streams/river in illinois

[Norm M]

The river has been dropping steadily but is still marginalby wading , even though today it's was under the magic 2.0 level is was still flowing at just under 4000 cfs . On previous trips both those levels were higher and more restrictive to wading .

Buzzbaits and chatterbaits produced well on both sides of riffles as did lightly weighted swimbaits swung across the slick at the top of the riffle . Current seams , especially those with larger slow/slack areas abutting them produced well with a rattlebait fished up or downstream .

Flats adjacent to the channel, well those I could get to , reponded to wtd topwaters, flukes unweighted and lightly weighted swimbaits . 

Along some waterwillow beds , buzzbaits, singlespins and chatterbaits produced .

The midstream humps I could reach , the unweighted fluke , lightly weighted swimbaits produced .

As far as crankbaits and jigs go , there was already enough algae to be on the wrong side of annoying . With other stuff working , I just quit using them and staining my fingers green . 

With all things being equal fishing the shady side of cover or overhead cover proving shade was the way to go . 

By midafternoon today , it was beastly hot when out of the shade even with the breeze , I finally bagged it and left it to the ever increasing numbers of fisherman . I went home to the AC, sucked down iced tea and enjoyed some baseball on the big screen TV .

I also did some crick trips , spectacular on cranks before they really got low, even got my first creekchub of the year on a crankbait. Brute was 11.5 inches according to the tape . Once they dropped and the algae on the bottom increased , it was singlespins to the rescue . Shoot about half the pools that previously produced were extremely shallow and held no catchable fish . It was back to the old low water standby , the deeper pools and those with a nice current flow below neck downs produced the biggest fish .