate these albacore. The weather forecast looks great so we have that going for us. It's almost seminar time and shortly there after dinner time.

A fun action filled day today. We were offshore fishing tuna and yellowtails on kelps. Plenty of tuna sign but they were like they've been, reluctant to bite. We managed to land a couple per rod. The yellows on kelps produced better results. Good fishing on some 10-14 pounders, mostly 15-25 pounders. Again, the weather was absolutely gorgeous. We're going to be fishing Cedros Island tomorrow for those jumbo yellows.