manitowish waters Fishing Report 2025

This season has been full of extreme conditions. Our weather has been either flat grease calm with air temps pushing triple digits or victory at sea borderline dangerous. Our fishing has been either crazy wide open or scary slow. Today’s trip had a little of everything. Strong South wind in the morning followed by calm seas in the afternoon. Empty kelp patties in the morning followed by crazy wide open bonito smash. We never found a wide open dorado kelp but managed to scratch 27 along with 8 yellowfin tuna and a handful of yellowtail and skipjack.

I apologize but we are having problems sending out emails from the boat so I couldn't give a daily report. It should soon be taken care of. Our first day was mostly a travel day due to the lack of fish offshore. We were in great looking water most of the day but could not find any fish to work with. That seems to be the trend offshore lately. The next two days we fished for yellowtail at the beautiful island of Cedros. Our first day there we scratched most of the day on anchor doing well on the great great quality fish. They are averaging close to 30 pounds this year again. In the late afternoon we took a tour and found big balls of the yellows at the surface feeding on krill. They were being very stubborn and didn't care to much about us but were very interested in the krill they were eating. Jerks. After a great nights sleep in the calm of the island we began our next day. We had very good fishing. The grade was a bit smaller averaging 15-20 pounds but that is still quality fish. They were hitting good for most of the morning. Just after lunch it sizzled out so we went in search of some more trophies. We found them but again they sure didn't bite like you would have thought. We had 30 more of the trophies before taking off up the line to put us in position to fish offshore for tuna our last day. We found an area of jumping bluefin late morning and fished two hours there before we had to head home. We tried quite a few different spots and they laid under the boat each time for as long as we sat there but were reluctant to bite. We caught two bluefin from 25-35 pounds and lost a nice albacore. I'm pretty excited about what I saw offshore today. It looked much better than it has in the past week. The water is warmer and cleaner and there is fish in it. The offshore season is here. Thank you once again Mr. Larry Brown and to all the kids and dads aboard this trip. Me and my crew had a blast. Drew and the greatest crew around.

A very slow pick turned into full speed chaos. 230 yellowfin 6 bluefin (40-60lbs).

The first annual Ocean Tackle Research trip aboard Polaris Supreme returned with skipper Tom Rothery and chartermaster Lon Mikkelsen November 19. The ten-day trip had 20 anglers. "We caught a lot of variety and had good fishing," said Mikkelsen, from Hood River, OR. "We also caught a lot of 40-pound Humboldt squid. The best fishing was on kelp paddies in the warmer water. "We're testing some new OTR jigs," he continued, "and they got bit." Rothery weighed the contenders on the Fisherman's landing certified scales. Clint Campbell of Bozeman, MT won first place for a 65.95-pound wahoo he caught ona silver and pink Raider jig. He said he used 40-pound P-Line, a Daiwa Saltist 30 reel and a Seeker Black Steel 6470 rod. Jon Collins of Menifee won second place for a 52.6-pound skin that bit a pink Catchy Tackle bomb. Collins brought his son into the photo to show off a big dorado. Randy Walker of Huntington Beach was third, for a 48-pound wahoo that snapped up a gold Raider.

Oct. 8

We all slept in today as it was our first day off from fishing in a week. We had a later breakfast of pork chop, bacon, eggs and hash browns. After that we broke down and cleaned all of our big tuna gear and put away the harnesses and the terminal tackle and things. Then the crew scrubbed the boat to a nice shiny color while the passengers watched a movie or two. Then we ate cheeseburgers and they were great. And after that it was nap time. So we're all rested and we have a clean boat. We still have a little bit of live sardine left over and some time to use them so we'll be rolling by some fishable waters the next few days and if we see something we'll be able to stop and give it a try whether it be wahoo the next couple of days or bluefin the day before we get back to San Diego. The weather today was as good as you could ever ask for. Flat calm seas and the sun was shining. Lovely. Dinner was wahoo enchiladas and that's all we have to report.

.

July 27
Well hello all.  We departed today on a 5 day trip with many regulars on board and so far a good load of bait which is key to starting off a successful trip.  As I'm writing this I still don't know where we're going tomorrow. On the one hand I'm listening to the boats on the radios and hearing them finding schools of bluefin in the 15-30 pound range that aren't biting well, and on the other hand there is a whole lotta 50-70 pound bluefin that are unaccounted for.  2 weeks ago it was everywhere and then it vanished.  It's somewhere out here and we want to find it.  I'll make the decision at dark whether to stop short for the local bluefin or keep her rolling down in search of the bigger grade BF.  Tune in tomorrow to find out where we end up.  I'll be curious myself.  For now that dinner bells getting close to ringing and we're looking forward to that prime rib.
Drew and the Supreme team.

The Apollo had great fishing today. Limits of Red and Chucks including 24 Lingcod. Plus a nice bonus 24 pound Halibut. The weather is great, finally!

Captain Mike Pritchard called in late last night with an audio update from the Tribute out of Seaforth Sportfishing in Mission Bay.  We finished the day with good action.   We finished with 38 Bluefin Tuna up to 100 pounds.  They were biting the fly-lined sardines on 40 pound with fluorocarbon.

The Tribute is ONLINE at Seaforth Sportfishing.