sandy creek Fishing Report 2025

Many of you know Captain Ray Montera who has been involved in sportfishing most of his life. In March, his 32 year old Chris son was severely injured in a C4 blast in Afghanistan. We are holding a fundraiser on October 8th at the Bali Hai on Shelter Island. He is one of our own and we are rallying to support him.

As an Army soldier, Chris Montera was often taken aback when people would thank him for doing the job he loved. On a fateful day in March, he came to face the sacrifice. He was on a dismounted mission and was hit with explosion of C4, which literally blasted and propelled him into a grape field. He suffered major issues with blast lung and severe burns over much of his body. For 9 days he was on ECMO (lung bypass) until he was stable enough to be transported to BAMC in San Antonio for the treatment of his shrapnel wounds and third degree burns. On April 2 a fungal infection set into the wounds on his lower extremities and Chris underwent bilateral AK amputation of his legs. He was further diagnosed with an incomplete spinal cord injury in the thoracic area of the spine at VA Polytrauma Center in Palo Alto.

Through all of this, Chris remains focused and committed to rehabilitation. It is estimated that he will remain in Palo Alto for 3-6 months while he works to regain his upper body strength, which will be necessary for the next stages of rehab in the C5 program at Balboa Naval Hospital in San Diego where he will be fitted with prosthetic legs and with determination will learn to walk again. There is no doubt in our minds that Chris will recover to live an independent life. The goal of this fundraiser is to be able to assist Chris with expenses he will no doubt encounter on his journey to independence.

The event will be held at the Bali Hai Restaurant on Shelter Island On October 8th from 6:00-10:00 pm. There will be food stations serving food from many San Diego restaurants along with a no host bar. A raffle, live, and silent auction will take place during the event along with live entertainment by Mango Bay and World Famous Jim Gibson. The outpouring of support of raffle and auction donations from the sportfishing community, tackle, fishing supply manufacturers, and local businesses has been phenomenal. The evening will be great fun for all and will serve to help a young man who put it all on the line.

There are several ways you can help:
First and most important is attend the event.

Tickets are $50 in advance or $450 for a block of 10

Advance ticket purchases will include 3 raffle tickets and assorted swag

Cannot attend but would like to help, make a cash donation in any amount.

Donate an item for the raffle or auction. Anything from fishing items, art, gift certificates, clothing...anything is greatly appreciated.


We look forward to having you at the event. The sport fishing community has come together to take care of a wounded warrior of their own, and it promises to be a fun filled evening for all.

To purchase tickets for Island Nights at the Bali Hai, please visit our website at http://christophermonterasupport.com/island-nights-at-the-bali-hai

To donate items for our raffle/auction please visit our website and complete the donor form http://christophermonterasupport.com/sponsors-anddonors-supporters/donor-form

Polaris Supreme Trip Up Date 11-16-2013

First thing's first on today's report. Happy 1st anniversary to both captain Drew and his lovely bride, Kristen. Congratulations to you both. Since we're on the subject of significant others, hello again to both Kathy and Marla.You are both missed. The crew is once again too busy to sit up top and work a keyboard, so you are stuck with me again.

Weather out here remains stellar. Flat calm. Everyone on board has tagged a wahoo some have tagged 5. John Devore trolled up a real beauty out in the middle of nowhere that we'd like to see a few more of. Fishing has not been exactly red-hot, but has certainly been keeping us on our toes. We're currently on our way into Magdalena Bay to top off our bait. It's the first time we've seen land in about five days. Cocktail hour is underway. Tomorrow's plans are being plotted. This evening's dinner will be started with an Italian tuna soup, followed by a seared fillet mignon and scallops stir-fry, served with a roasted garlic risotto and sauteed broccoli. YUM!

One observation I have to share today was while trolling. I looked up and realized that a flock of frigate birds had been following us for several hours. The wingspan on these magnificent birds must be at least four feet. They look like prehistoric pterodactyls from the right angle. Nature is amazing. It's an incredible world out there. Go and see it ...

Your anonymous guest reporter.

 

P.S. We have landed about 150 Wahoo the last 2 days but kept only 46 for the trip. We released the rest. I have never seen this many small Wahoo. We are about 3 years too early on this school. The ones we kept where dandy's. Tommy

6 yellowtail 118 calico bass 36 barracuda 22 whitefish. Lots of bites for anglers of all skill levels.

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

Aug. 4
 Here we go again.  This time for 4 days.  Tough decision for me today.  Do i make a left or a right?  As always, they both have there advantages and disadvantages, but in the end, one outweighed the other.  So I made a left.  I hope I made the right decision  Good timing is everything.  We're bombing her down below.  We've been flying down all day and night and we"ll be fishing after lunch tomorrow.  One of the boats caught some tuna down this way today and we're going to try and get in on some of that.  We should have good weather for the trip as long as the forecast holds true.  We're hoping for lots of fish the next couple days.  I could use the pressure release.
       

21 yellowfin tuna 7 skipjack. Had enough fish under and around the boat to catch 200. Unfortunately we never found a school that was easy to hook. We will try again tomorrow. Starting to see some large sardines. Please bring some size 2 and 2/0 hooks.

Wednesday, October 17th, 2012

Hi friends. We had ourselves a very productive morning down here on the yellowtail grounds. We awoke this morning to beautiful, balmy conditions and after catching only a couple of premiums, we bailed back out to the drift zone. The drift zone once again was kind to us, as that quality 16-22 lb. grade bit the jigs and dropper loops for us all morning. Really fun fishing on a really nice grade of 'tail. Unfortunately, as the wind picked up speed around lunch time, our lines went slack and the yellows stopped biting. Bummer. To throw salt on the wound, the weather kept freshening up and we had to make a run for cover for the afternoon.

I'm thankful to say that we did find shelter for the evening. Although it's still blowing thirty-plus knots with gusts up to forty knots, there isn't the washing machine sea conditions that we had in the afternoon. The wind this evening was like the clock concept of the arena in the second book of the Hunger Games series "Catching Fire". It would blow from the east, then the southeast, then the south, and so on. Every time the wind direction changed, we ran for cover and hid until the direction would change again. We're very smart!

Like I said, we're sheltered away for the night and the wind is letting up now, so we're pumped. We'll try for bait throughout the night/morning and then try for some yellows when we're all finished with the bait-making. After that, we're hoping to bust a move offshore and focus on tuna for the remaining three days of the trip. With a favorable weather forecast, our excitement is high and let's see if we can't get on some of that nice grade yellowfin and bluefin. Stay tuned.

-The Supreme Team

65 yellowfin tuna (15-25 lbs) 129 purple skipjack aku tuna.  The skilled bait fisherman with a 20 lb setup and #2 hook was hooked up all day today.