okaloosa island pier Fishing Report 2025

Polaris Supreme arrived August 23 with skipper Drew Henderson at the wheel. Ryan Christianson of San Diego was chartermaster for the 24 anglers aboard on the Let's Talk Hookup trip. Mark Greul of Omaha, NE presented a 58-pound yellowfin at the scales and won first place for his effort. He said his fish bit a sardine on a 3/0 Flyliner hook tied to 30-pound Blackwater fluorocarbon and 30-pound Ande line. He used a Torium 30 reel and a Seeker Black Steel C8 seven and a half-foot rod. Richard Miller of Jackson won second place for a 40-pound albacore. Mark Cornoll of Jackson won third place for a 31.6-pound yellowtail.

What a wonderful day yellowtail fishing we had! Limit style as they say.They malled the surface iron, bit the yo yo good and a small slider with a nose hooked sardine worked great. The fish where 25 pounds and weather was great. We all are looking forward to a good night sleep and a repeat of today. Have a great night Tommy and Crew.

We need a few more reservations to go out tomorrow. If you are planning to come out we need to know so we can go get squid.

Today we went out with 39 anglers and landed 25 yellowtail. The quality of these fish is the talk of the boat the last couple days. The average size of our yellowtail today was 25 lbs with several fish over 30 pounds. 50 lb. mono and a heavy lure is the preferred setup right now.

Mike Pritchard called in from the Tribute with this report. "We are finishing off the 1st day of our 2.5 Day Steve Seaver charter. We had a good day with only 18 passengers. We landed limits of Yellowtail with 28 Bluefin tuna. We got 21 of them in the last 10/15 minutes. It looks like the weather will be nicer tomorrow. It was a little breezy today. We'll check back with you tomorrow."

27 yellowfin 21 bluefin 27 yellowtail. Shoulder and belly hooked baits work best when fishing picky tuna. The second picture shows where to place your hook. The baits pictured are also a prime example of what a bad bait looks like, taking your time and selecting a good healthy bait will get you more bites.

We arrived today at the island around noon. There were plenty of fish but not as many bites as we expected. However most of the fish we did hook managed to come on the boat. We had a high landing percentage of the fish we hooked today. Not as bad of a shark problem today. Hopefully the ratio continues and we hook more fish tomorrow!

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.