You were warned. For some reason, the way the sun was shining or technical difficulties, I couldn’t get photos to work the way I wanted. So I went out of my way to make things worse just for the hell of it. Some of them were so bad that I left them out to spare the space. I put up enough here.
First off, Aquaseal is gods gift to the wading angler. My crotch is extremely grateful for not being soaking wet after wandering through waist high water. Now we’ll see how long this lasts.
My ventures to creeks this early in the season is mainly to get away from noise and the presence of others. It’s also my own little science experiment to see when the fish have migrated upstream. You would think with the mildest winter in 75 years, the fish would be making a mad dash up these exceptional breeding grounds to get it on with other like minded fish. So far, based on years worth of records, this year is not much different than any other year. I figure out why later this day.
We haven’t had that much rain, but for some reason the Fox River came up high enough to make wandering out into the middle of the river an impossibility. Yet, even when it has rained, the rain has had no effect on the creeks except for making them slightly stained.
The heat and the little bit of rain does have things blooming earlier than usual though. It’s nice to see color again.
Even though I’m fishing light, I refused to go light enough for the creek chubs. They were aggressively tugging away at the tail, but I was holding out for those hawg chubs.
This spot is about nine creek miles up from the Fox. With all the leaves still missing, the water temps don’t feel that bad. Quite a bit of sun is making it’s way down to the stream bed and the creek is at normal levels.
In one small pool, a decent smallie self released. In the next pool, I picked up this deformed thing. Looks like a hunchback.
A few more casts got me this decent rock bass. Unlike the Kankakee River where you can catch these throughout the river and it’s creeks, I only catch them out of a few creeks and never out of the Fox itself.
The bite died and I moved on. The next spot I hit is two or three creek miles up from the Fox and on a different creek. The first few casts got me a scrappy little smallie.
And that was it. Further down I came across a river red horse dying in the shallows. I had seen them porpoising and jumping up and down the creek. At least some of the fish migrations up the creek had started.
Then I decided to do something I hardly ever do anymore. I went and fished near the mouth of a creek. I figured if a few fish are heading up the creeks, maybe more were staging closer to the mouth. I don’t like fishing around other people, but I figured on a weekday there may not be too many others around. There were a few at the mouth, but they had their usual sticks in the ground and their lines out into the river over the mud flats where no fish go, so no harm done. I went up the creek a couple of hundred yards or so where I know the fish go.
Sure enough, first cast to an undercut bank gets nailed hard and a decent heavy fish self releases. Couple of casts later and it’s smaller cousin comes to hand.
One of the other fish that migrate this time of year are bluegills. They like the creeks too. I had switched to a Producto junebug/chartreuse twister. When you look down at these in the water, they look identical to a small bluegill. In the next pool I fished, this worked out quite well. This photo has nothing to do with the pool, I couldn’t figure out any way to work it into the write up.
Out of the pool I missed three heavy fish when they self released and landed three more, all in the 16-18 inch range.
I kept wading down toward the mouth of the creek. This was pretty tough since the river was a little high and filling up the last stretch of the creek. Only one smaller smallie was caught closer to the river. What I did notice was that the river water coming into the creek was much cooler than the creek water flowing out. That would explain why not many fish have migrated further upstream. They’re coming out of water that is colder and their metabolism needs time to play catch up.
River red horse were all over the place, porpoising and jumping. I wound up foul hooking a couple of them and if there was a way to actually fish for them, I would give it a try. It’s like hooking into a car speeding by on the road, they take off like a bullet.
As the sun kept setting and came off the water, I went back to the big hole to see if any more fish could be had.
Since I had already hit this pool with the bluegill colored look alike, I switched to pearl for a change of pace. Over the next half hour I missed a few heavy fish and landed six more smallies all in the 16-18 inch range.
None of the fish really hit all that hard. They were simply picking up the lure and swimming away with it.
I was now more interested in the light show of the setting sun than the fishing. Missed a couple of fish because of that.
Then, right when I was making one of my many final casts, one more fish cooperated.
I had caught nine smallies out of this hole. I thought for sure that when I came back after fishing through it the first time, I wasn’t going to catch anything. It was actually better the second time. All nine of them were in the 16-18 inch range. In another week or two I’ll be catching these fish in the stretches of creek miles inland where I started this day.
I should have put tags on them. Would be interesting, to me anyway, to see if they were the same fish.
I’ll be back out there in about an hour. I have a wad of Comcast tags from my short lived employment for the worst company on earth to ever work for.
Those will work.
BrookfieldAngler
21 Mar 2012I need to get up there one day…I came up with a new fly that I think will work great in the off color/muddy waters that we have. It’s really just a modified version of a fly I used in Maryland quite successfully.
Ken G
21 Mar 2012Anything you can fish like a jig and twister will work Nick. I almost did that today. The fish were hitting hard. I should have.
Mike
21 Mar 2012If I apologized for every crap picture I’ve put up on my blog it would be half mea culpas and half crap writing.
No sorries necessary, Ken. It’s good stuff!
Ken G
21 Mar 2012I don’t what was up with the settings on the camera. Or maybe it was the light.
As for your writing, I don’t think I’ve read a bad one yet. I’m starting to wonder if you have bad writing days.
bob
21 Mar 2012great, great narrative. I could hear it being spoken over a video track of the day. clean, spare writing. pix were fine – nothing is always art, nor should it be.
fish in small places are fun; not sure why, but I ain’t looking for an answer to that either.
millions of humans around any one place, like the Fox. Most don’t fish. of those that do, only a very very few are any good. That is they way is is and will be. Millions of humans only a few get to be pros at anything.
Pro: n – a person with a desire to get good, the willingess to learn and to put in the time to do so.
You’ve earned your “attitude.” Humility is not pretending you don’t know, but acknowledging what you don’t know, and pursuing it.
Ken G
21 Mar 2012Di called me arrogant the other day. She says I have a tone in my voice. I said “kind of like my ma?”
She laughed, exactly. I am my mothers son.
It is kind of odd to have all these places to myself and yet knowing not far away are hundreds of thousands of people.
As for fishing, today’s venture had me outfishing a guy that was using minnows. We were fishing the same general area. Of course he had to come over and ask what the hell I was using.
I am constantly pursuing the things I don’t know. I’ve always assumed everyone does that. I’m finding out I’m wrong. I can’t imagine not pursuing those thing.
Wolfy
21 Mar 2012Hey – I know that bridge! And those last pools.
Nice post Ken
Ken G
21 Mar 2012Brings back memories, doesn’t it? I live so close and yet I went here more when I lived 35 miles away. I think this is only the second time in over 5 years. Went there again today Joe, almost the same amount of fish, but all their baby brothers and sisters. Hope you’re enjoying yourself out east. Pretty country when you get away from the urban areas.
cofisher
21 Mar 2012Well, I looked despite your warning. Nice photos in my humble opinion.
Ken G
21 Mar 2012You’re being too kind.
The ones I don’t get is where my arm is bright white. A lot of them were like that and I couldn’t figure out why.
The scenery shots aren’t awful. I do like that bridge shot though.
Steve Z
21 Mar 2012Yeah, this strange weather is something. I was fishing in short sleeves last weekend but not a stitch of green on the river banks. I was just plain strange to see winter gray but yet be sweating and seeing trout chase stoneflies. Hopefully we get some spring rains so the water levels don’t get too low. Nice pics. Thx for sharing.
Ken G
22 Mar 2012Thanks Steve. We’ve been lucky in getting just the right amount of rain to keep some fresh water coming through. No blowouts yet, but that too is bound to happen.
Pingback: Blackberry Creek Dam Removal Update