fort randall dam Fishing Report 2024

Good Evening everyone, Today we woke up anchored in the yellowtail grounds. Things started off slow with a couple fish being brought in on the dropper loop and yo yo iron. Most of the fish caught in the morning were nice sized yellowtail in the 20-30lb range with a couple of really nice sheep head and assorted rock fish in the mix. As the morning went on, the yellows moved up in the water column and started to bite the fly lined sardine and the surface iron. The fish were coming around in flurries with a handful of anglers hooking up at a time. We picked at the yellows for a couple of hours before making a short move. We started off catching some smaller grade yellows before the big ones moved in. Before long the fish started boiling around the boat, and started to bite. We continued to put fish on the boat all afternoon into the evening before the bite slowed down. Most of the guys had success on fly lined sardines with 30 or 40 lb test and a 1/0 or 2/0 hook. When the bite had stopped we sat on the anchor for the night and enjoyed a nice dinner courtesy of chef Mike. We will be fishing the same area tomorrow, and will be hoping for a similar outcome as today before trying our luck for the yellowfin once again. Will report tomorrow, Team Supreme

It's been hard to find a biting fish offshore lately. But we connected with one in choppy, mixed up seas. Dylan saved the day!!

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 .

Polaris Supreme Trip Report 09-17-2016 We got out today bright and early without a hitch and are rolling down south for eight days of we hope will be spectacular sportfishing! The group today is an open group of "The Usual Suspects" that takes this annual voyage south with us each year. Our bait looks just okay so far? Our weather is fantastic. We have gotten a full day in of eating, sleeping and rigging.Tune in here tomorrow and we will have an update on our travel down day. The Polaris supreme crew P.S. We have just put a 1 1/2 day trip online for next weekend. It will be leaving Sunday night at 6 PM and returning Tuesday morning at 6 AM. It will be set up to target that nice grade 18 to 30 pound yellowfin tuna right outside San Diego. Call Susan (619) 390-7890 or fisherman's Landing for details on the trip. We hope to see you there.

11 pass. 2 yellowtail 53 calico bass and plenty of whitefish and rockfish. Extremely light load for tomorrow.

Captain Aliyar Nabi called in this morning with a wrap up report from the Pacifica out of Seaforth Sportfishing in San Diego, CA. We just got back this morning from our 1.5 day trip. The Bluefin Tuna fishing continues to be excellent. We ended up with 52 Bluefin Tuna for our 26 anglers. We had some really nice fish between 150 and 190 pounds. We also caught some in the 12 to 45 pound range. The flat fall fishing at night produced 40 fish.

The Pacifica is online at Seaforth Sportfishing for 1.5 day Bluefin Tuna fishing.

The San Diego has finished their three quarter day trip on Monday with 2 Bluefin Tuna (30-40lbs) and 5 Yellowfin Tuna.

The San Diego will be fishing OFFSHORE through FRIDAY 6/17. These trips are limited to 45 people and reservations are required!  Recommended tackle for these trips is a MINIMUM of 50# monofilament for the big Bluefin! Live bait and poppers have been working well.

The El Gato Dos returned from a 3/4 day trip on Sunday with 1 Bluefin Tuna (124lbs) and 1 Yellowfin Tuna.

Sep. 10

Well, today was just swell. We caught bluefin. Yup, lots of them. We found a school a little while after breakfast and stayed drifting till a little while after lunch. I've just now been staring at this screen for a few minutes drawing a blank on what to write. Mark just woke me up for my watch and I guess I'm not a midnight writer so I'll keep it simple. It was a lot of fun. The fish were in the 30-40 pound range with our spring scale calling the biggest at 49 pounds. After that school wouldn't bite anymore we went on search for another and found just a dandy of a school but it would have nothing to do with us so we search, search, search. About an hour maybe longer before dark we found what we were looking for and stopped the boat on a school of biting fish and had another nice shot at them before and into and after dark.

I'm going to have to give Tommy the credit for todays fishing. For a while today I thought maybe it was all about my lucky 7-11 cap I've been wearing but I think Tommy just did a good job of finding those schools today. Hat or no hat, we just nailed them today. The weather was good today and we're still drifting and my legs aren't very spread apart so you know it's good drifting and good sleeping. We're going to give it a little while tomorrow before having to call it a trip and head for home.

Drew