mattmar10

Thanks for the report. Went to the river today and conditions are exactly the same... very little surface activity very slow current through the watts area. Did ok on midges and sowbugs.

Looking for a new reel for my Winston Boron III 5wt for trout. What would be your suggestions? I'm not necessarily looking for the latest generation, most technologically advanced whiz-bang hyped option. I'm looking for a solid, dependable (wont dent/bend if I drop it) good looking (perhaps more traditional in appearance) reel that is made in the US and fun to fish. One thing of note is that the reel seat of the rod is silver.

Just wanted to give a quick report on the water conditions and fishing on Sunday, 9/4/2016. The water conditions were much better than I anticipated after reading about the "chocolate milk" in some of the more recent forum posts. It seems that the water is clearing up quite a bit, though it does still have a little bit of stain/discoloration. While we were there they did not generate, but the flow seemed higher than what low flow normally is. I talked to a couple guys that fish there a lot and they mentioned the flow was a little bit higher than low flow normally had been. As for the fishing, it was decent, but not great. Having said that, I went to the river to try out some European nymphing techniques that I have never done before. To help teach me the euro technique, I went with a local guide Donavan Clary. We started the morning around 7am at the 2nd parking lot below the dam. Early in the morning, we could see a few fish rising, but not a ton of activity. While I threw the euro rig setup with midges, Donavan alternated between midges and a wooly bugger. We caught maybe 3-4 fish between the two of us before 11... so not a great start. One fish was caught on the wooly bugger, the other on dark (brown or black) zebra midges. Maybe what was more interesting, was that Donavan pumped a couple of these fish to see what the were eating, and they had only 1 little midge a piece in their stomachs. Donavan fishes the river a lot, and he said that was really strange - to not find food in their stomachs. Maybe that could explain some of the slow fishing. He said a couple of times that we should be getting more takes than we were. It wasn't just us, there were quite a few fly fisherman on the water that morning, and I didn't see any of them bring up a fish. The bait guys had a little better luck and would reel one in every now and again using powerbait. After lunch, we fished below Watts and had a little bit better luck. We had to dodge the swimmers but managed to catch 10-12 in the afternoon below watts... all on zebra midges. A couple other guys down there were throwing wooly buggers in the deeper/slower water, but they weren't having much luck. Overall, I guess it was a good day. The water conditions seem to be improving, and I did catch a few fish. Maybe by winter, things will be mostly back to normal. I'm sure I would have done a little better had I not been out learning a new technique for the first time. I think maybe the water temp was a little up for them, and I think the stripers may have them up in shallower water. Most of the fish we caught were in 1-2ft of water. FWIW, there was one gentleman there that did say he caught 20ish fish up by the dam that morning... using an olive wooly bugger with a gray hackle.

Captain, I was just wondering the same thing. I was planning on making the trip myself on Sunday. Hopefully, it will be a good weekend.

Hi All, new to the forums and have been searching for information about the state of fly fishing on the lower illinois. I fished it several years agao, but with the flooding and conditions being what they have been over the past couple of years, I've generally avoided the lower illinois and driven over further to Beaver. Has anybody fished the river recently? Are things any better now (late Aug 2016) than they were in 2015? Is it worth the 2.5 hour drive to fish?