clearwater river idaho 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 CLEARWATER RIVER IDAHO
🌎 Country UK
⏰ Fast Updates Every day
🐟 Species All Species
πŸ—“οΈ Next Update Tomorrow
πŸ… Rating ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

You also can get helpful information from the Fishing Forecast.

May 28, 2023 clearwater river idaho Fishing Report

~~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.
       

May 27, 2023 clearwater river idaho Fishing Report

41 yellowtail 1 barracuda 1 calico bass. Steady picking all day long.

May 26, 2023 clearwater river idaho Fishing Report

24 pass. 11 yellowtail 8 calico bass. Conditions took a step in the right direction today. The future looks bright !

May 25, 2023 clearwater river idaho Fishing Report

Oct. 10

Another travel day today so another day with nothing to report. I enjoyed a nice sleeping in this morning, then ate some cereal, then cleaned an engine room along with Mark and Jed. I noticed there were some movies being played and naps being had. We're going to try our hands at some squid in the early a.m. hours to give us a little more to fish with tomorrow. We're getting in the bluefin mode tomorrow for our last day before we return to San Diego.

Mr. Joe G. Yes you Joe. I am truly sad to say that tomorrow is our last chance to catch an albacore before we square up our bet. Unfortunately even if there was a miracle and we did find a biting school I don't think we could get a hundred to make you a winner in our bet so make sure you have that bill clean and crisp. I know you know but I would have loved to lose that bet. Thankfully we had the bluefin this year covering for the albacore so we were still in good shape for the summer. Fall is here and they're still biting. Timing is everything.

May 24, 2023 clearwater river idaho Fishing Report

~~Aug. 26
 Whenever you end well it makes you feel like you had a good day. When you start well and end slow you get that "it wasn't a good day" feel to it. Today we started slow and finished strong. We had a good day. We looked at a lot of fish this morning but only one would bite. We had one fish well after lunch. We then found an area that for some reason the fish we found wanted to bite. We found one school that produced 18 of those 30-45 pounders and one school that bit through the sunset for 13 bluefin with one of those going 65 pounds more or less. So we ended our day with 32 beautiful bluefin tuna and we're going to do this again tomorrow for our last day.

 We developed quite the south swell today from that category 5 hurricane down below. It's amazing what some wind thousands of miles away can do to the ocean right here. It's ground swell with no wind on it so we barely feel it come under the boat but it's impressive to watch. Surf"s up.

May 23, 2023 clearwater river idaho Fishing Report

~~Oct.16-20
 So for the last few days, I was either too busy to write a report or just too tired.  I knew these blogs wouldn't be making it out here until tomorrow anyway so I figured I would just do a 4 day report to explain the remainder of our trip down below so here it goes.

 When I left off, the sharks backed off and allowed us to have a great afternoon and we were hoping the sharks would do the same thing they did last year after the first couple of days which is leave.  That didn't happen.  It was a sharky trip for sure.  Brown Reef Sharks were in the picture for the remainder of the time we were down there.  Sometimes they were relentless and we'd have to pull anchor and go trolling for wahoo and other times they would back off just enough to allow us to scratch at the tunas and then other times they would back off completely.  They weren't tuna eaters though.  They let us wind in what we hooked, but they loved our kite baits.

 Anyways, we still had an excellent trip down there sharks or no sharks.  There were a lot of windows of opportunity and there were some slow windows as well.  There was almost always a window where we would get at least two cows before sunrise, and after that it never stayed consistent.  If we didn't need to sleep it would've been convenient.  I know we missed plenty of tuna bites in the dark hours through out the night but that's when we would sleep.  Like I said though we had an excellent trip and here are the numbers to prove it.

