Hit a different stretch of the DuPage river near my house today. Got there about 11am, wanted to try out my new Simms Freestone Studded wading boots. They sure beat wearing my stepson’s old sneakers!
Anyway, it took about 15 minutes to pickup my first smallie. A nice 15″er that nailed a Brovarney Swim Jig…….. what else? LOL It came from casting downstream past a weed laden branch next to a small grass bed, with current running between. A slow retrieve rapping around the branch and letting the jig flow with the current was the ticket. The next cast produced this 17 1/2″ smallie, my personal best for the Dup to date.
Picked up a few more dinks, both brown and green, on the swim jig for the next hour or so. Remember, this is new water for me, so I tend to fish every inch of it. LMAO I decided to try a 1/4oz white spinner bait, with a small gold Colorado blade and a larger silver willow leaf. Picked up the healthiest little LM I have ever seen in this river. 6″ with a belly about 1 1/2″ wide. Hungry little bugger was hiding in some rocks next to the bank.
Came up to another laydown with slack water on one side, and current on the other. I laid the spinner bait right in a pocket on the upstream side of the laydown and WHAM! This 18″er nailed it……. my personal best just got better!
I noticed an island a little further downstream, and decided that would be my final destination. I’d already been in the river for about 4 hours, and only covered a mile of water at the most. Picked up a few more dinks and a couple more 12-14″ smallies on the way. Once I got there, I looked the situation over, and tossed the spinner along the first 30ft or so of the North side of the island. The water was only 2′ deep at best, with a rocky bank leading into grassbeds. Current was present but slow.
The first cast landed another dink smallie, but this one had a crayfish head and claws sticking out of it’s throat. I was laughing too hard to think of taking a picture of that, though I wish I had. The next cast got bumped by a nice sized smallie, but I couldn’t get it to hit again. I decided to see what the other side of the island looked like before I started heading back to the car.
This side had some riffles leading into a waist deep channel with laydown on one side and large rocks on the other. Sounds perfect, huh? Well not today, not so much as a bump came out of there. But I will be back there to try again another day.
Made my way back to the North side, tied on a 1/4oz football head jig, and added a 2 1/2″ green pumpkin/texas red Yum Crawbug. The first cast produced the fish that bumped the spinnerbait. Turned out to be a 16 1/2″ smallie! You can see the crawbug hanging down on the left side of the pic.
I was used to having the fish slam the swim jig and spinner, so I waited a bit too long to figure out that the taps I was feeling with the crawbug weren’t just the jig sliding over the rocks. This sucker almost inhaled the jig, and it took a lot of patience on my part and the fishes part to get it removed successfully. A minute or so of revival time was needed before it started clamping down on my thumb, letting me know it was ready to be released.
With that I started to make my way back upstream. I picked up another dozen fish of various small sizes with the crawbug on my return trip. All in all it was a great day on the Dup. Many fish caught, all released safely to fight again.
Sizewise, the spinnerbait beat the swimjig by 1/2″. But for sheer numbers of fish, the crawbug couldn’t be beat. And the wading boots performed like a dream!
see you friday 
