spirit lake Fishing Report 2024

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 [email protected] for any photos. Thats the word on the water. Don

UPCOMING HOT TRIPS!!! We are planning on running some specialty trips sponsored by Berkley and Shimano These trips will be out of Santa Barbara, targeting White Seabass and/or shallow water Rockfish at the Channel Islands. They will have give aways and raffle prizes. Berkley Trips will be limited to 24 people and Shimano trips will be limited to 20 people. All trips will depart from Sea Landing at 9pm the night prior to the fishing date. Please email me at [email protected] for more details or to make reservations, call Sea Landing at (805)568-0460. The Berkley dates are fishing Fri. April 2, Fri. April 23, and Fri. May 28. The Shimano dates are Fri. April 16 and Fri. May 21

Nov. 14

We traveled home today. Just one of those perfect rides. It was like we were driving in the bay. Flat calm is what I'm telling you. Just beautiful. The passengers broke down all of their gear in the morning and spent the rest of the day watching movies and taking naps or just chilling outside enjoying the ride while the crew did the end of the year cleaning. Spring cleaning you'd call it only in November. That's right, we have no more trips leaving the rest of the year. It's time for us to do the land thing. Time to get our land legs back, work on our golf games, plan our ski/snowboard trips, work off all the Polaris Supreme meals we took in throughout the year or whatever else it is we do during the off season.

On behalf of myself and the crew we thank O.T.R.'s Lon Mikkelsen and Mr. John Esler and all else who participated this year on their 10 day trip and to all the many anglers who fished with us this year. You guys are what makes our world go round. Without you who knows where we'd be. THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

POLARIS SUPREME TRIP UPDATE 10-03- 2020 Socked in fog today and this is all eye ball fish! We caught 1 fish in the dark and one mid day. It finally started biting late, bit into the dark and turned into a fantastic day. all Bluefin today 25-55 pounds. The seas where flat calm and look like they will be for a few more days. Only 1 pic too busy. In tomorrow and back out for 3. The Polaris Supreme Crew!

The first half of our day today was spent traveling to the Island. We slept in, had a nice relaxing breakfast, did our tackle seminar and enjoyed the nice ride down. That was my take on it anyways. I'm sure the passengers we're very anxious to get a line wet. It was worth the wait. When we got our anchor down at 3:30 the jumbo yellows immediately were on the prowl. It was very good fishing for the next couple hours and then slowed down a little to a steady pick until dark. We are very pleased with our day and I can't wait to see what's in store for us tomorrow. The galley portion of the day was great. Pedro dished out a beautiful seafood Newburg and we're getting ready to chow down on Cornish game hens stuffed with something I'm sure will knock our socks off.

Fall is probably our favorite time of year. 2 yellowfin 6 dorado 57 yellowtail 18 skipjack.

Capt Ryan Bostain from the San Diego 3/4 day trip called in with a trip report from todays trip. They decided to head west from the Coronado Islands in search of some offshore fish, with the report of the tuna racing up the coast. We started they day with a stop on some really nice grade Bonito from 5 to 10 pounds and left them biting after we had 55 on the deck. We some mixed schools of Yellowfin and Bluefin and ended the day with 20 Bluefin and 36 Yellowfin that were all between 10 and 35 pounds. We had mostly beginner anglers on the boat today, very few had ever fished offshore before. We will be heading back out there tomorrow and until they go away. You will need a 20 pound bait rods, today they we biting 20-40-50-60 and even 80 pound line. If you come out with us the perfect setup will be a live bait from 20-40 pound set up, some size 2 and 2/0 hooks for either the Anchovies or Sardines. Come on down and get in on the action.

Wednesday, August 29th, 2012

Hi friends. We made it back up to the tuna grounds at first light and found absolutely beautiful weather and the "football" yellowfin tuna were hungry today. Steady jig strikes all morning all the way up until we found a kelp that accounted for most of our score on this day. It was a really fun kelp too. You could look in the water and see brown for most of the stop and these fish were on the squid real nice and the skip jig as well. Kub Ito even got in on some hand-line action which was pretty entertaining. Speaking of Kub, Kub had ten minutes of hardhat time for two minor offenses. Good job, Kubby bear. Anyhow, fun morning of fishing and flat calm, sunny weather to boot. A fine way to end a fine trip and Joe Beck and the boys are pumped.

Anyhow, we're traveling up the line in a very calm ocean and we're looking to arrive to the docks at 0600 where we will be getting the boat turned around and heading out on our annual Gary Roberts 9-day trip. We'll chat with you tomorrow evening sometime. Take care.

P.S. Absolutely no hardhat time for Mark this trip. Shocking, I know. Granted he was in the galley this trip but nonetheless, he was on the boat. Good job, Mark. You now have nine days to reclaim that beautiful yellow dome of yours. Stay tuned.