New To The Area

[Chriswk77]

I am new to the area and still pretty new to fly fishing, I am going to the Illinois river this weekend to check it out, any suggestions for a newbie?

[joshuapaul]

Hi Chris,

Check the generation schedule and be careful not to hang out too long once they blow the horn.

We normally do well on Pheasant tails, zebra midges, hares ear and scuds from about 18-14. Midges are normally the go to. If there is no generation, it's hard to find a good drift. Just look for areas of decent flow. If they're running 1 unit (the best fishing IMO) make sure you're getting to the bottom with you rig.

Good luck!

[OKFlyFisher44]

This time of year....eggs, eggs, and more eggs. The bugs that Joshua mentioned are good choices as well. If you don't wanna get a headache by staring at a bobber all morning, put on a slumpbuster or big wooly bugger on a short leader and strip 'em back to ya. It can be a lot of fun versus the bobber grind when its on. Keep an assortment of midges in different sizes and colors. Good luck!!

[joshuapaul]

Thats true, you could always go to the spaghetti and meatballs. Egg, SJ worm then a midge or an RS2. If it gets super slow, I normally rig up something like that. I'm heading over on Wednesday, I'll write up a report.

[Chriswk77]

Its been a while since i posted this and I did have some luck that weekend that I spend on the river, thanks for the advise. I will be going again tomorrow morning to see what kind of damage I can do Has anyone else been up there in the last week or so? are they still hitting on the midges?

[JCWolfe]

I went yesterday and brought to hand 18. I consider that a slow day of fishing with the amount of time that was spent. I saw several people keeping fish, which is fine, but i'm sure the fish population is going to really drop with spring break people. I used several flies, just keep changing.

[Chriswk77]

I had a lot of misses on diffrent color midges, brought about 10 to hand it was a pretty slow day from what I could tell, my girlfriend and her little brother were using power bait and even they were having a slow time when usually its one after another on that stuff...stil had fun though and it was a beautiful day which is what really matters.