Illinois Visverslagen

We won the "Fish This" tournament Saturday July 19th, out of Montrose harbor beating a field of both charter boats and private fisherman. Rules were to fish a dnr 3 man limit catching 15 fish and weighing only the largest 10 silver fish (King & Coho Salmon, Rainbow & Brown Trout). There was a side bet for anyone wishing to keep Lake Trout, only weigh one. I believe we were the only boat to bring in 15 fish (13 silvers 2 Lake Trout). The fish are biting between 80-135 feet of water (fow). Various spoons, flasher flies, plugs and cut bait was working. We landed and weighed 6 King Salmon (5 four yr olds & 1 three yr old), 2 Rainbow Trout and 2 Coho Salmon. We also landed 2 smaller Rainbows and 1 smaller coho. Today is July 28 and the big Kings are still around and the Lake Trout bite is going crazy. Get out here and book a trip today, fishing has rarely been better. There are less coho this year than last year but there are more King Salmon making up for it. Cmon lets go fishing. Book us today.

Good mix bag the last coffee of trips

We started early with this Father Son Team and had one of the best trips they've ever taken. Any day you catch 5 species on a 6 hour or less charter is a fantastic day. Many Captains attempt to catch a "grand slam" for many years and some never do. When we catch a brown and/or a King salmon early then we often go for the Grand Slam! Kings and Browns used to be the hardest two fish to catch out of Chicago. This year was a little different as Kings were much more plentiful this year. So we often had them pretty quick. Actually coho became much harder to catch (than normal) after mid July. This trip was on the morning of July 5th, we left the harbor at first light and headed North to one of our favorite spots. Upon arriving I noticed the graph was showing suspended fish. My comment was... "they are here".... and they were, the first line screamer was about a 13 to 14 pound King Salmon, then another, then the 15 pound Brown Trout. Somewhere in there we also caught a decent coho which gave us 3 species, and before I could get all the lines in we caught another coho. These two guys had no clue that we had 2 of the hardest fish to catch in the cooler. So I changed the plan and ripped lines and targeted the sometimes elusive Rainbow trout, or Steelhead. We ran to a spot I like where I often catch them and got my setup out as fast as I could, we had only fished for less than 2 hours at this point. I had about 4 lines out (and was readying to put out a couple more), when we got a hit and that fish was jumping and doing some tail wallking like steelhead can do. We lost him, but before we could get the line in another hit and this one stuck. So all within a couple hours we had 4 species, and no Lake Trout at this point. Often thought of as the easiest of all five species to catch, we had one to go. Where I had run to to catch our steelhead was further out into Lake Michigan and the weather had changed and the waves and wind had picked up and changed direction. So it was difficult to get our last (easiest) fish! There was a current down deep and it took us another hour to get our Lake Trout, but we did it and caught five species again! We did it twice in the summer of 2025, once on tournament day of the Zilliam species tournament. We weree the first boat in over 40 years to catch all five on tournament day and we did it again on July 5th. We also did it once in 2024 catching 5 species with a crew from the Dallas Safari Club. We caught 10 fish that day around August 20th or 22th. A brown trout was our 9th fish and our last fish of the day to end the charter was a nice King Salmon. Wow how unexpected that was to catch the two hardest fish in tandem as the last two. Also they hit the same lure. So we have completed that feet 3 times in the last two years. We also caught 4 species at least 10 times in 2025, mostly only missing a Brown Trout. Anyway, if anyone out there wants a chance at catching a Grand Slam on one day give us a try and let me know that that is what you want to do. I can and do target certain species, so come fishing on the top dog. See you on the water. Captain Jason Baldwin

Nice mix bAg coho steelhead brown trout

5-hour or 6-hour morning trips are the way to go

Still superb catches continue on the Jawzon