north central illinois stream multiple trips

[Norm M]

surprise, surprise , it's been raining for the most part and the river is about twice it's normal flow and muddy. slack areas getting skinnier daily .

pretty much singlespins and chatterbaits on the seams . if I want to just catch mostly smallmouth I stick to singlespins. with the chatterbaits it's almost 4-1 channel cat to smallmouth ratio. I'm doing pretty well numbers wise on the chatterbait for bass, it's phenomenal numbers wise for cats . most of the cats 2-3 lb eaters, some mid sized, a couple double digit weight wise .

pretty much have the river to my self. wonder how many cats I could catch using cutbait, livebait or stinkbait ?

[Guest]

That sounds like fun.

I fished the Apple River near Galena years ago.

It had good numbers of big smallmouth.

That area fished like Ozark streams.

Never thought about the chatter bait.

I might try it out.

What size ?

[Norm M]

1/4 and 3/8 oz mostly

I remove the standard tail on the chatterbaits, use a twin tail grub or a thick, fat twister tail. most most productive has been the rear 3.5 to 4 inches of a 7 inch ditto gator tail worm.

down to my last 4 gator tails, haven't been able to find any of those for better than a decade .