for toledo bend Fishing Report 2025

The spring Season is nearly upon us and we will be taking the Apollo to Santa Barbara for the rockfish opener and hopefully a productive seabass season. We have an unusual amount of open weekend dates for this spring, between March 1rst and May 15th. Take a look at our calendar at apollocharters.com. Take advantage of these rare openings and book your own charter with me and my excelent crew today. Come fish with us out of Santa Barbara and experience the easiest and shortest ride to Santa Rosa and San Miguel Islands. This means more fishing time and easier access to those harder to reach destinations. I hope to hear from you soon. Thank you, J.J. Gerritsen.

Hey gang:

This past week we got a taste of just about everything the offshore grounds have to offer. Wednesday and Thursday were spent drifting over the top of some of the biggest schools of bluefin tuna I have ever seen in the local waters. While we had a lot of fish around and under the boat we did not catch all that many of them. I have been saying for years that I believe a bluefin tuna is one of the hardest fish to hook in the ocean and they proved it as we caught 11 on Wednesday and 7 on Thursday. Monday and Tuesday were relatively slow days for us as we returned to the dock with 20-30 mixed fish (yellowtail,dorado). On Friday and Saturday we took out 2 separate rent rod charter groups and experienced some very fun fishing for yellows and dorado. The highlight of the week was our Saturday trip as we caught 68 mixed fish (46 yellowtail 22 dorado). If you are planning to come out with us this week , all you need to bring is a few bait rods. 25 lb. has been the most popular size as it is a nice medium between light and heavy. In the event that we run into a school of bluefin a 15 or a 20 lb. rod is a nice outfit to have. A 30 lb. rod can be used on kelps where the dorado and yellowtail are biting good.

Come fish for exotics with us!

Capt. Ryan Bostian

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.

Incredible sunsets are just another day on the office. Not much traffic on the commute either. 

Oct. 7

Hello out there in the internet world of the Polaris Supreme. It's been a while since I have been able to write to you all. This is because down there in the lower lower latitudes our satellite service isn't available therefor I am unable to send out any emails. So this will be a trip wrap up of our time spent down below...

First of all we had a great trip. Of our 5 1/2 days down here we landed 50+ tuna over 100 pounds. 15 of those went over 200 pounds and 1 of those will most likely go over 300 pounds. It taped off at 297. A real beaut. We also released at least 17 tuna over 100 pounds and threw in 50+ wahoo as hole fillers. That's not a bad fish count for 20 anglers. We had 8 anglers. Fantastic.

We got a little nervous when we first arrived down there at 4:00 a.m. of the 2nd. We stopped the boat first on some flying fish to try for some of them to put on the kite and during the drift we could see many sharks swimming around and chasing the flyers. We got the anchor down around 5 and it wasn't getting better. A big shark problem is what we had on our hands. They were making it unfishable. We had a 1 hour window that morning when the tuna were more aggressive then the sharks and managed a handful of big tunas with the Jer-Bear getting one over 200 pounds but it was short lived. The tuna backed off and the sharks took over again. We had enough and tried pulling the anchor but it got stuck and we lost everything. Damn. While we were putting one of our spair sets on we trolled it up for wahoo but we couldn't get past the 50-80 pound tunas to get to the wahoo. On most trips that would be good but on this trip we release those babies. After doing that for a while we got the anchor back down and things never really got rolling. We had a shark problem. Like I said we, were a little nervous after the first day.

Day number 2 didn't start off any better. We had a shark problem. Every bait we put out hooked a grinner. We didn't give it too long before we got to trolling again and this is what we found out. The cows were biting the marauders. We were trolling them up! ? That was a first for me. We were getting fish from small ones we would release to fish up to 215! You never know with fishing. It's a crazy game. So we had it all figured out. For the rest of the day this is what we did. We would troll around with our marauders and our yummy flyers on the kite and catch tuna and wahoo. The 4 remaining anglers not trolling were getting them fishing sardines on the slide. We stayed very busy. 15 fish over 100 that day with 2 of those over 200. The weather picked up that day and would stay windy for the remainder of our time here.

Day 3 was more of the same except the sharks disappeared and we were getting more tired. The fish were getting harder to pull over the rail. We also lost our Matt to an injured knee. We're not sure how it happened. To much of banging it on the rail scooping flyers and he may of hit it on a tuna some how but however it went down he was done. He could barely move about the boat let alone gaff a 200 pounder. Also our fearless leader, and I mean that, hurt his back prier to the trip and has had a hurt wrist for some time now was of little help gaffing 200 pounders as well so we were down to 3 of us and a "Gringo". That's our galley assistant. That's right Gringo fans, he's been back for some time now. Any hoo around 5:00 p.m. things started to really liven up with tuna flying out of the water everywhere so we threw the anchor over and had pretty much wide open fishing on the bigguns till about 7:30. We landed 12 over 100, most of those closer to 200 with 4 of them over that mark. Nice.

