gallatin river fly Fishing Report 2024

Nov. 11

After our previous day of wide open fishing - we had high hopes of the same on giant yellow fin tuna. The day started with Captain Tommy identifying sonar readings of big schools of tuna all around us. We fished hard all day. Kites, sinker rigs, fly line, chunked, jigged, drifted and anchored. Tommy calling out the sonar readings the whole time, ", "big tuna at 20 fathoms" or "we are surrounded by school tuna 10 fathoms to 30 fathoms". We began to doubt Tommy's sonar and guessed that it was just a screen saver image. Then, in the late afternoon, tuna started flying out of the water all around us for a 1/4 mile. 100 lb to 300 lb tuna fully coming out of water and giving us a show and taunting us once more. At the end of the day Greg, Matt and Rick caught larger tuna and kept us from getting skunked. We flushed the stomachs of the tuna and found them stuffed with pelagic crabs. The sardines, mackerel and flying fish we offered were not on their menu. We hear of a place up the line where the yellow tail are biting. We are going there now.

OTR Lon Mikkelsen.

131 Yellowfin Tuna 200 Skipjack Tuna.  Bring a 30-50 lb bait rod to fish big sardines and a 20-25 lb bait rod for small sardines.

Drew Henderson brought Polaris Supreme home July 5 after a five-day trip with 24 anglers.

"We fished Cedros again a half day," wrote Drew July 3, "and had a nice drift in the morning but then the fish went down quick which has been the routine. We put our anchor down and had a nice pick on the yellows and all the other fish you could catch. We had to bail out at 11:00 a.m. and made a couple stops on the way up the line then we had to go full cruise to get ourselves to the tuna grounds.

"The next day started off painfully slow but right around 1:30 we had our first school and shortly there after we got on another one that we drifted on until dark."

At the dock, Drew summed up his last day of fishing, the 4th of July: "We spent the day looking offshore. We got about 75 fish, and mostly we had three or four going for several hours."

Bob Morehouse of La Crescenta won first place for a 54-pound yellowfin he bagged with a sardine on a 2/0 Mustad hook, with 30-pound Big Game line, a TLD 1`5 reel and a Calstar six-foot rod.

Chris Stavaridis of Venice was second, for a 48-pound tuna, and Tony Sabatino won third place for a 46-pound yellowfin tuna.

~~Sep. 19
 Today was mostly a travel day for us.  We did have a nice little surprise in the morning.  We had a double jig strike on wahoo.  Then we had a couple more singles.  Then we had one more single a little later along with a few dorados.  When we got to the yellowtail grounds in the afternoon we found mucho wind.  It was blowing 25-30 knots right through the grounds we were planning on fishing so we fished elsewhere.  We found a little spot with some current before dark and we captured 6 cow yellows, we're talking 30-40 pounders, to go along with lots of 10-12 pounders and some bonito.  Action is what we call that.  We now have to head north and we'd like to find some dorado tomorrow.  It's going to be a bumpy/windy ride up tonight and we hope for it to back off tomorrow for our fishing and ride home.
 

Our first stop of the day was a bit humbling as we went 10 out of probably 50+ on the 50-110 pound Bluefin (anything under 40 on these fish was too lite).

We ended the trip with 14 Bluefin and 41 Yellowfin (18-60 pounds) in great weather for our 27 Angler’s, we go again tonight.

AWESOME 1.5 TRIPS WITH CAPT. J.J.!!! APOLLO is fully booked for January. We're now getting reservations for February. They will go fast. Boat will be departing every Friday night. Cost of the trips is $225 including Mexican permit. Book now before they're gone. For reservations call Fisherman's Landing @ (619)221-8500