wallowa river Fishing Report 2025

July 21
    I don't think anything abnormal happened today during our turn around.  Well, Sysco was late so we left for the fuel dock before that came aboard so, just another turn around day is what I'm trying to say.  We loaded the Paul Hess group, our Hess homies and we were out.  I think things went OK at the bait receivers.  We'll find out.  We fished this afternoon.  It's the year of departure fish days.  We scratched 16 nice grade tuna.  We're traveling now and I'm on watch.  It's almost 3:00 am on the 22nd and I believe we're in American waters.  I'm thinking about it and I don't think I've ever fished in American waters in the beginning of a 5 day trip which is what we're on.

    The weather this afternoon was rolly and choppy.  The weather now is pretty nice but I think it's supposed to be bad the next couple of days.  Windy, choppy, rolly oh my.

 

This past week was spent offshore catching yellowtail and waiting for the bio-mass of yellowfin tuna to move within our range. On Wednesday we started to see the first sign of tuna in our area and caught 8 yellowfin and 5 bluefin. Thursday and Friday we only caught 2 yellowfin but the yellowtail fishing was phenomenal . Thursdays passengers caught full Mexican limits of yellows in the 7-11 lb. range. On Saturday Capt. Ray had a very good day as he caught 1 yellowfin 1 albacore and 82 yellowtail. On Saturday we also had a couple other 3/4 day boats out of Seaforth connect with a few tuna. All and all I am very excited to see what October brings. We had another tropical storm down south which should bring some more warm water up. This could be a very special October so don't put your fishing gear away yet!

Polaris Supreme Trip Update 09-08-2019 What a sweet ride down we've had beautiful weather! Made good speed and had a nice early arrival this morning into the fishing grounds. Fishing started off tough. Actually it was brutal! You would catch and release 30 skipjack just to catch one keeper yellowfin tuna. We would catch a Wahoo here and there to spice things up but it just wasn't working. Finally after 10 hours of get in all jacked up, AKA skipjack, Things started going our way. It was like somebody flipped a switch! For the next four hours we had a very consistent bite on quality yellowfin tuna ,right into the dark. Our weather stayed great all day and were going to try our luck here again tomorrow. The Polaris Supreme Crew!

~~AUG. 6
 We fished hard today.  It felt like a kind of slow day but when you look at our tally it shows we had a good day.  We just never got steady more than a couple of drifts.  We'd stop and get a handful and then have to go again.  Other than a few hour long drifts that is.  But at the end of the day, when only half the people were fishing and I had a yellowtail to give away because the angler who caught it had his limit already and nobody handed me over a tag, I knew it was a good day. 

 Things didn't start off so hot though  Nope.  I knew our bait was dying but I thought we were good for another day of fishing before it would croak.  I was wrong.  "Red Boy".  The sardines were red.  Most were either floating belly up or lying at the bottom of the tank.  We made it through though.  We worked hard and had a good day.  The yellows were nice ones too.  20-25 pounds in the morning and 14-25 pounds in the afternoon.

 The weather through here was great today.  I'm not sure we've had one day at this Island this year where the wind wasn't ripping through the south end where we've been fishing.  Now we have one and it looks like it will remain true tomorrow as well.  We saved one tank of bait from last trip.  I knew the first morning we may not have any survivors for our last day if we didn't save our one tank of good bait.  Hopefully we find something to use it on.  I know we'll be making horrific speed coming up so we won't have any time to "work" an area.  We just have to pick a course and hope for the best.  See ya.
       

