illinois river Fishing Report 2025

~~Sep. 20
 The ride going up last night wasn't good, although I can't say it was awful either.  It was just your average windy rough ride up the line.  I'm just not used to it, that's all.  The weather for the most part these last couple months for me has just been so good.  It doesn't matter because the weather got good again for the important part which is the fishing.  And we took advantage of it.  We found our dorado kelp.  The dorado were small to big and they were plentiful.  It was our first dorado kelp of the year.  Finally. Though we've had plenty of other specie to keep us busy this year. If you know me you know I'm all about the competition so I like to make searching for kelps fun.  Today I challenged Mark to a kelp off which means the person who finds the loaded dorado kelp wins.  He found it and of course I couldn't be happier about it.  It may be the only thing I'm glad to lose to.  Of course he wanted me to tell you all about it.  He finally beat me. It was the cherry on top of this wonderful trip.  Another one in the books.  We're headed back to the barn all fat and happy.  Fat from too much eating and happy with all the fish we caught.  We'll be dockside tomorrow morning at 6:30 and yes, we will be heading back out to sea.  I'll be taking the LA Rod and Reel club out fishing for a couple days.

 Good fishing again today in the local tuna grounds it sounds like.  Let's make it one more tuna trip for the year before it's over.  Our October 3rd and 6th trips are both for sure goes.  Let's, and by that I mean you, make our September 26th and 29th trips a go too.  Come fishing!  My baby can be without her dad for another week if it means she gets those shoes she's been begging me for.  5 months old and she's already begging for shoes.  Holy Toledo.
     

Sept. 25

Today we got nasty aboard the Polaris Supreme. And I mean nasty. When I use the term nasty I mean it in a good way. Unless I'm talking about the weather. If I say the weather is nasty I mean it was nasty. And by the way the weather was nasty today. It was windy windy windy and the swell was up and it was steep and we were rolling baby. It didn't bother us though because we were getting nasty on those bluefin tunas. Shortly after firing up after daylight Jed called down from above "tern birds pickin starboard bow". So I turned toward starboard bow and there was tern birds a pickin and when we rolled up on them, wouldn't you know it there was a big school of bluefin under them. I love those beautiful little white tern birds. They're the best of the fish finders. Find tern birds and you usually find game fish. For two hours it was game on. I mean they were snappin! 35-50 pound tunas? Yup. After the initial two hour whack things became civil and we scratched at them for another five hours. We could of kept picking at them but we had enough and the weather was getting worse so we headed east for the rest of the day and found nice weather in there. Night and day compared to what we had out west. We didn't catch much in there, a few small yellows and dorado but we didn't care. We had a heaven of a day already. We're on our way in. We have one night in and then we're back at it again. See you then.

Polaris Supreme Trip Report 07-17-2016 Good morning everyone. We ended up driving around most of the day yesterday and seeing only a few schools after the first two hours. That Bluefin was not up and foaming and boiling and crashing and jumping and breezing like it has been. Late in the day we got on eight Breezers that were the size of Midtown Manhattan that we made long drifts flying the kites, fly lining, sinker fishing, jig fishing etc. with no luck. Just as we were getting ready to take off to the Yellowfin tuna grounds after dinner we had a nice school come under and managed to hook a 115 pounder and landed it. Quite a long day but we ended up with two beautiful tuna both caught in the dark and both caught on iron. The majority of the Bluefin that is caught, is caught that way or on fly fish trolled with the kite through big schools. Today we will be fishing Yellowfin tuna and hitting kelp patties for Yellowtail and Dorado. Our weather is good and were looking for a little bit more action than one in the morning and one at the end of the day. We will check with you later. Have a great day. The Polaris supreme crew.

Aug. 15
    We started our morning off in the local bluefin zone.  We caught 12 of them, 2 of them being the 50+ pounders while the rest were that beautiful manageable 30-40 pound fish and we caught a few yellowfin.  On drift number 2 we hooked and lost one.  Do to the amount of boats thinking the same thing we were and the lack of fish I was seeing being brought over the rail, I decided to leave early and look for yellowfin for a while.  It wasn't long before we found some, and then some more, and then some more.  It pretty much was like that for as long as we fished it which was until after 5 when we went back to the zone where we started.  We had good fishing pretty much all day long.  The only negative thing about it was the grade of fish was a bit on the smaller side.  They weren't runts but they weren't great either.  12 pounds is the short version.  They averaged out to be 12 pounders.  We looked all around for a bigger grade but it pretty much was what it was.  I did think that the area we finished up in yellowfin wise had quite a few more 20 pounders mixed in than what we'd been fishing so it may be something to look at tomorrow.  We finished up right where we started and we had a long 2 1/2 hour drift.  We caught a yellowfin every once in a while, we landed 4 of the 30-40 pound bf's and caught 1 70ish pounder and lost at least 4 of those.  We are going to drift tonight and do it again tomorrow.
                                

 

Captain Mike Pritchard called in with a wrap up from today's trip. We ended up with a great Yellowtail Kelp. We had 195 fish for our 28 people on this Okuma Sponsored trip. We have an extended 1.5 day trip departing on Friday night. Call Seaforth now at (619) 224-3383 to get in on the action.

Aug 16

Today started off on the slow side. For a few hours after daylight we saw virtually nothing. A little bit in the dark and even less in the day light. A couple of the boats found schools and were drifting so of course the stress level goes up. Thankfully we found a school after 9:00 and drifted with them till after lunch. They didn't bite full speed by any means but it was steady picking for most of the time. And oh yeah, they were the 50-70 pound grade. Yes baby, they're back! For today anyways. Who knows when they'll disappear again. Maybe tomorrow. Anyways after that drift, that was it for us for the day. We never found another deal. But I chalk this day up as a good one because that's just a beautiful grade of bluefin.

We're headed down now and we're going to try for some yellows in the morning and try our hands at some yellowfin in the afternoon. That's the tentative game plan for now anyways. Things change out here constantly. That's fishing. The weather today was top notch. I give it a 9.5 in the morning and an 8.7 in the afternoon. See you tomorrow.

Drew

To mama bear- Your little angel did great today. 2 record breaking bluefin for him. They were bigger then he was. He's currently sleeping in bed safe and sound.

Hello fishing friends,

We now have the Apollo in beautiful Santa Barbara for the rest of the spring. We are running two Berkley sponsored limited load overnight trips to the Channel Islands. The first trip will depart on Thursday night April 19th at 9 pm to fish on Friday April 20th. The second trip will depart at 9 pm on Thursday night May 17th to fish Friday May 18th. These trips will target Quality Rockfish, ling cod with the chance for some early season halibut or sea bass. Please come join us on the Apollo in Santa Barbara for some fun spring time fishing. Berkley will sponsor this trip and will be giving away swag on board. These ntrips are limited to 20 people and the cost is $185 per person. Please call Sea Landing at (805) 963-3564.

Thank you,

J.J.

21 pass. Full Mexican Limits of yellowtail and a few red rockcod. Yo yo jigs on 40 lb mono, surface iron on 40 lb mono and flyline bait on 20 or 25 lb. we’re all producing.