smith mountain lake striper Fishing Report 2025

The Annual SFR charter aboard the Apollo with Captain J.J Gerritsen and crew was a big success !! The Apollo is running out of Sea Landing on beautiful Santa Barbara Harbor, the closest harbor to the outer Channel Islands. Great weather meant an ideal cruise over to San Miguel Island for some of the finest shallow water rockfishing you'll find anywhere. 300 feet down you say, maybe 200, how about 100 feet ? No way. The offshore terrain around San Miguel is so rugged and marked with underwater pinnacles, we spent most of the day fishing in 25 to 90 feet of water. Lighter rigs, jigs, leadheads and swimbaits were the order of the day, and the San Miguel rockfish were in a hungry mood. We started catching fish before daybreak and spent the rest on the trip hauling up huge reds, chuckles and lings, all sporting some of the most vibrant colors I've seen on any fish in a long time. Awesome day!! We limited out on huge rockfish, slammed about 50-60 grumpy whitefish, 5-6 huge goats and 16 or so pre-historic looking lings before calling it a trip. Epic day !!!! The jackpot was a nail biter as Shawn Suhr's huge lingcod and Art Moralez's giant goat battled to a near dead heat. Captain J.J needed to come down and settle the score, with the final vote went going to Shawn's 12-13 pound ling. Great job Shawn. Captain J.J and his crew did an awesome job as always and the Apollo is looking as spotless as ever. The Apollo will be in Santa Barbara till around mid May before moving down to Fisherman's Landing in San Diego. Call Sea Landing at 1-805-963-3564 or log onto www.apollocharters.com for their schedule. Great trip everyone !!!. email me at donpadick@hotmail.com for any photos. Thats the word on the water. Don

~~Trip Report 08.10.2015

 Good evening folks. Today didn't fair out like we planned. It proves that's why it's called fishing and not catching. We didn't have the awesome weather that we had yesterday, but it was certainly fishable. Our common yellowtail zone has been producing fairly well over the past few weeks, but there are those off days too. What's encouraging though, is there is also school of yellowfin tuna down here South as well. It's great for keeping our options open for when the tails don't want to cooperate. My feeling is the the tails just took a day off to regroup and we'll get at it first thing in the morning and start tagging some fish right away. On a brighter note, we did move north a little ways in the early afternoon and hit a giant breezer of tuna. Pretty close to a football field size I would say, and we managed to get a nice chunk of them to stick with us. It took some shoveling of bait to get them to stick, but they did. Nothing like a nice chaotic tuna bite to break up the day. We managed to turn it into a nice 100 fish stop of a pretty good grade I might add. All and all, we ended up putting a descent afternoon and everyone got to tag plenty of tuna. Tomorrow is a new day, we'll cross our fingers that the fish God's are on our side tomorrow and we'll check back in after we wrap it up for the day.

Also, we cannot forget to wish Michelle Taylor a very Happy Birthday from Troy and the boys out here on the Polaris Supreme!!

Jed and Crew

Hello Everyone, We are loaded up and on our way. A nice load of bait and good weather, cannot ask for much more. Today is mainly a mainly getting situated day, and tomorrow will be hot and heavy rigging. Will report again tomorrow, Team Supreme

164 yellowfin tuna from 15-30 lbs and 1 mahi-mahi. Right place at the right time today. Flylined baits on 15-40 lb and small colt snipers and Flatfalls. Adjust your tackle based on the mode of the fish. Their mode is constantly changing so be aware and don’t be afraid to ask questions.

Some great weather, good fishing and fun times during this weekends Penn Air 2 day charter.

Aug. 20
    Another fantastic day out here for us.  We had a great nights sleep.  The boat just gently rocked us to sleep just like a baby.  We tried for a gray bite but only caught one.  It didn't take long looking for a school before we found one.  We short stopped 15 yellowfin and then it didn't take long to find another deal and that one was good for a 2 hour drift.  When that dried up it didn't take long to find another one and that one was good for a 2 1/2 hour drift.  After that it was lunch time and we're pretty much done with the yellowfin.  We spent the last half of the day looking for bluefin unsuccessfully.  We're going to head for some new grounds.  And by that I mean some water I can't remember ever fishing in.  We have reports of some bluefin schools so we're going to check it out.  We'll be there first thing.  I'll let you know.

    The weather today got interesting.  It stayed pretty much windless through out the day so it remained similar to a lake, but around 9:00 in the AM it started dumping rain on us.  And I mean dumping.  Everyone on board scrambled for there rain gear.  I got to try out my new Aftco raincoat and it worked great.  During the down pour the lightning that was around got pretty darn close so I had everyone go indoors to wait it out.  It didn't take long to pass and we continued fishing and catching.  After that it stayed dry the rest of the day.  The boat got a nice fresh water rinse.
                                    

 

Happy July 4th everyone.
    We started our morning off doing some bluefin watching.  It's like whale watching but instead of whales you watch bluefin.  In other words they didn't bite.  We got on one spot and they were practically smacking the side of the boat they were so close but they wanted nothing to do with us.  After a little bit of that and a kelp for some yellows and our first dorado of the year we started getting strikes on yellowfin.  It was pretty steady for 1 1/2 hours then shut down for 1 1/2 hours then started up again for 1 hour then went completely dead.  We went west because west is best.  After lunch things got interesting.  We started to see big schools of yellowfin and it didn't stop until dark.  As my grandma would say, "holy Toledo!".  Unfortunately they were not biting fish.  We would get stops for 2,1,1,2,4,1,1,2,2,3,3,3,1,2, like that.  But we stayed busy and worked  hard at it and scratched out a nice catch.  We had 40 tuna stops and averaged 2 per stop.  Now thats scratching.

    The weather was incredible.  As my grandma would say, "holy Toledo!".  Variable winds all day.  That means there wasn't enough wind to measure.  I think that's what it means anyway.  We're headed back in and will be docking at 7:15 in the am and we will be turning around on a 6 day.  I'll be your captain.  See you then.
                                

 

A couple years ago we lost one of our favorite passengers, “Iron Mike” Morrison. Today our charter group honored him on his birthday with a stellar day of fishing. 96 yellowfin 68 skipjack 58 yellowtail.