Lower Illinois, 9/2/07

[Okieflyfisher53]

Made it down Sunday morning and fished from around 7:00 till they blew the horn around noon. Started below the cross-vane and picked up about 10-12 fish there, mostly small ones. The hot fly in that section was a blue dun midge with silver rib and bead. Moved upstream and continued to catch fish on the blue dun midge and black and silver zebra midge. Ended up with around 30 fish landed, a few missed strikes and LDRs. I caught one brown around 12"s, so all those little browns the ODWC dumped in are growing. I also saw a couple of redds in the riffle below the plunge pool above the island.

Steve

[Zach Bearden]

Sounds like a good day!

Ive noticed the redds also and in the winter the rainbows are just stuffed with eggs.

The Browns that ive caught have been about 12-16" and look like theyre about to just burst with eggs! I cant wait for the fall so that maybe somebody will take documented reproduction. Ive noticed it for the past 2 years but it would seem that nobody really listens to a 14 year old. (Lol)

[Okieflyfisher53]

Zach,

The old timers in the ODWC didn't want to listen to anyone about that stuff, regardless of age. There are some new younger people in the fisheries dept that seem to want to work with us on improving the area. There are big plans for the old Watts area that should improve the fishing there drastically.

Steve

[Zach Bearden]

I still dont understand them though. They wanted to learn about Broken Bow. Oh well though, at some point they're going to listen to somebody and come check it out. Ive actually found some fish midgeing one time and cast to them, I caught a trout about 4 inches long and had really solid par marks on his side. After he jumped a couple times the rest of them left.