Fishing Crap Plants for Monster Bronze Bombers

Sounds exciting, doesn’t it.

Pound for pound and inch for inch the ‘fightingest’ fish that swims in fresh water.

River bronze, fighting bronze, bronze bruisers, bronzebacks . . .

I think I’ll stick with smallmouth bass, smallies at best. Pet names for fish just ain’t right.

But it is nice to go to a spot in the Fox River on a whim and catch a half dozen and miss a couple more. The one above probably would have measured somewhere around 18 or 19 inches, I don’t measure fish anymore. Not that important. I had another one on that I lost at my feet that would have given this one a run for its money.

In between a few more were caught.

Since the water is crystal clear flowing through this section, the smallies take on the beautiful coloration they’re known for. Once the water muddies up or discolors for the summer, they lose those stripes and become pretty much one solid color. If you hold them out of the water for a little bit, especially on a sunny day, you can watch the vertical bars appear.

For those that don’t fish urban rivers, which is pretty much all we have here in the Chicago area, crap plant outflows can offer some of the best winter and early spring fishing around. Crap plant, shit plant, treatment plant outflow and if you’re being very polite, warm water discharge, every river around here has them. Some too many.

In a way this water behaves a lot like spring fed creeks. During the winter these outflows are flowing at around 50 degrees. During the summer months when the river water is measuring over 80 degrees, the crystal clear water of a plant discharge is around 70. Fish magnets under both circumstances.

The one I was fishing this day puts out the most water of any I know about. Over the winter when air temps are below freezing, I followed the fog coming off the warm water down stream for over a mile. That was when the water was at normal levels. On a day like today when the water is a little high, the colder river water mixes in with the warmer water much quicker.

Now before you start wretching all over your keyboard at the thought of fishing an area like this, a little bit of research will show you that these plants put out some of the cleanest water that enters a river. Problem is, accidents happen and I’ve seen that a couple of times. No fun watching crap, literally, flow down a river.

I had to be patient with these fish today. Since I had all the time in the world and I knew the fish were there, I kept casting to the same spots over and over. I stuck with a simple 1/16th ounce jig with a 1/0 hook and a 3 inch pearl Producto twister. (If you haven’t tried these, look it up. They’re the only ones I’ve been using for 11 years). I even walked back and forth along the shore in one stretch numerous times casting to the same spots and eventually a fish would hit.

With the water a little high it was still easy enough to be wading through the area. As long as you stayed within 20 feet of shore, the water never gets deeper than 3 feet and it’s not moving all that fast.

Signs of spring are slowly appearing with the first of the buds showing up on the silver maples. Bug hatches were coming off the water and some green grasses are showing up along the shore.

This isn’t how the day was supposed to go. I had no intention of fishing the river when I started out. I had planned on fishing a couple of creeks and finishing the day at a private pond.

The creek I fished initially I go to in order to get away from everyone. Virtually nobody seems to go here.

I had a couple of fish on, but the bite was so light that I completely blew setting the hook. The creek chubs and river shiners were everywhere and I caught a shiner that I seriously considered hooking and throwing into a deep hole. I decided to let it go to do its spring spawning ritual. More shiners for the creek.

A small caddis hatch was happening and as the caddis were fluttering wings across the water surface, the shiners and chubs would chase them down the creek nipping at them till they sucked them down.

My day would have been made if I had stopped there. I had got to see a male wood duck come cruising just a few feet above the water directly in front of me. I could hear woodpeckers banging away in the woods and came across what appeared to be a woodpecker condo. Amazing how they could drill such perfect circle entry holes.

For some reason when I left that creek, I chose to turn right and go to the river instead of left to the other creek. The rational side of me says its because I knew the river was down enough that I could safely wade the edges, there were more clouds than sun which is perfect for fishing the crystal clear water and there was a full moon on the eastern horizon.

But I think the real reason is that the phrase “Fishing Shit Plants for Monster Bronze Bombers” has been stuck in my head for weeks and I was looking for a good excuse to put it to use.