smith mountain lake for bass Fishing Report 2024

Nov. 15

                Not much to report from us today.  It was a pretty uneventful day.  We traveled all morning until after lunch when we arrived to the Islands, and we never saw a yellowtail.  It was dead as can be at this place.  We took the tour, well as much as we could in a few hours, and ended up back here in the lee.  We were and still are catching calico bass and things.  We did hook something big, a yellow or a big halibut or even a seabass, but we'll never know because the hook straightened out right before we could see it and the fish got away.  And that's it.  We're going to try and keep our anchor hung right here and see what kind of conditions we have here in the morning for our last day of fishing.  As soon as the wind backs off enough for a tolerable ride offshore Tuesday morning, we'll be on our way home.

We had some short range trips online and were able to catch a good amount of school sized fish and 3 jumbo tuna! Including the First 2 cow tuna to come aboard the Polaris Supreme in 4 years! 

 Congratulations guys! 

Nov. 11

                Not a very good day for us today.  I wish I could call it a travel day too but we did a lot of fishing, just not catching.  Well, we did need to travel for 4 hours of the day to put us in position for tomorrow, so maybe I can call it a travel day.  Anyways, the weather today was pretty crappy when I first woke up and not much better when we arrived to our first fishing destination of the day at 7:00 AM.  That could be why the wahoo weren't there and biting.  But after 3 hours there, the weather was nice.  The wind backed off and the ocean flattened out.  Unfortunately 12 miles below there the current did a 180 and the wind picked up a little and things got jacked up.  The swell and chop were coming from every which way and we couldn't pick a smooth course.  We got our roll on for most the rest of the day.  Spot #2 looked like we could've caught a bunch of nice yellers but the skip jack wouldn't let us have any of it.  They were hitting everything we threw in.  That's alright though.  We needed the chunk for tomorrow.  We did get a few nice yellows though.

                After that we had a delicious cheeseburger and some took a nap during our 20 mile move.  I had high hopes for this place but it was not to be so we threw in the towel a bit before dark to make sure we give ourselves plenty of time to get to our next destination.  We'll be hunting for cows tomorrow.  We need a little luck and by that I mean good timing.  The fish need to be on the bank tomorrow for us because above here didn't seem like the answer for the last couple of days. 

                Mama Bear: Though we only caught a few wahoo today, your little rascal caught one of them.  His first wahoo.  I guess the ritual for that is a deck hose soaking?  I never heard of that but he got a drenching after that one.

~~Aug 25
 We had a slow day today.  The morning seemed promising.  We caught a little but we saw a whole lot.  If just one of those schools we saw this morning wanted to bite a little we would of had a great day.  That seems to be the deal this year though.  Today, we hit the wrong schools.  We caught about 20 ish this morning from 30-50 pounds.  The afternoon stunk.  We ran in to where we finished up last night and it was muerto.  We ended up in an area late that had mucho fish but unfortunately they were all small.  We didn't even try them.  It wasn't worth wasting our precious sardine for. 

 The good news about not catching much fish this afternoon is we still have some of a tank of sardine left to fish with this morning.  It's 4:00 AM as I write this and we just finished up with our attempt at bait making.  We caught plenty of bait, but it wasn't a good size for the tuna that's out here so we're going to try and make some lemonade here.  We're going to take our big spanish mackerel and take it to where the 150+ pound bluefin live.  We'll do this after we run out of sardine this morning.  No one has tried that cow BF with a couple tanks of spanish yet.  Maybe that's the key to it all.

 The weather remains great.  We had a few hours this afternoon where things were getting interesting.  We had a descently strong wind out of the southeast and with it came some rain.  It wasn't all that neat but it didn't last long.  Things went back to butter.  Nice.
       

Good evening and thanks again for tuning Polaris Supreme fans.   What an excellent day today!  The early morning hours were spent doing some looking around at different spots deciding where we wanted to get established for tuna fishing.  The currents didn't really want to cooperate at first, but eventually we found what looked best and gave it a shot.  It was a little on the slower side till things started to wake up, then the guys started to scratch away.  We eventually switched gears into wahoo mode and that was a great choice.  The remainder of the day we had our running shoes on chasing skinnies all around the boat.  Stop after stop, they kept coming over the rail.  The tax man had to take his piece of the pie of course, losing more than just a few to sharks, but never the less, I still call it an amazing day of skin fishing.  We all look forward to many more days like today before we end the trip.  For those wondering about the weather, you should be jealous.  I don't think there is nicer weather anywhere in the U.S.  It nothing short of perfect out here. 

                 A+ fishing and top notch food, what more could you ask for on a long range trip.  All of the guys are having a great time.  As always, thanks for taking a few minutes to check in and don't forget, even though we are out here on the water, we will still be representing at the Long Beach Fred Hall Show this year.  Make sure you stop by our booth and say hi to our crew up there.  Till tomorrow, tight lines.

Jed and the Polaris Supreme crew

22 yellowtail, 65 calico bass, 1 bonito and 3 barracuda. Tony Brough and his charter group had good action fly lining sardines.

20 pass. 33 yellowtail plenty of reds and rockfish. Yo yo lures were the top producers however we did catch a few on flyline sardines and surface iron.