 130 yellowfin tuna and 60 wahoo for 8 guys for 6 days.  54 tuna kept.  11 over 200 lb's, 5 that may go when we weigh them on the dock scale, 6 between 170-180 and the rest were 100-150 pounds with much fish being in the 120-130 pound class.  We also released 76 of those too!  One release estimated to be around 200 pounds and several in the 150 pound range and like I said, many in the 120-130 pound range.  Our largest was 240 and next in line was a 234 pounder kept.

 Here are the team jackpot totals: 1st place goes to Charlie and Craig with 2 fish totaling 453 pounds.  2nd went to George and Scott with 2 totaling 414.  George also had 5 tuna over 200 pounds by the way.  One per day besides the last day.  3rd place went to the Jer-bear and JC with 399 pounds, and Brian and Bernie finished just behind them with 396 pounds.  None of this is official.  We still need to weigh them oin land.

 And that's basically how fishing was down there.  Here are some things that stand out to me while we were down there.  First of all I'd like to talk about KC.  I'm not saying he was scared, he just didn't seem too pumped on fighting one of these fish we call cows.  He wasn't the first or fifth for that matter to jump on a spot on the kite for example when one was available.  On the third day it couldn't be avoided.  He got up on that kite and when he did this particular time he hooked a big one and he handled it as well as anyone.  I mean he kicked that fishes @$$.  He came to battle and he won.  It taped out as a 193 pounder.  After that it wasn't hard to get KC up on the kite when a spot was presented.  It went from where the heck is KC, to him not leaving the rail at all.

 I let Mark know the Raiders lost.  I did it in a mean way too.  His birthday was the 16th I believe, and Chef Mike baked him a cake and we all sang happy birthday and when it was over, I gave him my birthday present which is spilling the beans on lying about the Raiders beating the Chargers.  Ha ha Mark.

 The weather was a lot less steamy the last few days down there.  It was still hot, but once the clouds went away it didn't feel like a sauna there anymore.  Although myself and a few others got the worse case of burnt lips we ever had.  I did it in a dumb way too.  I knew I should go get my chap stick from my room on the first day down there but my lips did;t feel like they were getting chapped so I thought, because of the humidity my lips weren't drying out and I didn't need protection.  Dumb, stupid and idiotic.  My lips may not have dried out but they still got as burnt as ever.

  So that's it.  We now travel for a few days.  The crew has plenty to do.  Clean, clean clean and sleep.  The passengers will be sleeping and celebrating a wonderful trip.  We'll be trying to break up the ride on our last day of travel by looking for a dorado kelp but that's still not for a couple more days.
      

 

May 22, 2023 clearwater river idaho Fishing Report

June 28

I told you all we would be departing today on a 5 day trip on my last report and I have to tell yah, that's exactly what we did. We're out on a private charter with Mr. Pfleger and some of his boys. Things went alright at the bait receivers. We got two boxes of a mostly spanish mackerel with some greenies and about a 7.375 average of sardines mixed in. Things are looking a little scary with our sardine stocks of San Diego this year thus far. You may want to make sure you pack your bait catching rigs if you're coming out this year and also think about getting your anchovy fishing skills back. You may need them.

We're thinking about starting offshore tomorrow on a southerly track. We're not going to put the brakes on and fish locally where most the tunas been caught lately. We're going to put ourselves in position to do other things the next couple days after tomorrow. We may look for white sea bass and yellows somewhere down the line. It's not something we'd do on a normal long range trip but this is a special one. I'll explain later. You know how Pfleger is with his sea bass.

Tommy's running the boat but I'll still be your author so enjoy and I'll see you tomorrow.

 

May 21, 2023 clearwater river idaho Fishing Report

~~Do not forget about our upcoming shorter trips that just hit the schedule: 2.5 day open Friday 08.28.2015-Monday 08.31.2015, 1.5 day Monday 08.31.2015-Wednesday 09.02.2015 and 1.5 day Thursday 09.03.2015-Saturday 09.05.2015. Come out and fish a short range trip in long range style! Call Susan at the office right away for all of the details at 619.390.7890
 

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Fishing reports for clearwater river idaho 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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