upper james river Fishing Report 2025

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 UPPER JAMES RIVER
🌎 Country US
⏰ 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 9, 2025 upper james river Fishing Report

Captain Ryan Bostian checked in this evening with an update from the San Diego, CA. Today we had 22 anglers catch 5 yellowfin tuna. 4 of our tuna are 75 pounders. Please bring a 20 lb. bait Rod and size 2 hooks as well as a 50 lb bait Rod with some 3/0 circle hooks. We will fish for whatever we see. It may be 12-90 lb. yellowfin or it may be 60-200 lb. bluefin. Very weird year !

May 8, 2025 upper james river Fishing Report

Jackpot! Wow what a great day. We had very, very good fishing on nice grade tuna. With the light load we have on this trip the anglers had lots of action. Our scores are as follows: Lon 274 lb., Greg 144, 110, and 152 pounders, Matt a 136 lb., John a 200 pounder, Mike 90, 125, and a 70 pounder, Tim 195 lbs., Chris 70 lbs., and Bill 70, 160, and a 304 pounder! Our weather is good. Lunch was a great seafood pasta and for dinner we went down home with some bar-b-que ribs, beans and corn on the cob. We were all so excited to have this nice big hit on the big fish.

May 7, 2025 upper james river Fishing Report

Started our drift with no boats in sight. Ended our drift with the same.

10 nice Bluefin, lost a few. A very nice Yellowfin and Yellowtail on kelp near by. 

Nice Day!!!!

May 6, 2025 upper james river Fishing Report

Four big bluefin bit for anglers fishing aboard the Fischbeck Charter aboard the Polaris Supreme with skipper Drew Henderson, and three of them were decked. Drew weighed the fish on the certified scales at Fisherman's Landing July 23 after the five-day trip with 23 anglers. He also weighed an unusual escolar, caught at night. The boat returned with a catch of yellowfin tuna and albacore.
Dick Emerson of Roland Heights won first place for his 134-pound bluefin, and also took over first place for that species on Bill Roecker's big fish list for the season.

Dick said he cranked that baby aboard in only 15 minutes on his single-speed Accurate 665 reel. The tuna took a sardine on a 5/0 Eagle Claw hook, on 60-pound Seaguar fluorocarbon leader and 50-pound Big Game line. Emerson used a Fenwick 665 rod, he added. Tom Donnelly of San Clemente got second place for a 126-pounder, which will make second on the big fish list. His fish fought for 40 minutes on 60-pound Seaguar Fluoro leader and 60-pound P-Line. Bill Byler of Covina made it a trio of 60-pound Fluoro users, and won third place for his 105.6-pound bluefin, which came on a small Accurate 870 reel.
The escolar came to Jason Severn of Petaluma. The 31-pound, strange-looking critter (some scientists think the escolar may be a progenitor for tuna) bit on a squid that Severn was fishing in the dark.
Skipper Henderson said his anglers were treated to a show of jumping bluefin, many of which were larger than the fish his anglers caught. They didn't want to bite, however, and it didn't take long for a fleet of seiners to show up with their spotter aircraft.

May 5, 2025 upper james river Fishing Report

We arrived today at the island around noon. There were plenty of fish but not as many bites as we expected. However most of the fish we did hook managed to come on the boat. We had a high landing percentage of the fish we hooked today. Not as bad of a shark problem today. Hopefully the ratio continues and we hook more fish tomorrow!

May 4, 2025 upper james river Fishing Report

Fishing was not wide open today. The guys topped off with the yellowtail for the trip. They also had good fishing on the dorado on a couple of different kelp patties. Our weather continues to be great. As we travel home to make our 6:00am arrival tomorrow we will be dining on Pedro's exquisite prime rib dinner. Come see us at the dock or better yet book a trip and come out with us. Tomorrow we'll be heading out on Tom Chaparro's annual 5 day, 18 passenger, lite load charter. So check in again in a day or so. Thanks! Tommy and crew

May 3, 2025 upper james river Fishing Report

POLARIS SUPREME TRIP REPORT 09-23-2020 We departed today on Joe Becks annual 8 day trip.The weather is great and our bait stinks. lots of spinners. hopefully enough will cure out to make the trip. Not much to report the usual rigging eating and napping. The picture is of our new storage box an rod holders we built in the bow to replace the old bait tank. We will be traveling all day tomorrow. The Polaris Supreme Crew!

May 2, 2025 upper james river Fishing Report

Thursday, April 19th, 2012

Hey everybody. More of the same today. Lots of sanding and grinding as we prepare for painting next week. The five of us have worked from 0700 hours until 1600 hours for the past two days and the weekend forecast calls for more of the same. No rest for the wicked, I guess. Anyhow, I'll update you all with some photos this weekend and you can see just a glimpse of what we've been up to.

Injury of the day: Boat-work always has a high level of danger involved, especially with being twenty feet in the air, scaffolding surrounding the boat, electrical chords running wild and very dangerous equipment in our hands. It's a very stressful situation and accidents do happen and today, one did. Jed got stung by a bee.

Chat with you tomorrow.

Weekly Fishing Reports

Fishing reports for upper james river 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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