smith mountain lake Fishing Report 2023

For up-to-date information, look up the fishing report for the water of your choice. Field staff update the fishing reports each week through the fishing season, reporting on fishing success, lake levels, water temperatures, and other important information.

πŸ—ΊοΈ Location SMITH MOUNTAIN LAKE
🌎 Country US
⏰ Fast Updates Every day
🐟 Species All Species
πŸ—“οΈ Next Update Tomorrow
πŸ… Rating ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

You also can get helpful information from the Fishing Forecast.

September 28, 2023 smith mountain lake Fishing Report

~~Aug. 26
 Good evening everyone.  We wrapped up our trip today.  And it was an interesting day.  First off the weather continued to produce variable wind.  Flat calm and gorgeous.  Onto the fishing.  As you know we almost had no sardine today.  We used it well though for the time we had it.  The bluefin floated today.  Everywhere you looked there was a 30-50 pound bluefin gently rolling on the glassy surface.  Other times you would see the whole school swimming on the surface.  It definitely had that feel to it.  We caught 30 fish from 30-50 pounds this morning before we ran out of bait.  For the time being it was great but sad when we ran out.  We still had a couple tanks of big mackerel to use and Tommy had it figured out where we would use it.  So we made a few hour move and it didn't take long after we arrived to the honey hole before we were gettinum.  Big yellowfin.  45-65 pounders.  It felt like we were anchored up at Alijos Rocks when the tuna were around there.  Those fish liked our mackerel.  We caught a few over 20 of those bad boys before they quit biting.  I wish we could be in 2 spots at once.

 So we have a 1.5 day trip leaving tomorrow afternoon Aug. 27 and we want you to go.  Let me try and talk you into it.  Now this is me speaking truth.  Not blowing smoke at you.  The weather still is fore casted to be great great.  Variable wind.  Now I told you we had great fishing this morning while we had bait.  A lot of the boats that had just left on there trips that had bait all day drifted all day.  Not all but a lot. They drifted and they caught. It's a good time to go fishing I'd say.  Good grade, good fishing. Let us take you fishing, feed you great, show you a good time and hopefully the bonus, catch lots of fish.
        

September 27, 2023 smith mountain lake Fishing Report

Apollo docked December 9 at Fisherman's landing after an eight-day trip with just 11 anglers, who visited Alijos Rocks for some nice tuna fishing with skipper J.J. Gerritsen. Many large yellowtail were also caught.

September 26, 2023 smith mountain lake Fishing Report

~~Aug. 28
 It was a busy morning for us today but a kick back afternoon. For the second time this year we are not fishing on our departure day. We did the usual turn around throwing in an oil and fuel filter change. We offloaded, then onloaded and then we took off before lunch. The bait was OK. It looked great but lost some scales putting it in our tanks. We'll see how it likes 80+ degree water in a couple of days. I decided to skip this 30 mile yellowfin zone today and get down below while we have a window of good hurricaneless weather. There will be some wind the next couple of days everywhere but should come down nicely for a week or so everywhere if the forecast holds true. I'm still not sure where we're starting yet this trip. We'll either head straight to the rocks or drag our feet for a day and wait for the weather to get pristine. For now there is some napping going on and just some old fashioned kicking back. Something we haven't seen a whole lot of this year as it has been straight to fishing out of the gates.
 

September 25, 2023 smith mountain lake Fishing Report

I have three more fishing opportunities on the Apollo. Berkley will sponsoring three overnight Channel Island trips. These will be sea bass and rock fish type adventures. There will be give aways and raffles on board compliments of Berkley and Pure Fishing. Everyone will receive goodies for fishing. The dates will be: Friday April 3rd, Friday May 1st, and Sunday May 17th. To book a spot please contact Sea Landing (Truth Aquatics) at (805) 568-0460.

September 24, 2023 smith mountain lake Fishing Report

Tuna fishing was good again today with nice quality tuna. We took off mid-day to hunt for some dorado and wahoo on kelps in the afternoon, but no luck. We will be on the Ridge tomorrow to sweep for wahoo. Our lunch today was an outstanding fresh tuna fillet with avocado, lettuce, tomato and wasabi sauce. We will update again tomorrow. Thanks, Tommy and crew

September 23, 2023 smith mountain lake Fishing Report

July 6

Today went as planned. We did about what we thought we'd do. Scratched at yellowfin most of the day. Our best stop was for 7, then 6, we had a handfull of 4's and the rest were 3's 2's and 1's. That's exactly how the tuna fishing has been on a good day for the last few weeks so we had a good day.

The weather did what it was supposed to do. It was beautiful in the morning and got breezy in the afternoon. It looks like the wind backed off when it got dark. Hopefully it stays that way. We're heading down to Cedros Island now and we'll be there at day break.

September 22, 2023 smith mountain lake Fishing Report

Today our passengers made it thru the strong south wind, fought off the morning sickness, and were rewarded with 93 yellowfin tuna and 108 skipjack tuna. Our schools would go back and forth from aggressive to line shy. A wise angler would have a variety of line sizes from 20 to 50 lb. small hooks are very important. Size 2 Mustad 94150 or something similar.

September 21, 2023 smith mountain lake Fishing Report

~~Sep. 18
 "Fixed up" is a good expression to describe our day today.  We had very good yellowfin tuna fishing.  We arrived to our destination shortly after breakfast and after about 1/2 an hour of searching we found what we were looking for.  A school of 25-30 pound yellowfin.  It bit for a little while before we had to relocate the school, which we did a few times.  After that we found a different school of a more mixed grade of 10-30 pounders that we hit a couple times.  Then we found a school of mostly 16-22 pounders that we did well off of.  I think you get the point.  We had a good day.  Along with all the tuna we caught, we also managed 7 wahoo and 4 dorado.  I'll say it again, we had a good day.  We're feeling satisfied.  Worth the days travel to get where we've been the last couple days, that's for sure.

 The weather today was fantastic.  Fan tastic.  We'll be traveling tonight and sleeping in tomorrow.  We're shooting to be fishing tomorrow afternoon.  We'd like to top off on some yellers.
        

Weekly Fishing Reports

Fishing reports for smith mountain lake are updated each week, usually by Thursday morning. The reports are compiled by an outside contractor who receives the information from bait shops, marinas and fishing guides.

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