Drew Henderson docked Polaris Supreme at Fisherman's Landing August 12 after four days of fishing. His anglers had near-limits of yellowtail, mostly from Cedros Island, where he found mackerel to be superior bait, and fish biting at both ends. Drew said his anglers released some 200 fish. Henderson's posting for August 10 read: "We started our trip making the long haul down to Benitos Island due to the bad weather and bad offshore report. We got to the Island at about two thirty. We got held up with a giant school of 3 to 4 foot giant squid. I can't say it was bad there, I mean we caught a lot of fish we just had to go through lots of little ones to get the bigger ones. We gave the night bite a couple hours only getting ten fish and took off towards Cedros. "The morning was great. Everyone woke up to bent rods. After a couple hours the current slowed and the slime (barracuda) took over. We did a little scouting and found some large model yellows and had a couple of long plunking drifts. Then we took off to the northern head to gain some time for tomorrow and give it a check and found the honey hole. Mucho Fisho. All the beautiful grade, and they chewed until we all got our fill. We're traveling up tonight to do some offshore tomorrow until it's time to go home." Dave Betz of Huntington Beach won first place for a 27.6-pound yellowtail he bagged with a sardine on a 1/0 ringed Gorilla hook and 20-pound P-Line. He said he fished with his favorite Accurate 270 reel, and a Calstar six-foot rod. The fight ran to 35 minutes, he said. Forrest Broyles of Kelseyville got a 25.4-pounder. He was tied by Ken Wan of Oakland for second place.

Aug. 15
 Our day sort of reversed from yesterday.  Today it was a super slow morning that led into an action packed afternoon.  We looked for bluefin tuna this morning.  We started off in the zone where it had been in the weeks prior, but like yesterday, it wasn't around.  We caught one 12 pounder on the troll all morning.  We looked around there and in other places I thought it might have gone but we never saw an meat.  We went through one area where at least we were seeing little dabs of the BF but it was diving off on the meter.  We could tell it didn't want it.

 So we kept tracking around and ended up close to a possible yellowtail honey hole. So we took a look and that's exactly what it was.  For the rest of the afternoon till dark we stayed pretty steady on 12-25+ pound yellers.  It was good fishing.  A very pleasant surprise.  We're keeping this ball rolling.

 Needless to say, well maybe not needless, but we're going to spend the night here and see what this place looks like in the morning.
    

Captain Mike Pritchard called in with a wrap-up from the Tribute's overnight trip today. We had 18 Bluefin Tuna and 16 yellowtail. We did have one Jumbo Bluefin at 70 pounds. Our next trip is SOLD OUT but we have a trip next week with availability. Call Seaforth at (619) 224-3383 to get in on the action.

Aug. 25

I've said it before and I'll say it again. Bluefin are the most unpredictable fish out there that we fish for. If you would have told me yesterday that we were going to have a day like we had today, I would have laughed in your face. Never again though. I will never trust this fish. For the last several days the bluefin fishing was very poor. I really thought that it was over for the year. I was wrong. Today we experienced the best bluefin tuna fishing I have ever seen. This is on a quantity to quality ratio that I'm talking about here. In my 13 years of long ranging, today was the best for the Bluefins.

Just after 6:00 this morning we stopped on a single fish mark under the boat. Just after 6:00 tonight we left them. The whole time we drifted it was pretty much wide open. The fish were from 25 up to 75 pounds. Most of them being in the 30-40 pound range. Once again we went into battle and we won. Oh yeah, we fished in the rain. At around 11:00 it started raining and it never stopped. Everyone on board was absolutely drenched all day and it was awesome. By the end of our stop no one was fishing so Mark and I grabbed a couple of rods and boated 3 of them ourselves. It was only Mark and I fishing and I was bringing one in and wouldn't you know it, when the fish was at gaff, there was Mark's spectra tangled all over my fish. 2 anglers fishing and he manages to make a big tangle. MAAAARK!!! I would have made him put on the dunce helmet but he was already wearing it. Heres why. There was a 2 fish tangle and Mark grabbed 1 of the rods to unwrap it and he dropped it right in the water. MAAARK!!!. Unbelievably another person fishing managed to hook one of the guides on the rod and we got it back. Fish and all. I immediately tossed Mark the yellow dunce helmet and he wore it all day.

Needless to say everyone on board is beat tired and we will not have any trouble sleeping through the night tonight. We're headed for the yellowtail grounds now and will be there first thing in the morning.