skagit river Fishing Report 2023

The day started up very well for us. It was good scratching up until just after lunch and fishing took a dump. We looked around the Island for a bit and after making a few stops for a few more fish we took off from there and are now heading west to the big Island. We have a great catch of jumbo yellowtails on board and we're hoping to get some jackpot settling trophy size yellowfin tomorrow. Portuguese style yellowtail for dinner tonight. We had it last trip for the first time and I must say it was by far the best yellowtail I have ever eaten in my life.

J. J. Gerritsen docked his Apollo at Fisherman's landing January 21 after a trip of a day and a half to the Colnett area. "We fished the high spots," he said, "when we saw really good sign of yellows on the sonar. We had good action on drifts for 26 yellowtail, most on yoyo jigs in blue and white or scrambled eggs color. "About 9:30 a.m. we moved into deeper water to rockfish on slow drifts. We had excellent ling cod fishing on lings up to 20 pounds. We got 78 of them, mostly on the dropper loop with sardines, but some on jigs, too. We filled out our limits with reds anmd some large bonito. There were a lot of bonito around, up to 14 pounds. "We also had a flurry of Humboldt squid, which hindered the yellowtail fishing until they left." J. J. said he would be running these trips every Friday night at right p.m. through the end of February.

Sunday, June 17th.

Hello everybody. First off, we here on the Polaris Supreme would like to wish all the dad's out there a happy Father's day and we would like to assure all the mother's back home that the young men on-board are beat. Tired and happy as can be from an eventful first day of fishing. Worry not about them, they are sleeping soundly and are looking forward to doing it all again tomorrow morning.

We arrived to our destination on schedule due to our phenomenal weather and proceed to look around for a bit. To no avail, we made a move a little ways to some fresh country and upon arrival, spotted a breezer of Bluefin tuna. Most guys went out with their 30 lb. outfits as we hadn't yet seen a boil to get a size estimate. After a couple minutes of drifting, the ocean, which was peaceful and calm for the past twenty-four hours, was now full of big, beautiful Bluefin tuna erupting all around the boat and it was a classic scenario of hunting elephants with deer rifles. We hooked a few on the lighter gear and actually managed to land a couple and as for the rest, you all can guess what happened. Once we started fishing a little bit heavier gear, the bites diminished a bit but what we did hook, we landed and they were some real beauties. It was one of those classic Bluefin deals that warrants a stealthy, 50 lb. rig with the best bait you can find and although we had very little wind (which is a problem when trying to fly a kite) we did successfully hook a couple on the balloon rigs and what a show that presented. We drifted for four hours and came out with a couple handfuls of gorgeous 50-100 lb. shortfins but that wasn't without a few heartbreaks as well. Like I said, a short topshot of fluorocarbon with a 3/0 hook, two-speed reel and a strong, castable rod is the best bet for landing these trophies. It was truly a spectacular show that these fish put on for us as fish were blowing out all around the boat. Kind of gets frustrating at times seeing all those fish and not hooking them like you should but that's how Bluefin fishing is sometimes. We're just thankful that we had our shots and connected on a couple o trophies. Some of them are bigger than the kids that landed them. Pretty cool.

Anyhow, the rest of our day consisted of a spot of jumpers that produced some 25 lb. Bluefin, a couple Yellowfin tuna jig strikes and a kelp loaded with rat Yellowtail. Going from 100 lb. Bluefin to 3 lb. Yellowtail might disappoint some, but the kids sure weren't disappointed, they were pumped! We had a good ole time catching and releasing all of the juveniles to grow but like I said, it was the most fun the kids had all day. So with that, our day was complete and we've decided to make a move into some more coastal waters to not only elude the wind that is forcasted for tomorrow but to also try for some Yellowtail of greater size than the ones we caught today. Fun day, awesome weather, we're out. We'll chat with you tomorrow.

P.S. Mark would like to tell Ana, " ti amo". Happy Father's Day once again to all the daddy's out there. Chat with you tomorrow.

Nov. 19

Good evening once again everyone. Well, we broke up the day this morning with a couple hours worth of fishing. Unfortunately we didn't catch much but we were due to travel all day today but we had an hour or two to spare so we took it. The weather has breezed up for sure. It is a bit of a bumpy ride but it's not horrable. We only had one other day of windy weather the whole trip so we'll take it. In a whole it was a rather slow trip. We did catch a lot of big beautiful dorado and we can't complain at all about the amount of wahoo we caught or the amount of tuna we caught either for that matter. We lacked on the larger sized tuna and we didn't connect with the yellowtails on the way home either but hey, you've heard this before, "that's fishing". I hope and I think I can speak for everyone on board and say we had a great ten days out here. I said it in my first report and I'll say it again, I love this group. This is not your mystery passenger Ed writing to you but your captain/ co-captain/ deckhand Drew writing this and I'll write this on behalf of all the crew members abourd the Polaris Supreme, thank you charter heads Lon and John and thank you to all who joined us.

I would also just like to thank all who came out fishing with us this year and in years past. You are what allows us to do what we love to do and what allows us to pay our bills and raise families doing what we love to do so unfortunately, for the last time this year, we all say THANK YOU and we'll hopefully see you next year!

Yesterday we had good fishing on wahoo in the morning and excellent fishing on tuna in the afternoon. The average weight on the tuna ranged from 45-70 lbs. Our weather is still good. Chef Tommy put out some great meals again. Lunch yesterday was yellowtail served over fresh spinach, surrounded by black beans with a spicy avocado cilantro sauce. And dinner was cornish game hens topped with a spicy apricot sauce on wild rice with grilled asparagus on the side. Fishing this morning has started off again with wahoo biting and this afternoon we will fish the tuna again. We still have some open spots on *Sept. 8th* an 8 day trip if you want to come get some of these wahoo. Give Susan a call 619-390-7890.

We just departed on another 5-day. The bait isn't the best of the year by any means but it is what it is and we'll take it for what it is. We're heading straight for the albacore grounds for this afternoon and tomorrow and we'll take the trip from there. Check back.

Sep. 1

Today was kind of a disappointing day. We woke up catching yellowtail but it quickly stopped biting after daylight. We trolled up the place for several strikes on wahoo but the catching was slim. The ratio of hooked to land is never good with wahoo but this morning it was especially bad. We lost 3 marauders today. That's about what you lose when you have a 100 fish day on these things and we did not. Anyways, after that we weren't getting strikes anymore so we kept her rolling to a couple of spots I've been real excited about trying for the last couple of weeks and it really bummed me out. No wahoo, no tuna, not even any dorado. A few yellows was all. So we ran back up to this mornings honey hole and had a strike where the odds were in our favor. I'm not sure if we lost a fish. 8 lucky anglers caught a nice wahoo. We trolled it up till dark for nothing else. We're going to give it one more chance tomorrow looking in a different wahoo, dorado zone and if it stinks we're going to finish up the trip in the closer to home zone. We're keeping an eye on the storm so there's nothing to worry about ladies. I'll bring you hubbies home safe and sound.

Drew

Hi Anglers,

Good Morning. We just added a new page to our web site, called Fish Facts. It has some pretty cool info on some of the species we target.

For those of you Humboldt Marine Biologist graduates, if you see any mistakes or corrections I need to make, let me know. I'd appreciate it.

This is Richie's end of the day report from yesterday. It really has been some incredible tuna fishing since the beginning of June.