lower illinois river Fishing Report 2025

Polaris Supreme Trip Report 07-19-2016 Okay we departed last night on Paul Hess's annual five day trip. We got another great group of folks and a nice load of bait to take down to the tuna and yellowtail grounds. The two pictures at the scale are of Jack and Kenny with their jackpot bluefin tuna one weighed about 124 and the other weighed about 120. We are looking offshore today and at this moment striking out. We have not put a fish on board. Have only found two scraggly kelp's and no schools of tuna. Weather is good and our expectations are high. Hopefully our evening report is a little bit more exciting than this one. The first picture that we put up today is a color water temperature chart of the area around Guadalupe Island. We would love to make a nice catch on the yellowtail in the next couple of days and be able to go scout out some new country for yellowfin tuna! It's a little hard to go out searching that far offshore though without something on board. Wish us luck! The Polaris supreme crew

July 28
    Today we had about as good of yellowtail fishing as you can get.  Quality to quantity ratio, holy Toledo.  18-25 pound fish and they were biting pretty much as full speed as yellows bite for a couple hours and after that it slowed down but they were still biting well for a couple more.  If you have read my past reports you know that surface iron fishing on big yellows is my favorite kind of fishing and it was pretty much wide open on the surface iron.  Holy Toledo!  I'm not the only one who felt this way either.  We have a Polaris Supreme first timer on board, his name is Josh and he may love it more then me.  He named his dog after a surface iron.  Tady.  How cool is that?  We've had a tank of mackerel on board for about 3 weeks and we finally let them go today.  On hooks that is before getting eaten by yellows.  In the late afternoon ewe looked for bait and found some a couple hours before dark and caught a tank full of nice mackerel.  We restocked our supply.  We made a couple drifts along a kelp line while the sun set and tugged on a few calico bass and now we're headed up to fish tuna tomorrow.  Sweet dreams.
                            
    Oh yeah, Happy Anniversary to Renee.  I think you know who that's from Renee.
                    

 

Well today was another tough day for the whole group. A couple stops on 40-70 lb. tuna and a sprinkling of 100-120 lb. fish, but for the most part slow. The weather is still good and the food great. We had lobster salad and home made cream of chicken soup for lunch, and another superb sushi sashimi layout before a prime cut steak and potato dinner. We'll be looking at a new area tomorrow.

Captain Ryan Bostian checked in this afternoon with an update from “The San Diego,”    We have a Coronado Islands trip that is a for sure go.  We only have 4 anglers so the light is load.   

Call Seaforth at (619) 224-3383 to get in on the action.

The San Diego went out fishing on March 17th with 17 anglers. They caught 15 yellowtail, 3 bonito and 100 rockfish. They had multiple good size schools that did not bite. Perfect weather, fun fishing. Tomorrow’s trip is a definite go with a light load.

Nov. 10

No fishing today - it was all catching. Wide open dorado, yellowfin, and 30 plus wahoo. Did not matter what you cast into the ocean - sardines, maggie bay mackeral, wahoo iron and bombs - it was all awesome.Big dorado of the 30 lb variety, wahoo up to 40 lb and 15 to 30 lb yellowfin. Constant "catching" all day with only breaks to tie on new hooks and leaders. The crew show'd their experience as 17 anglers, all hooked up at the same time with flying dorado all over the place, untangled, gaffed and tagged with seamless ease. Everyone is tired and happy and settling in after a fine dinner of seared wahoo with mango ginger sauce, risotto followed by blackberry pie ala mode. Whats next? Heading after big tuna tomorrow and hoping for more of the same. A big hello to Terra and Finn. and also a big hello to Allison from Jim.

O.T.R. Lon Mikkelsen