montana fly Fishing Report 2024

Oct. 1

I have very little to write about today. Everyone just chilled out. It's tough to say that though because it was so hot today. You'll have that when your at a lower latitude then Cabo San Lucas. Today was our last day of travel. You can tell when that day has arrived because Charlie starts to lose his mind. He can keep it together for about 3 days of travel but any longer then that he starts to get a little coo coo. He was sitting in the wheel house today counting the flying fish he saw flying by as the boat spooked them. He also walked about 3 miles around the boat. All this is very necessary to keep Charlie at a sane enough level to keep everyone on board safe so we encourage it. Everyone else did the same old same old. Movies, rigging, cigars, naps and Mark just ate food all day. We arrive to our destination at about 4:00 in the morning and we're all really excited to do so. Tomorrows report will have to do with fishing.

The Polaris Supreme Crew

This is the launching of the Polaris Supreme after our Haul out. We hauled out at Shelter Island Boat Yard and all though it was my longest ever it was definitely the least pain less. Thank You Guys in the yard, And Girls in the office.

Aug. 17
    Today almost went as planned except for the lack of yellowfin.  We were supposed to scratch pretty good at the yellowfin in the morning, like 40 or so and then get on that big bluefin, and then scratch out another 30 or so yellowfin in the evening.  Well we did the middle part but the numbers were lower on the sides.  We saw plenty of that yellowfin, it just didn't bite well.  On with the cool part.  We found a mega school of that 70-100+ pound bluefin mid morning.  It's been a long time since I've seen a mega school and every time I do I forget about the time before and I think it's the biggest school I've ever seen and that's how today was.  Of course it didn't bite, but for me up in the wheel house where I can see it well it was incredible.  Just the area of fish was monstrous, and when you add in all the shiners and thousands of black backs swimming through, it's amazing.  We fished it for 4 hours on different attempts.  On the first, the youngster Brendan hooked up and landed about an 80 pounder.  On the second, his dad Scott hooked up and lost it and we hooked and lost another one.  On the third, Scott hooked up again but this time he landed his 107 pounder. So far it's looking like we'll have a father- son jack pot.  On the next few tries we got no reaction so we let it regroup for a while and a couple hours later we found it again and we hooked two more and lost them both and we missed a bite on the kite.  We tried it one more time after that for no reaction before we left it for good.  We're going to fish again tomorrow.  We'll make a small move and relocate but as things are right now, we don't need much more yellowfin so we'll concentrate on the other kind of tuna.
                                    

 

Monday, October 1st, 2012

Hi friends and happy October to all of you. First off, I was going to smack that weatherman right in the mouth this morning but he was pretty dead-on with his prediction of this evenings weather, so we cool again. Our ride back to San Diego Bay is a beautiful, moon-lit excursion -- a perfect ride for a fillet mignon dinner. The weather wasn't all that bad today, just about ten knots more breeze than predicted and the seas were spaced out and low today so it was just windy. Like I said, the weather now is just dandy so I can't be all that bummed about the excess wind.

We started off this morning in the eastern edge of things and although my gameplan for the day was right on, my execution was about an hour or so behind. We were hoping to catch a bunch of yellowfin and dorado this morning and then roll out to the west all day, get to the western edge and look for bluefin and albacore to end the day. After screwing around in the eastern zone and having not caught a fish for a couple of hours we slowly motored out to the west and just before lunch -- thinking I was hot stuff with thirty tuna and a dozen dorado on the boat -- a boat to to the west got on a kelp that ended his day. Ugh, just where I wanted to be too. After that, we plotted the position and kicked her up on our westerly tack to get out there by the afternoon time.

The bad thing about this whole scenario was that we never found the kelp our "buddy boat" bagged for us. The good news is that we found one of our own. A big, beautiful lady-of-a-kelp with a "smaller" sister about a thousand yards upswell of her and once we set up the drift for both of them, it was on like donkey kong. We had a really fun afternoon pulling on 12-22 lb. yellowfin tuna and a really nice grade of dorado to go with the tunas as well. It wasn't WFO at all, just a steady pick with three to five going all the time. The gang had a ball and before you knew it, we were finished up with our daily limit of yellowfin tuna and dorado. Better late than never.

The one thing that I'm feeling down about is the fact that we never made it out to the western edge to look for bluefin and albacore. But we had a fine day of fishing on yellowfin and flatheads and the passengers are pumped. Good times! We'll be in tomorrow morning at 0600 hours and we'll be back out on Wednesday night for another day and a half trip. We'll chat with you then. I'm sorry for the long report. Direct your slick comments to Tommy and he'll pass them along to me at a later date. Good night.

-The Supreme Team

Polaris Supreme Trip Update 11-30 To 12-01-2018 Getting a little behind on the reports. This is our report for the 30th and the first. We departed Guadalupe and traveled all day on the 30th to Ensenada to check in. Our weather was pretty nasty but our ride was not that bad due to the fact that we headed straight in for Colnett on the coast and then turned up toward Ensenada after the weather got better. The port of Ensenada was closed due to weather so The Port Capt. had us all signed releases to allow us departure. The weather going up to San Diego was not that bad at all there was plenty of space between the swells and it was a pretty decent ride. We cleared San Diego customs around 5 AM and were unloading in San Diego by 530. What a absolute beautiful catch we had of that yellowfin tuna from the island. We did our usual quick turnaround and are out now on a seven-day OTR charter to Guadalupe. We did our check in at Ensenada and will be at the island around 230 tomorrow afternoon. Boats that are fishing there right now have excellent sign of 80 to 150 pound tuna. Wish us luck the Polaris Supreme Crew !

