montana ice Fishing Report 2024

Jody called in with this report for the Apollo out of Santa Barbara, "We are having some excellent Rockcod and Lingcod fishing. We ended up with limits of Rockfish today and 19 Lingcod for 20 Anglers.

If you are interested in fishing on the Apollo,we have an Open Party trip on the 28th. If you are interested call Sea Landing to make a reservation or to get more information 805-963-3564.

We departed today on Larry Brown's annual 10-day trip with 22 fine anglers. Most are repeats as they join Larry each year, but we are delighted to have a couple of new comers. We are in good weather and are happy to be driving out of the sooty smoky air. The group is excited after seeing Drew's great catch from the last trip. He had Dorado, Wahoo, those big cow Yellowtail and some Yellowfin with the jackpot weighing in at 160 lbs.! We are also getting reports that fish are moving in a new area and want to bite. This is all good news. So I will close for now as we get ready for dinner of filet and lobster with vegetables and a baked potato. Thanks for checking in and we'll update again tomorrow.

Polaris Supreme Trip Report 07-17-2016 #2 I meant to send this picture of the fathom meter this morning but I forgot about it. This is a screenshot of our fathom meter last night when we hooked the 115 pounder that Jack caught. You can see these Bluefin like to hang between 26 to 40 fathoms. That's pretty darn deep. If you look up towards the upper part of the screen, you will see two flat straight lines. One of them is in the middle of the screen at about 4 fathoms and the other is on the left side at about 11 fathoms. That is somebody under the boat using a live bait sinker rig. Also in the center of the screen you'll see a forward slash. It is light in color and broken up starting at about 4 fathoms going down to 12 fathoms. That is somebody winding a jig up. If you look between 7 to 13 fathoms you'll see a jig someone is dropping down. The point I want to make is that these fish are typically deep and you need to be able to get your bait or jig down into the deeper water columns where these fish are at. Knowing this you should be using those big heavy jigs or heavy torpedo sinker to increase your chances of hooking one of these trophy fish. The tuna did not show up. A couple of us saw schools that did not cooperate at all. We picked up a few yellowtail on kelp patties and a handful yellowfin tuna for the day. We are heading home to regroup. We would like to thank Archie Steele and the gang for joining us we had a great time with the crew and some fantastic fishing the first part of the trip. We will be into the dock early tomorrow morning to pick up Paul Hess and the gang! Thanks for reading, Polaris Supreme

Sep. 8

We woke up this morning on the drift. I heard Tommy doing the stop and go on his watch early in the morning meaning he was seeing schools. He woke the rest of us up bright and early and it didn't take too long before we started hooking fish. They were the 15-18 pound bluefin and they weren't biting as well as you'd think they would judging by all the fish around the boat. We kept drifting though trying the patient mode. It's a lot easier to be patient with non biting fish when the other boats aren't getting stops. After a while and a few handfuls of BFT we gave up on these fish and went searching for some new ones. It took a while but around lunch time we found a nice big fat kelp and it was an aquarium underneath. Good viewing and catching on lot's of different fish from small throwback yellowtail to small tuna and tuna up to 32 pounds and lots of dorado. Yes it's that time of year. The water warmed up considerably in the last week or so and with that came schools of yellowfin and now the dorado in numbers. We'll take um. Crowd pleaser's is what they are and you know us, we like to please crowds. After a couple hours fishing there we went searching for something new unsuccessfully so we ended up back on our kelp and caught some more dorado and a few more tuna. We're now headed for the yellowtail grounds and everyone is fat and happy and we're planning on some good pulling on big yellows tomorrow.

I ate the escolar again substituting it for the prime rib in the fajitas we had for lunch today. It was smooth sailing John and I mean that in a good way. No problems down there. The fish isn't the best fish in the ocean. The flavor is great though the texture is a bit soft. Opening day for pro football so I'll leave you with this. Go Chargers! Let's do some competing this year. My Pad's couldn't do it so now it's up to you guys. Come on now!

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

Well another carbon copy of yesterday. Traveling in beautiful weather, nice and calm. Rigging gear and eating great food like Huevos Rancheros in the am and rack of lamb for dinner. Sounds like those of you that didn't stay home to watch the *_CHARGERS WIN THEIR FOOTBALL GAME_* went to the boat show in San Mateo had a good time. Dave said he had a chance to talk to a lot of new customers. We look forward to having you as well as our wonderful repeat customers on board the Polaris Supreme.

Polaris Supreme Trip Report 07-11-2016 Good evening folks, Polaris Supreme checking in. We started our day in the same area where we had phenomenal yellowtail fishing yesterday. The bait was there, the birds were there and the current was there, but for some reason the yellowtail were not. We did manage to pick away at a couple yellowtail, but we just couldn't get the ball rolling. After accepting the fact that the yellowtail pulled a no-show, we decided to make our way offshore in hopes of better things. And indeed better things we found! We spotted a big beautiful kelp patty that had a jumbo school of large hungry yellowtail beneath it. It was a day saver! These fish were biting the fly line and yo-yo jigs. We also saw a couple nice Dorado on the kelp but they did not like our offerings. We are now making way back up north to another area where we will be finishing off our trip by fishing for those larger size yellowtail once again. Also, sorry for the lack of pictures today. We where pretty busy on that last stop! Thanks, Team Supreme

~~Sep. 15
 It was a rather slow day out here for us.  Not miserably slow but it definitely could've been better.  I'll just break it down for you so you know what I call a slow day.  We caught 68 yellowtail, 4 bonito, 6 barracuda, 4 calico bass, 8 sand bass, 6 Sheepshead, 4 oceanic whitefish, 5 vermilion rock fish and 6 unspecified rock fish.  We let some go too.  We threw in the towel around 3:00.  I may have a trick up my sleeve.  I may tell you about it tomorrow.  Anyways, we left the grounds because they're calling for wind here tomorrow and we hate wind with a passion out here on the ocean.  I don't even like it on land.  We're going to a less windy spot.  I'm just not sure where yet.  Find out tomorrow. 

 The weather now is fantastic.  Very little wind and along with that comes very little sea state.  It's nice.  Steamy too.  You should see Mark's shirt.  It looks like he fell in the water.  I offered anyone 20 dollars to wear it today but I got no takers.