Norm M

how long before the shadow rap bx is introduced ?

get in touch with a local food bank .

I know a guy that was a state rep up my way. He said if he didn't know enough about an issue , he would give very serious consideration on how to cast his vote based on even a single letter on the issue.

Check the Freshwater Fishing Hall of Fame. If it's a line class record , you can get some patches and such, if you like that sort of stuff .

Up in Illinois it's a 7 ft medium spin on the river and a 7 ft med light spin on the cricks .

You mean like Congress does on a regular basis ?

How can there be so much hate in their souls ?

and that will put you well on the path to becoming Illinois .

a repost of a reply I made last year on a similar topic . I believe it is worth repeating. Fight this, in Illinois I would love to have the plan Missouri currently has. The Illinois DNR is always hamstrung because the legislature controls the purse strings. If you want to see what happens then , come on up and check things out, you will be appalled at how little public land we have, how little is ever added, the decline of wildlife and fishery related programs, the lack of staff, the lack of equipment for that staff to do their jobs and the dearth programs for non hunters and fishermen . I have seen first hand what the lack of maintenance has done to the natural areas in the state of Illinois. You want to see stuff not work for months on end for lack of a part costing a couple bucks, I have . Fight the miserable sob's

5th gen railroader . any of you guys remember the hobo art work done with chalk in a single unbroken line ? That stuff was impressive . .

If a lure doesn't get wet, why carry it ? I wade fish so whatever I use , I have to carry . The older I get the more my body objects to heavy loads . I carry a selection of lures that have proved themselves over 5 decades on my river. Any other lures that I want to experiment with or that I use for certain conditions stay in the vehicle and can be swapped out as needed. I worry less about lure color than most folks , I tend to select lures for how they function . I try to carry lures that I can use in multiple conditions and that will cover as much of the water column as possible. Obviously lures like topwaters are an exception to the water column idea but I carry a couple of different types. It works for me but maybe not for you. Do what makes you happy, that's what it's all about. No right , no wrong, just individual preference .

rehashes with new names.

this last blast of cold has put enough ice on the river to make it unfishable. all the still water is froze completely over . it's never good to have kidney stone issues but if you have to deal with it, better now when I can't fish. other than that , I take the conditions a front brings and deal with it. the fish adapt, so I should too.

well, went out today, all four places I went to were unfishable. Slack areas froze over, yea many icy, slushy piles flowing in the current. trying to present a lure thru them was next to impossible and even if you got twixt them, the line just got hung up on one of them .

cold, wind chill reported in single digits, water temps low 30's . water level dropping, slower sections starting to ice up . line guides icing up . only thing that would catch fish was 1/8 jig with a paddle tail fluke dragged extremely slow on the bottom . ended up with two smallmouth in 2 hours, good enough for me today. home for a hot meal , hot shower and off to dispatch trains on the main line of mid America

water temps mid 30's, clearer than I like, still above normal flow. due to the clearer water algae back on the bottom in various stretches . air temps not bad, fished thru light rain on one of the trips. I fished a series of slack water areas on one trip, primary catch was smallmouth bass with some walleye mixed in. rattlebaits on the current seam got some , a topwater in the slack part of an eddy got one smallmouth, a suspending rogue twitched with long pauses got the most smallmouth and the handful of walleye . I fished a series of inflows on another trip, mostly walleye, a couple of smallmouth bass. A suspending rogue, drift, twitch, drift worked best. the hits came on the twitches . I fished some slack areas associated with bluffs , smallmouth bass the only species caught. A jig/pig was the only lure that got bit. It took an extremely slow, inching retrieve with frequent pauses to get fish

rattlebaits

Fight this, in Illinois I would love to have the plan Missouri currently has. The Illinois DNR is always hamstrung because the legislature controls the purse strings. If you want to see what happens then , come on up and check things out, you will be appalled at how little public land we have, how little is ever added, the decline of wildlife and fishery related programs, the lack of staff, the lack of equipment for that staff to do their jobs and the dearth programs for non hunters and fishermen . I have seen first hand what the lack of maintenance has done to the natural areas in the state of Illinois. You want to see stuff not work for months on end for lack of a part costing a couple bucks, I have . Fight the miserable sob's .

I don't stop unless the river has too much ice to fish .

the articles all pertained to largemouth and smallmouth bass, should have said that . no mention of how they took the water temps, wouldn't be surprised if surface temps were what they went by . I am primarily a river smallmouth fisherman, for that species , in my view cold water is below 40 degrees . For other species I fish for like walleye and pike. I feel they are more active than smallmouth in that temperature range . sorry for the lack of clarification on the initial post. that's what happens when I've been up since 0400 .

While waiting for my daughter to get off work at Barnes & Nobles, I was looking thru the winter edition of a fishing magazine. Every article mentioned cold water fishing at over 40 degree water temps. One guy bit cold water at 40 to 68 degrees . For me, cold water fishing doesn't begin until the water temps get below 40 degrees .

I'm a guest here, it's not my place to say you can't earn a few shekels .

water temps on the river I fish in north east Illinois just got back up into the 40's . it's had ice cover on the slack areas during some of the more recent cold snaps. smallmouth bass has been spotty, some decent days, some skunks and a couple outstanding days during the warming trend lately. haven't targeted walleyes real hard but catching enough to make it worth it . some northern pike action but very inconsistent .

