devils lake nd ice Fishing Report 2025

Ryan Bostian checked in to tell us what the San Diego is doing. "The kids are back in school and if you have been waiting for an opportunity to get on the boat, with a light load, this is definitely the time for you. The Coronado Island have had very good Yellowtail signs. It has been inconsistent. We see them one day, we don't see them the next. The bite one day, they don't bite the next.

"Rockfish make up most of the counts, they last couple of days. But we always keep our eye out for Yellowtail. I don't think this season is over by any means. The water is still very warm. There is plenty of 70 degree water around. Reports have Yellowfin tuna moving up the line and there are plenty of Bluefin around. The problem with the Bluefin is finding fish that want to bite. It is just like the Dorado. There are plenty of Dorado, they just are hesitant to bite.

"It seems like the ocean is in a transition. I expect to see some good counts in a week or so. Our reservations are very light. If you've been waiting to get on the boat, with 40 or 50 of your closest friends; this is definitely the time to come on down. Make your reservations at 619-224-3383. The boat is still running everyday and the weather has been outstanding.

~~Sep. 18
 "Fixed up" is a good expression to describe our day today.  We had very good yellowfin tuna fishing.  We arrived to our destination shortly after breakfast and after about 1/2 an hour of searching we found what we were looking for.  A school of 25-30 pound yellowfin.  It bit for a little while before we had to relocate the school, which we did a few times.  After that we found a different school of a more mixed grade of 10-30 pounders that we hit a couple times.  Then we found a school of mostly 16-22 pounders that we did well off of.  I think you get the point.  We had a good day.  Along with all the tuna we caught, we also managed 7 wahoo and 4 dorado.  I'll say it again, we had a good day.  We're feeling satisfied.  Worth the days travel to get where we've been the last couple days, that's for sure.

 The weather today was fantastic.  Fan tastic.  We'll be traveling tonight and sleeping in tomorrow.  We're shooting to be fishing tomorrow afternoon.  We'd like to top off on some yellers.
        

Hello Apollo Anglers:

We have a two day trip that has some spots available. The trip departs Sunday the 9th of September at 9 p.m. fishing the 10th and 11th. and returns on the evening of the 11th. This two day is limited to 20 people. Cost is $510 per person and includes food and permits.

Contact Baron for more info or to sign up.

Baron Spafford
1815 Gillespie St.
Santa Barbara CA 93101

805-569-9939
805-452=1562 (cell)

Oct. 13

Good afternoon from the Polaris Supreme. We returned this morning from our 6 day trip and off loaded our candy of the ocean. I'm not kidding you. Those bluefin are so darn good I could just make a shake out of them and drink them. I had the pleasure of getting my hands on a few this year and had the big fat belly of one last time I was off and the way I did it was so darn good I'm going to tell you how I did it for the people who caught those beauties this year. Salt, pepper and olive oil on the meat side. Put the belly skin side down on the grill and cook it through. If you flip it at all only do it for a few seconds at the very end. On the stove mix soy sauce, maple syrup and a splash of water and heat warm. Pour on top of fish and enjoy.

Big fish goes as follows: The big bluefins of the trip went from 68 up to 123 pounds, the wahoo was 58 pounds, and I weighed a yellowfin at 51 pounds and we caught several of those so some good quality fish there.

We departed on Joe Gigliotti's 2nd annual 8 day accurate adventure excursion quest outing journey tour ride drive cruise stroll trek trip this morning. Our bait looked mostly good. The last box we took scaled up after our first few scoops so I had the pleasure of taking part in my first bait bucketing. That's where you use buckets to scoop the bait as opposed to nets to put it onboard. It has it's advantages and disadvantages and one advantage is that it's a good workout. Holy moly. After that we had a lovely lunch and some lovely tackle rigging. I had a lovely nap as well and I jumped on the band wagon. I now started the Suzanne Collins Hunger Games trilogy. Richie and chef Shawn have book club meetings on them and I just couldn't be left out so here we go. Plus my David Lee Roth bio still isn't in, damn you amazon.

I'm handing the keyboard off to hopefully Richie for your reading sake, Tommy's out but I sure you want to read Richie's writing. I do. See ya!

Drew

July 15
  Howdy folks.  Arrive depart day today so I don't have any juicy fish stories for you.  We made it dockside by 5:30 in the am.  We had a lovely time of off loading a beautiful catch of yellowtails, then an even better time of fueling the vessel.  When we got back to our slip I was surprised to see my mother who just happened to bring my lovely daughter down to see me.  I didn't know she was coming and did not expect to get to see my Sydney so that just made my day.  But we're out fishing now so it's all business.

  Things went great at the bait receivers.  We topped off on some good looking sardine and we're looking to put them to good use tomorrow.  We have a report from one of our code boats fishing on the grounds we fished last trip offshore wise and it sounds interesting.  A better grade of fish moved in today and we're going to investigate it tomorrow. 

  Everyone on board is just relaxing now or stuffing there face with prime rib.  I'm about to join them.  Mark's trying to diet and it's hilarious.  I've never seen him  give  the slightest about what goes in his stomach and he's going crazy with hunger.  He's a big boy and he's' having chicken fried steak withdrawal.  See you tomorrow.  Hopefully our timing is right on tomorrow and we get some of that action on those better tunas.
           

The 3M private charter experienced both ends of the spectrum of tuna behavior. Many non biting schools made our mid-day aggressive school very special.

~~Oct. 12
 Here's what went down today.  Breakfast, then American Hustle(movie), then a whole lot of tuna leader making, then the Charger game.  Listen to this.  Our goofball crew member Mark Clark, well he claims to be a Raider fan but the only time he seems to care what they do is when they play the Chargers.  Myself and the rest of the crew usually bet 20 dollars on each game. Well today couldn't have played out better.  Prior to the start of the game he assumed we were betting and to rub it in that the Raiders are no good, I claimed I didn't want to bet because I'd feel I was taking money out of his sons pocket.  He insisted  we bet so we did.  I still had it planned out to give him his money back if the Chargers blew them out as the ultimate rub in.  So if you didn't know, it was a nail biter.  Mark missed the last couple minutes of the game and everyone on board made him think that the Raiders won.  He immediately came down to the galley and just absolutely let me have it.  I don't know
 how but I managed to keep a straight enough face to still have him think the Raiders won.  Ever since then he's been on cloud 9.  I don't know how and when I'll break the news and bring his reality crashing down to a major low.  I'm sure looking forward to it though.  He thinks he's up 120 bucks but more importantly to him he gets to talk all that smack. 

 Anyways, moving on.  It's cocktail hour now and soon we will be feasting on a veal chop.  One more day.  The weather is fantastic right now.  A beautiful sunset too.

         

 

Polaris Supreme arrived under Drew Henderson's hand October 27 after a ten-day trip with 20 anglers that visited the southern banks, an offshore kelp area and Cedros Island. Drew tied the rig at Fisherman's Landing and weighed the best of his catch. "We had good fishing the first day at the banks," he said, "until about eight in the morning. Then we had a good sunsetter. We got yellowtail on the 23, and about a dozen wahoo on offshore kelps. We had good dorado fishing on the kelps." The trip's best yellowtail was a 45.3-pound mossback caught at Cedros Island by Stan Katkansky of Lincoln City, OR. "I got him on a mackerel," said Stan, "on 60-pound line."