Day 4 was different. The tuna stopped biting on the troll and things got back to the way we're used to. Anchor fishing and we did well. The fish started biting at 1:00 p.m. for a little while then things slowed down until around 5:30 when things went ballistic similar to the night prior. 11 fish over 100 with 4 of those over 200 and George getting his personal best which went 297. We're hoping it goes over 3 at the dock. We'll see. When I'm giving these fish counts keep in mind we are releasing many fish if they aren't in the 200 pound range.

Day 5 was pretty much spent on anchor. We had a late night with Brian being stuck on a big one for hours. We didn't get to bed until 11:00 p.m. so when the crew woke up at 4:00 a.m. nobody was awake except Charlie. Here's why. He had a 186 pounder completely wreck him. I mean he got his but kicked like I've never seen him get his but kicked before. This happened the day before so he went to bed early that night and was up with us bright and early. Anyways he had a 207 landed before anyone else was even up besides the crew. He hooked another one shortly after that too but after a long battle the fish one and lived to fight another day. We had more action throughout the day but there were many lulls in between the action but it was a slower day for sure. Not a slow day though. We had 7 over 100 with 3 of those going over 200 pounds. Tommy had been keeping an eye on the storm that's been brewing the whole time we were down there and decided on this night to start heading north to keep us all safe. The storm became a tropical storm and was still getting stronger and closer so we had to take off leaving 1 day to fish somewhere north.

Here are some firsts for me and most others on this boat that happened while we were down there: I have never seen a shark problem that bad and then seeing them disappear like they did. One hour it was not fishable and that afternoon they were pretty much all gone,. I have never seen a 200 pounder let alone so many 200 pounders and just big tuna in general bite the trolled marauders like they did for a few days down here. I have never seen a 186 pounder jump completely out of the water right next to the boat after being on the line for 5 minutes or any amount of time for that matter. The fish must have thought it was a dorado. I have never seen Charlie not at the rail 100% percent of the time the fish were biting and it's because of A. he's reached the age of 60 but mostly B. I have never seen fish fight as hard as they fought on this trip. I mean they were brutal. Mean mean fish. I have seen 350+ pounders come in much easier then the 160+ pounders we were hooking. We lost a lot of big fish on this trip. We think about 50% of the big ones we hooked we lost. Not because of angler error but because these were just mean mean fish.

Here are some of the pricey things that happened during the trip. We lost one set of anchor gear, we lost 2 big giant 12 volt batteries, our refrigerator broke down , we lost and broke 3 gaffs, fuel prices are nasty, but the look on Matts face when I offered him a sponge bath because he couldn't stand up in the shower was priceless. Oh Mathew. He's doing a little better then before. The swelling went down a little and there is a little less pain then he had before but the poor guy has got to be just borred out of his mind and just bummed he missed out on some great big mean tuna fishing.

We will keep you filled on the ride home .

~~
July 11
 The morning started off so promisingly. We had plans to haul butt down to the lower grounds where there had been some good kelping but we got stopped short. The setup was epic. We had a 1-2 degree water temp break, and we were instantly catching fish. They were mostly small yellowfin. There was a sprinkling of 15-20+ pound tuna in there but most were throwbacks. But it felt like the school of straight bigs was right off the bow. We found a nice kelp and caught a dozen nice yellows and some more of that small tuna with a sprinkle, and again, we felt like it was soon coming. It never came. We stayed very busy but unfortunately it was mostly that throwback yellowfin. Eventually we gave up on what we thought was our honey hole and we never found much else the rest of the day. The lower zone produced enough for the couple boats that were down there so we're going to start down there tomorrow.

 

 

 

The weather was great most of the day. It got a bit breezy late but hopefully that comes down tomorrow.
 

Hello everyone, Today we spent another day targeting quality Wahoo and school sized tuna. We did great, picking at the Wahoo the majority coming on live bait. The bombs and jigs seem somewhat dormant at the moment, but we're not complaining because fish are coming aboard! At times there is an incredible amount of life out here. From the Wahoo, Skipjack, Yellowfin, Triggerfish, and more. The volume of life makes it difficult to hook the targeted Wahoo and bigger Tuna. So there is quite a bit of weeding out of the small yellowfin and other species in order to get what we came here for. Aside from Tuna and Wahoo we had an unexpected jag of Dorado swim through today. We landed a handful of the larger models to add to the fall variety pack here aboard Polaris Supreme. We are heading up tonight in hopes of a Yellowtail topper tomorrow morning. Wish us luck! Team Supreme There are also a few spots open on our upcoming 10 day departing November 6th. If you would like to join us, we would love to have ya. Contact Susan for more info on this exciting opportunity.

Captain Ryan Bostian called in late last night with an update from The San Diego out of Seaforth Landing in Mission Bay! We had 101 Yellowtail for 53 anglers. We also saw a couple nice spots of Bluefin Tuna. Right now we are not allowed to catch Bluefin Tuna in Mexico so we will continue to focus on Yellowtail for the meantime. Hopefully, the Bluefin issue will be resolved soon.

The San Diego runs trips daily from Seaforth Sportfishing. You can book online or call (619) 224-3383 to get in on the action.