The following was previously published in the Illinois Smallmouth Alliance Bronzeback Bulletin We as river fishermen are affected by current in all aspects of our fishing experience. How many of us really understand how it functions and how it affects our fishing? This will be the first in a series of articles I plan to write about current, current situations and objects in the water that affect current flow. The fisrt article will be the primer, so to speak, of the series. To start with, gravity moves water downhill, this movement is what we call current. The steeper the gradient, the faster the current flow. Riffles and runs are what we associate with this faster flow. What we think of as pools are places where the gradient decreases and/or there is an obstuction that slows the current. The gradient is the inclination or slope of the land's surface in the direction of the flow. The velocity of the flow is affected by several other factors. They are discharge, which is a quantity of water passing through any cross section in a given unit of time and the form-ratio, which is the proportion of the depth to the width of the stream. Water temperatures have some effect as warm water is more fluid than cold water. In straight flows the maximum velocity occurs in midstream near the surface. In bends the maximum velocity occurs near the surface on the outside of the curve. There are two types of flow recognized in limnological texts. Laminar flow is more or less defined as all the water moving in a parallel course in one direction. These texts state that laminar flow is seldom found in nature. Turbulent flow is defined as multiple eddies in a variety of sizes with all the water moving in all directions as the main flow goes downstream. This mixing of the water is caused by friction with the air-water interface, the bottom of the river, the shoreline and any obstructions in the water's path. This friction that slows the flow and the upper water that moves faster rolls and mixes the water which aids in the distribution of oxygen from top to bottom. The difference in flow rates from top to bottom contributes to the bow in your line as you fish. Fish hold on the bottom of rivers because the drag of friction on moving water significantly lowers current velocity. This creates an area you can think of as a slack water zone. The slackwater zone is a place where fish can hold and conserve energy. They can hold until they need to move for reasons of survival, i.e. predation, changing water levels or spawning. This bottom slack zone is where most of the fish will be found most of the time. Where do you think you should be fishing? The larger the objects on the bottom of the river and the faster the current flow the larger this slack zone will be. These two factors- size of objects and current velocity- can cause distrubances on the surface of the water that we note when reading the water. The Law of Fluid Dynamics also affects current flow. This involves Conservation of Momentum if I understand the texts correctly. Basically what I got from this was that water does not like to bend as it goes around corners and when the velocity of water decreases it's pressure increases. Please don't ask me to go into great detail as that was rwo aspirin reading. When water hits the front of an obstruction it stops and moves sideways toward the current flow. It also moves both toward the bottom and the surface at this point. You may get a visible bulge on the surface if when the speed decreases the increase in pressure is enough to push water up in the surface. You can also get a slackwater pocket at the base of the obstruction due to these changes. This pocket, if it forms, is a key feeding area for the most dominant predator in that spot. On the downstream side of the obstruction you get another slackwater area. This is because water does not like to bend. The size of this slackwater area is limited only because the pressure of the faster water going around the obstruction is lower than the higher pressure of the slower water in the slack area. this causes a mixing of the waters as it moves from the slacker water to the faster water. The turbulence from this mixing is what we think of as a current seam. The slackwater area gets narrower as you look downstream because it's losing it's energy to the lower pressure of the faster downstream flow. A slackwater pocket forms at the base of a riffle[lift] on both the upstream and downstream sides of the riffle. This pocket is an excellent feeding area especially in warmer water. As the faster moving lower pressure water moves over the top of the slower moving higher pressure water mixing occurs limiting the size of the slackwater area. This causes the turbulence which is a familar sight to river anglers. On the upstream side of the riffle the bulge that is present is a result of water being pushed up by the change in water pressure. When a river bends the current picks up speed on the outside edge and a current seam forms on the inside edge where the current slows. The faster current on the outside moves sediment and carves away at the bed and bank of the river. This is why you have deeper water on the outside of a river bend. The slower current allows sediment to be deposited on the inside which is why the water is shallower and you get that familar point bar at that location. if the angle of the bend is sufficient an eddy is formed. In this eddy friction with the bottom and the shore further slows the current. This variety of current speeds, depth changes, changes in the direction of the current and slackwater zones make this a place for holding out of current and for excellent feeding opportunities. Turbidity in a river is the presence of suspended solids in the water. Turbidity reduces the transmission of light either thru scattering or absorption. This reduction in light can affect water temps, the amount of aquactic vegetation, fish location and fish activity levels. From what I read the amount of sediment load can affect current velocity in different ways due to a number of different factors. The consensus seemed to be that with a higher sediment load there would be a slight reduction in velocity once everything was factored in. Once again this was two aspirin reading that would require lots of specific details to go any further. Now for a brief primer in reading water. Start by looking at the surface for differences in speed and the seams created by those changes. Look to changes in curent direction, turbulence such as boils and bulges, slicks and changes in water color that denote differences in depths, You should look for areas where the current narrows forming feeding lanes that concentrate food washing downstream. If you can see a foam line that is an excellent way to track feeding lanes. If multiple foam lines or feeding lanes converge that can be a key spot for the most dominant predator in the area. Look for objects in the water or in the shoreline that can deflect current influencing current direction. Next look for objects in the water that can serve as ambush points for feeding or for cover when fish are spooked by predators or careless, heavy footed fishermen. Remember that boils on the surface indicate the presence of underwater objects that can hold fish. These boils will be downstream of the object, just how far depends on the size of the object and the current velocity. I know this was a little technical but hopefully it will help those new to river fishing. It may also offer new insights to crumudgedy old river rats. Peace Be Unto You Norm Minas aka Creekyknees aka Riverine Rodent

I have had success with all of them as the water temps are falling, just a matter of slowing them down and in some cases going with larger sizes. I have had some success with rattlebaits in cold water when the water temps are rising . Big, fat, dumb, slow, eat me can work in cold water river smallmouth fishing .