FTA – 2/22 and 29/04 Fox River WWD and exploring / Part 2

From the Archives – I have 100s of posts that were made on fishing forums starting around 1998. When I have nothing new to say, I thought I would start putting them up on my blog. I hope you like them.
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2/22 and 29/04 Fox River WWD and exploring / Part 2

Air temperature 38 to 50 degrees, water temperature 36 to 40 degrees in the river and 56 in the discharge, clear to partly cloudy skies, water normal, visibility about 3 feet in the river and unlimited in the discharge, split shot with hook and small plastics and jig/twisters.

Too much work, then none. Crappy weather then fine. It all came together for a couple of days a week apart and I was able to get out for awhile each time. Total:

1 smallmouth bass,
1 channel catfish,
1 sucker,
1 walleye,
3 carp.

I knew I couldn’t get out for another week, but every day I would take a break from work out on my porch to see what was moving around. Flocks of geese were flying high over my house with that determined speed and altitude that tells me they aren’t stopping any time soon. Rabbits, squirrels and a wide variety of small birds were all over my bird feeders. One day there were four doves reestablishing their nests in my yard. Two of them were trying to build a nest in the wood pile. Not a good idea. Besides the fact that I wasn’t done burning the wood this colder season, we use our back door alot and need to walk within inches of the wood pile. When a dove explodes unseen from a wood pile at a level even with your head and only twelve inches away, if you don’t drop dead of a heart attack right there, then there’s a good chance your heart is just fine.

We had 3 days in a row where there weren’t any clouds. The nights would get pretty chilly and the mornings greeted me with thick frost covering everything. With the bright sunshine this would slowly disappear, but the frost in the shadows stuck around for another hour or two. I’ve always loved the patterns this makes on the lawns and the roofs and I’ve paid for it when out walking and slip on an ice covered shadow on a sidewalk.

The koi in my pond would start each day hunkered down on the bottom and by the end of the day, were moving around. Not alot, but at least they weren’t comatose. My wife had unplugged the pond heater a few days earlier and now the pond was reacting only to the swings in the weather. I have yet to see any correlation between the koi activity or inactivity and my ability to catch fish on the river. I’ve paid a little bit of attention to it, but haven’t been consistent in my record keeping. Maybe this year will be different. But then again, these are basically colorful carp and I’m not sure it would make any difference. Unless I start targeting carp. Which is highly unlikely.

I had pretty much the whole weekend free. A rare treat this time of year. The Illinois Smallmouth Alliance was having their big annual fund raiser, so I was committed to working that all day Saturday. If I could behave myself and not have one beer too many, I could get out early on Sunday and spend the whole day fishing.

Behaving myself proved difficult. I seem to be hanging out with too many guys a few too many years younger than me. I didn’t wind up drunk so much as full, and extremely tired. But, like usual, I couldn’t sleep when I got home and eventually got out of bed and hit the road. It was only 5:00 a.m.

This proved difficult for my head. It wanted nothing to do with being out this early, but I forced myself. It was going to be another beautiful day with temperatures over 50 and I wasn’t going to lay in bed moaning about how I shouldn’t hang out with young guys. As it was I couldn’t get any of them to come out and meet me. They were all hunkered down in their beds, the sissies.

I started out in Batavia and checked out a small creek where I like to seine my own minnows. It was completely free of ice, but also completely free of living things. I didn’t really feel like carrying around live bait, so I was actually relieved that there was nothing in the creek. Not going to the bait shop was easy. Instead, I tied on some small plastics and covered a three quarter mile long stretch of the river.

With the water now at 40 degrees, I thought for sure I would get a few hits, at least of walleye. But nothing. Ducks and geese covered the low water areas and the slack water in the eddies. I saw at least 5 different types of ducks, but my brain wasn’t focusing enough to recall their names. I was already feeling a little sore and stiff, the aftermath of being on my feet all day at the fund raiser, but I decided to meet up with Jamie and Rich and continue on with the day.

The next stop was North Aurora. We combed a couple of stretches that are normally good spring spots, but since this wasn’t really spring, not much was happening. Jamie did get a good sized sucker to hit a crankbait and I think we all came up with scales on our hooks after sticking them into the sides of carp. Other than that, not much happening.

We made our way even further down stream and eventually met up with Gary. Along the way fish were being caught and seen, but the bite was extremely slow. Jamie wound up getting an even bigger sucker on a Gulp worm and Gary was the only one to land a couple of smallies. I seemed to do nothing more than snag the occasional carp that bumped into my lure.

As we walked down stream Jamie and Rich, the young guys, were well ahead of me and Gary, the old guys. I wanted to give Rich plenty of room anyway since he was throwing a monster shad for muskie and having it slap the water.

“Dude, you’re scaring away all the fish,” I said.
“It’s just a shad,” Rich said, “they’re used to seeing just a shad.”
“Not dropping out of the sky with a huge thud on the water,” I said.
“It doesn’t bother them,” Rich said, “It’s just a shad.”

I wasn’t convinced. Gary and I decided to wander across the river to try a point where we’ve successfully taken walleye in the past. The wind was now gusting upstream and casting to a specific spot became guess work. You cast, let the wind take your lure and basically hope it lands somewhere in the proximity of where you wanted it to land. After 5 minutes of this, I gave up and turned around in time to see Gary trying to walk through another hole where we’ve been successful at catching walleye in the past. I was going to warn him about the depth of the hole, but I figured its a rare opportunity to learn everything there is about a hole, at somebody else’s expense. He didn’t fill his waders, but came real close. At least now I know more details about this hole.

Me and Gary, the old guys, decided we had enough. I could barely move my legs and my head was somewhere between throbbing and spinning. We headed back upstream to make a few final casts and sit on the shore to wait for Rich and Jamie. On the way upstream we noticed that all the minnows were back in the shallows, by the hundreds. I remembered back in December when the edges of the river were just turning to ice that I stepped on a sheet of the ice, it went under water and popped back up. The surface was covered with minnows. The minnows were hiding under the ice. Gary and I simultaneously pointed out that the only difference between today and a week ago was that now there was no ice. All those minnows must have been in the shallows under the ice. With the ice gone, they were back. A very good fishing sign for the next few weeks.

When the young guys finally showed up we told them we were done, going home. We had to endure the old fart comments, but Gary is on a diet and slowly trimming down and next time I won’t spend the night before going pint for pint with these young punks. We’ll show them who can out last who.