Chicago’s uber-popular Riverwalk is now a fishing hot spot

Under the bright October sky on a recent weekday morning, AC Avila squatted down and packed a homemade mix of bait onto a fishing rig, flung the nearly invisible line into the water and waited.

Behind the fishing line floating in the water was not a serene lake or a pond surrounded by miles of nature as one might expect. Instead, he was casting near the Dearborn Street bridge from Chicago’s Riverwalk, with the city’s iconic “corn cob” buildings in his peripheral vision as he waited for the rod to bend, signaling a bite.

After about 10 minutes with two rods in the Chicago River, once considered a dirty waterway with abysmal biodiversity, one of the rods lurched downward. Avila rushed to grab it, circling the handle and wrestling the strong fish on the other end of his line.

“I would say that’s maybe 15 pounds,” Avila said, as commuters and tourists alike gawked.


Avila is one of several avid fishermen that have made the Chicago River the setting of some of their most impressive catches in recent years. Mostly targeting common carp, fishing on the river has become more popular as efforts to clean the river and improve the health and biodiversity of the water have paid off.

“There’s big fish to be caught here, and there’s a good number of them,” he said, as he pinned the slippery, flopping fish on the dock for a minute, eyeballing his catch and admiring it before throwing it back. Most carp he catches are around 12 pounds, but they can get much bigger, he said. A video of a 35-pound catch even went viral this summer.

An eightfold increase in fish species

In the 1970s, there were only around seven to 10 species of fish that lived in the river, according to Margaret Frisbie, executive director of the group Friends of the Chicago River, which works to protect the river and improve its cleanliness. Now, that number has jumped to nearly 80.

“So we’re finding not only more native fish but also some ones that are exciting surprises for the river and demonstrate how much better the water quality is,” Frisbie said.

Clean water and biodiversity, or the variability of species living in a certain area, have a symbiotic relationship — when the water is cleaner, the biodiversity increases, and when the biodiversity increases, the water becomes cleaner.

But human activities can disrupt natural biodiversity, according to the World Health Organization, and the rapid industrialization of Chicago and its infrastructure played a role in the river growing dirtier and more difficult for species to thrive in. As the city’s transportation, sewage and industry developed, the river suffered.

Two-mile swimmers take off at the inaugural Chicago River Swim downtown Sunday, Sept. 21, 2025. | Candace Dane Chambers/Sun-Times.

A group of swimmers in the 2-mile event swim in the river Sunday. Swimmers were glad to see the water quality clear and clean.

Candace Dane Chambers/Sun-Times

Thanks to the help of environmental activists and efforts to revitalize the river’s ecological health, its cleanliness has been on a steady rise in recent decades. The river is now clean enough to swim in, with the first sanctioned swim in nearly a century taking place earlier this fall.

For Avila and other fishermen, the river’s newfound cleanliness meant bringing their beloved hobby to the center of a bustling city.

“My favorite part about coming down here is just interacting with all the people passing by,” he said. “But a very close second is just being able to enjoy this awesome view I have behind me here, and just seeing all the boats go by.”

Big catches go viral

Videos of Chicago River fishing ventures have garnered attention and some fishing accounts boast large catches on social media. Danny Vivar’s post of a roughly 35-pound carp from the Chicago River with a surrounding Downtown crowd cheering him on spread on social media this summer with more than 800 comments and 4,000 reactions in a local fishing Facebook group.

“Honestly I didn’t expect that,” he said. “I didn’t think they got that big in there.”

Like Avila, Vivar has targeted carp since he started fishing on the Riverwalk last year. But after catching a catfish, his imagination is running wild with what else could be in the river for him to catch.

“If the catfish are there, and they’re eating what the carp are eating, who knows what other species are there?” he said. “I believe there’s something out there that’s rare and different.”

Fishing in the Chicago River isn’t necessarily new, but the cleaner the water gets and the more species that live there, the more lucrative a fishing trip can be. The hot spots for fishing on the river have long been in less populated segments of the river. In the past few decades, though, the places where fishing is accessible have increased alongside the cleanliness of the river, Frisbie said.

“People have been fishing in the Chicago River for, well, actually for millennia,” Frisbie said. “What we’ve been seeing is, there’s an increase in locations where people can access the river, which is really exciting.”

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AC Avila tries to hold onto a carp he caught while fishing from the Riverwalk, near Dearborn St. and Wacker Dr,, on Thursday, Oct. 2, 2025. | Zubaer Khan/Sun-Times

Zubaer Khan/Sun-Times

Avila first saw a photo of someone with an impressive catch from the Chicago River when he was in high school, and he made it a goal to try it out himself. Over the last several months of fishing on the river, he has figured out a system to target the fish he wants. He casts the lines away from any passing boats because fish are more likely to stay in calmer waters.

Carp are bottom feeders, so he attaches a weight to the rig so the bait sinks to the bottom of the river. He packs the spring-shaped rig with oats, bread crumbs, Kool-Aid powder and corn to attract the fish and fixes a few corn kernels to a hook. When trying to eat the corn, the hook can catch on the fish’s mouth so the angler can pull it out of the water.

Avila, 21, first held a fishing rod under the tutelage of his grandfather when he was about 6 years old. He lives in suburban Mount Prospect and works a retail job and delivers pizzas, but he has a dedicated social media following tracking his best catches on TikTok and Instagram under the handle @reelinwithac. He said he hopes to make a career out of fishing one day.

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AC Avila, now 21, started fishing with his grandfather around the age of 6.

Provided

Back at the Riverwallk, Gerald Alexander, in town from Atlanta, meandered along the path and stopped to observe Avila in action. His eyes lit up watching — he’s a dedicated fisherman himself — and seeing Avila inspired him to try it out when he visits his daughter in Indiana in the future.

“I told her next time I come up I’m bringing fishing gear, I’m leaving it up here so I can try it,” Alexander said.

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