Ham’s Tradgical History Tour 9/22

[Ham]

Hunter Biden might be the only person that documents their bad decisions better than me.To be fair, his are much more egregious and grandiose as well as unethical and illegal, but I digress.

I journeyed NE to fish with @FishnDavein The STL. We had talked about it in March and the stars aligned for a September yard pass. One of my fishing goals this year was 50 species on fly. At the time, I thought it was both outlandish and totally doable. So fast forward to now, I had gotten to 45 species and I really wanted to get to that 50 species plateau fishing with Dave. Buuuuut never being Happy with something straight forward as that, I wanted to fish the Chain of Rocks on the Illinois side. I had dreams of Shovelnose Sturgeon, Silver Chub, micros, small catfish on fly, White Bass, Yellow Bass, and Hybrid Striper.  Well, the simple things are all complicated.

9/9 Jet from the house at like 0745. I had the odd feeling to hold off buying the Illinois fishing license until I got there, but I got paranoid that I would not have cell service onsite. I  caved and bought the license on Friday. Y’all likely can’t really understand the ridiculous amount of overthinking and over planning I had done for the Chain of Rocks. Shovelnose Sturgeon was the primary target and I had lots of gear for that,  but I also tried to over every option I could think of. It was a lot of gear and I made sure I had more than enough live bait.

wellllll. the only road in was shut down for repairs until 9/15/22. Done. Over. Didn’t even get to try. Like Leo from EPF would say “you can’t make this stuff up”.

I tried to regroup on the fly. The other spot I knew about for Shovelnose was 1:30 away the wrong direction. So I am determined to catch a fish in Illinois. In retrospect, I wish I had driven to below Lake Carlyle, but conditions probably weren’t right. I opted for a little further up the Mississippi River. I found an access and tried to catch something.

I found a canal with a spillway. I caught a Longnose Gar on a small swimbait. Tried other stuff to no avail.

I moved down to the actually river. I fought through nasty undergrowth to reach the water. 

 I tried dragging flies around the rip rap hoping for just about anything.. no bites. Back to the mouth of that canal. I saw some fishing moving and swung a fly through them and felt a live bump and I was into something solid. I think I foul hooked a silver carp. Hook pulled after a tussle. I swapped to conventional gear. I hooked another invasive beast and about had him hooked when again the hook pulled. 
I decided to relocate to Melvin Price L/D. I had caught fish there before and I was hoping to do even better this time, but the water was wrong. The bite was off. I got a mini drum on fly. road construction made getting there hard and getting to Dave’s house even harder, but I did. Thus ends the fishing on Day One. 

[FishnDave]

Sounds like 100% Sunshine and Lollipops so far! 😜

I bet it gets BETTER!

[Ham]

So Day 2 started before daylight for me. Dave was being a Good husband and running his wife to the Airport. It was nice to meet her. Dave married up.

So while he was busy,  I went to the two Sure Thing (TM) locations that he found in Stl. I was still butt hurt from the Highway Closure at Chain of Rocks and I took it out on the willing biters.

I won’t post all the pics, but let’s just say the ornamental carp are NOT  quite as cunning as the wild cousins. I did notice that I mostly caught little ones. I think @FishnDavehas educated most of the Big ones.

I did get some larger ones. I want to let y’all know that netting one of these guys solo on a slippery slope was not easy. 
I was fishing with Dave the rest of the weekend so I played by house rules. All my fishing on Saturday and Sunday would be flyrod only. I used a new fun little flyrod. I got a TFO Bug Launcher. It’s a 7 foot 4/5 weight. 2.3 oz and $90 bucks. Big Fun.somewhere along the way I caught a couple of Goldfish too.so I probably stayed about 10 minutes too long, but I left em biting so I should get a Gold Star for that.

so I had added two species on fly. Sitting at 47 and feeling Pretty Good about myself. Heading to an urban water feature that has a Good number of hungry Bullheads. 

[FishnDave]

51 minutes ago, Ham said:

Dave married up.  TRUTH!

I won’t post all the pics, but let’s just say the ornamental carp are quite as cunning as the wild cousins. 

I did notice that I mostly caught little ones. I think @FishnDavehas educated most of the Big ones.  VERY LIKELY.  

.

You caught some pretty ones! 

[Terrierman]

So what Chinese restaurant were you fishing the entrance water feature?

[FishnDave]

52 minutes ago, Terrierman said:

So what Chinese restaurant were you fishing the entrance water feature?

Ho Chi Fin

[BilletHead]

Won hong lo maybe? 

[Ham]

I’ll never tell

[fshndoug]

who lung ho Marty

[Quillback]

4 hours ago, Terrierman said:

So what Chinese restaurant were you fishing the entrance water feature?

They're probably used to guys showing up in waders asking to just catch one Koi out of the display.  Gotta knock one off the species list.