missoula fly Fishing Report 2025

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.

Covered a lot of water and chased small spots of bluefin almost all day long. At the end of the day we only managed to land 6 bluefin from 25-80lbs. Tomorrow’s a new day.

Aug 18

Today was a good day. We got into the yellowtail mid morning and it was game on till lunch time. The grade wasn't the best but it was good enough. 12 up to 22 pounds and all in between. We had the passengers save some tags for the bigguns though the common grounds looked dead so we traveled to new grounds and connected near the end of the day. Everyone had a few more shots at them before we had them wind um up so we could put ourselves in position to be at the bluefin grounds before daylight.

The weather today was great. Cold but windless and on a boat thats all we care about. No wind no sea. Shawn through out a kick but appetizer spread and we're preparing to eat a seared ahi dinner. Can't wait. Gotta go.

Mama Bear- Little Bear still has both feet planted on the boat and is doing great.

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.

San Diego regular Chris Perez and friend show off a couple of 15 pounders.  Don’t let this phenomenal late season action pass you by.  103 yellowtail, 54 bonito, and 2 halibut.

The 3 days of wind dropped the water temp a couple of degrees. Ended our day with full Mexican limits of yellowtail 4 dorado 3 skipjack. Conditions should improve with a few days of good weather.

Weather kept us new shore today, so we targeted Vermillion Rockfish. Worked out just fine.!