north fork coeur d alene river Fishing Report 2025

Today we we picked at the quality Tuna we have been after. Many successes before the sharks took their share. The fish were on both live bait and chunk bait. It was nice catching them on the chunk because we were able to use big hooks and heavy line. As opposed to small hooks and light line.

Pictured here is a neat looking Pilot Fish. Really cool looking blue fish with black stripes. They hang out with sharks waiting for bits and pieces from a kill to float back to them. Also pictured is a delicious sashimi spread prepared by chef Mike!

I have always felt that it takes 3 full days to give the Coronado Islands a thorough check. Today was day # 1 and we caught 31 bonito and 100 rockfish. Spent a lot of time looking for yellowtail and never found anything substantial. Saturday is a definite go with a light load at this time.

~~Aug 29
 Today was mostly a travel day for us as was planned. We did stop late after 4:00 in the evening for some yellowtail. It took a bit of looking around but we eventually found some action. It wasn't exactly what we were looking for but it kept us busy for a while. 8-15 pound yellowtail is what we caught. We released most of what we caught but we tagged some of the 14 pounders we were getting. The fish bit until we left it to try and find a better grade. We never did but we didn't have much time left to look. The weather was definitely on the choppy/windy side of things today but it didn't bother us because we were rolling down with it so we didn't notice. We'll make a move tonight and fish first thing tomorrow targeting D, all of the above. See you then.
 

Pretty good sign of yellowtail for the first few hours in the morning. They were up boiling around good and showing on the machines but we were having trouble getting them to settle with the boat. We'd hook a few here and a whack there but nothing steady. We saw a couple more schools through out the day but it was the same thing. Nothing would settle. It was racing up and down the island. We ended the day 5 fish a rod of the jumbo quality and decided to head up the line to fish albacore the day after tomorrow. We should have good working weather so we're hoping the fish are chewing when we get there.

Aug. 14
    Arrive depart today.  We offloaded a beautiful catch, got fuel, changed oil + fuel filters, swapped out some crew and left the dock by 10:00.  We're good.  We left on a very long running charter called the Heil charter.  I won't go into our bait loading, I'll just say we have some bait on board.  We were in the fishing grounds before 3:00 this afternoon.  The couple boats that departed yesterday had some good yellow finning.  When we got there it just had that "should've been here yesterday" kind of feel to it.  We didn't see much.  We had one long drift where we picked up 14 but other then that it didn't feel like we were going to get a hit so we rolled out of that zone.  Below there didn't look much better until right around 8:00 when the sun fell we had a good old fashioned blind jig strike that resulted in a good stop.  We always fish till the end over here and tonight we were rewarded.  The fish bit full speed but only for a flash but it was long enough to get everyone on board at least one with many getting three or more.  They were snapping.  I call departure fish free fish because we weren't even supposed to be fishing.  They're free.  Anyways we're going to fish again tomorrow.  See you then.
                             
     Oh yeah, the weather is still sooo nice.  We're going to have to pay for this stretch.

Sept. 24

Good evening ladies and gentlemen. We departed this evening on a 1.5 day trip. We had a space available so we threw the trip in there and here we are. If you book it they will come. I wish it was always that easy. Anyway, we got a good load of bait number wise. We'll have to see how it lives. It lost a lot of its precious scales while we loaded it but it was swimming around the tanks well right after we loaded it like healthy bait does so we'll just have to see tomorrow. It only needs to stay alive for one day. We have some good reports in the bluefin grounds and that's where we're headed. I'll let you know how we do tomorrow tomorrow.

We have only 5 spots remaining on our June 1-6, 5.5 day trip! This trip is limited to only 18 passengers and is filling quickly!! Trip departs at 6pm May 31st, and returns 6am on June 6th. We will be fishing Cedros and Benitos targeting Yellowtail and calico bass. As well as fishing offshore for those early season bigger bluefin tuna! Ticket cost is $1300 per person. Contact Jodie at 858-220-1593 or [email protected]

July 31

This morning we had a good drift. We drifted along for a few hours catching mostly 40-70 pounders sometimes with as much as 5 going at a time. Unfortunately at around 9:30 am it stopped biting. We tried to be patient but it was done. After that it was a very slow day for the whole fleet. Most of the fish went down and the schools we found the rest of the day didn't want to play. A little before dark they got back in the mode and we had a nice stop on which started off 12-18 pounders and then turned into 30-40 pounders. That's it for this trip. We're headed back to the dock and are scheduled for a 6:00 eta. The big guy Tommy Rothery is taking the boat out for a 6 day trip and Richie will be coming back out too so the reports should get more entertaining. I'll be going home to hang with my lovely wife and needy dog. Take care all.