~~Oct.16-20
 So for the last few days, I was either too busy to write a report or just too tired.  I knew these blogs wouldn't be making it out here until tomorrow anyway so I figured I would just do a 4 day report to explain the remainder of our trip down below so here it goes.

 When I left off, the sharks backed off and allowed us to have a great afternoon and we were hoping the sharks would do the same thing they did last year after the first couple of days which is leave.  That didn't happen.  It was a sharky trip for sure.  Brown Reef Sharks were in the picture for the remainder of the time we were down there.  Sometimes they were relentless and we'd have to pull anchor and go trolling for wahoo and other times they would back off just enough to allow us to scratch at the tunas and then other times they would back off completely.  They weren't tuna eaters though.  They let us wind in what we hooked, but they loved our kite baits.

 Anyways, we still had an excellent trip down there sharks or no sharks.  There were a lot of windows of opportunity and there were some slow windows as well.  There was almost always a window where we would get at least two cows before sunrise, and after that it never stayed consistent.  If we didn't need to sleep it would've been convenient.  I know we missed plenty of tuna bites in the dark hours through out the night but that's when we would sleep.  Like I said though we had an excellent trip and here are the numbers to prove it.

 130 yellowfin tuna and 60 wahoo for 8 guys for 6 days.  54 tuna kept.  11 over 200 lb's, 5 that may go when we weigh them on the dock scale, 6 between 170-180 and the rest were 100-150 pounds with much fish being in the 120-130 pound class.  We also released 76 of those too!  One release estimated to be around 200 pounds and several in the 150 pound range and like I said, many in the 120-130 pound range.  Our largest was 240 and next in line was a 234 pounder kept.

 Here are the team jackpot totals: 1st place goes to Charlie and Craig with 2 fish totaling 453 pounds.  2nd went to George and Scott with 2 totaling 414.  George also had 5 tuna over 200 pounds by the way.  One per day besides the last day.  3rd place went to the Jer-bear and JC with 399 pounds, and Brian and Bernie finished just behind them with 396 pounds.  None of this is official.  We still need to weigh them oin land.

 And that's basically how fishing was down there.  Here are some things that stand out to me while we were down there.  First of all I'd like to talk about KC.  I'm not saying he was scared, he just didn't seem too pumped on fighting one of these fish we call cows.  He wasn't the first or fifth for that matter to jump on a spot on the kite for example when one was available.  On the third day it couldn't be avoided.  He got up on that kite and when he did this particular time he hooked a big one and he handled it as well as anyone.  I mean he kicked that fishes @$$.  He came to battle and he won.  It taped out as a 193 pounder.  After that it wasn't hard to get KC up on the kite when a spot was presented.  It went from where the heck is KC, to him not leaving the rail at all.

 I let Mark know the Raiders lost.  I did it in a mean way too.  His birthday was the 16th I believe, and Chef Mike baked him a cake and we all sang happy birthday and when it was over, I gave him my birthday present which is spilling the beans on lying about the Raiders beating the Chargers.  Ha ha Mark.

 The weather was a lot less steamy the last few days down there.  It was still hot, but once the clouds went away it didn't feel like a sauna there anymore.  Although myself and a few others got the worse case of burnt lips we ever had.  I did it in a dumb way too.  I knew I should go get my chap stick from my room on the first day down there but my lips did;t feel like they were getting chapped so I thought, because of the humidity my lips weren't drying out and I didn't need protection.  Dumb, stupid and idiotic.  My lips may not have dried out but they still got as burnt as ever.

  So that's it.  We now travel for a few days.  The crew has plenty to do.  Clean, clean clean and sleep.  The passengers will be sleeping and celebrating a wonderful trip.  We'll be trying to break up the ride on our last day of travel by looking for a dorado kelp but that's still not for a couple more days.
      

 

GREAT TWO DAY TRIP!!! APOLLO got mixed bags. With 26 Anglers they caught 21 Dorado,17 Yellows,4 Yellowfin,20 Rockcod,20 Lings. Good catch. Place your reservation now at Fisherman's Landing @ (619)221-8500

Skipper Drew Henderson docked the Polaris Supreme June 17 after a five-day trip to the mid-Baja islands, on the Pacific side, of course.

"It was windy until the day we came home," he remarked. His 18 anglers managed a good catch of yellowtail and rockfish, however.

George Farnsworth of Kenwood won first place for a 27.6-pound yellowtail. He said it bit on a sardine pin ned to a 3/0 Gamakatsu hook. He used 30-pound Yo-Zuri line on a Saltiga 30 reel and a Calstar 870 M rod to beat the fish in 12 minutes.

"We had a great crew," he stated. "And that made a great trip."

Regular long ranger Joe Beck of San Pedro won second place, for a 27-pound yellow. Michael Robbins of Santa Cruz, one of three generations of family members on the trip, won third place, for a 25.4-pound yellowtail.