12-25 on a river up in illinois

[Norm M]

The extended forecasts were wrong, the wind today definitely made it colder than yesterday . The fish didn't care .

I stuck with the river today , started out urban and worked back out to the park . First place I stopped, the best known place in town , the whole slack area was covered with ice . I bounced some jigs and banged some cranks in the faster flow , no takers .

I went up and hit the wall as no one was sitting up above fishing . I had one hit on a swimbait, bit off by a pike . I put on a metal leader of course , no more bites .

I went to go fish a pike spot that I rarely fish due to a promise I made to the guy who showed me the spot . About 35 years , an old grizzled river rat took a liking to a young , long haired river rat and started sharing his stuff . This spot , I promised him , I wouldn't fish when any of the meat hogs could see me catching fish there . You local guys know where them dudes hang, the ones that pay no mind to any of the size or creel limits . I am proud to say that even though he passed about 30 years ago, I've kept my promise to him . Today there was no one out, not even the usual panhandlers or petty crack dealers , so I fished there. When he showed it to me , we used size 9 floating Rapalas , still do . I landed one pike , second got off due to operator error .

I moved downstream , fished the flat off the channel . I was using a blade bait I've never tried before, the Johnson Thin Fisher . I settled on the middle hole for medium wobble/vibration. Upstream quartercast, count down 3 or 4 and follow it down with the rod tip, picking up slack as it went . I ended up with three walleye eaters but let them go as today was the family holiday meal .

I fished some bridge pilings and a creekmouth with everything from cranks to jigs with nothing to show for it .

I moved to a spot out in the park , nice sized slack/slow area . Slack was iced over , the slow was open. I switched up and went with a bobber/jig rig . I guess it's technically not F-N-F because I used a slip float not a fixed float . I used the Thill wobble bobber rated for 1/8 oz , so that is the size ballhead crappie chenille/marabou jig I used . It imparts action to the jig by wind and/or wave action . It did that well enough to entice two smallmouth and two rock bass into eating the jig . I mean the tip of the jig was barely sticking out of the fish's mouth . No guessing is that a hit, the float went under .

Plan to be out again tomorrow