Quality fishing like we have been experiencing this year on Pool 14 has me fired up for the future of our beloved sport in my area! When targeting larger fish, we now have a very real opportunity at a trophy fish on any given outing.
The slot limit covering all Illinois/Iowa sections of the river has positively improved these chances ten fold or more. We have been concentrating on finding the bigger fish the last couple of outings and have not been disappointed. Fish in the 20-25″ range are becoming commonplace, and are falling to a variety of presentations. My big fish for the year came 3-waying a stick bait on the face of a wingdam. On this day I was using a 1 oz. jig fitted with a paddletail plastic as the drop weight, commonly refered to as the “Dubuque Rig”. A great many of my larger fish this year have come on this rig, with either live bait, a crawler harness, or a crank on the back line. Slipping across the wingdam face and trough in front with my electric, this rig allows me to change depth quickly while providing the fish with two baits in one pass. When a concentration of fish can be found in one particular section of the dam, I generally like to drop the anchor and work that area casting cranks, pitchin’ jigs and plastic or bait, and even throwing out one “dead stick” line in front of the dam with a leech or crawler on a short leader and floating jig.
On our last outing, the river had been churned up from the recent heavy rains, so we opted to slow troll a variety of rattling cranks and spinner rigs on some backwater break lines to produce fish. Putting some sound into the equation was the key to our success with the exceptionally muddy water. Although the fishing is tougher during this time, a little experimentation and persistance can still put some nice fish like the last one pictured in the boat.
For those wishing to find a few fish for the pan, the main channel wingdams fished with jigs and live bait, or livebait rigs behind an egg sinker will give you a good chance of boating some 15-18″ fish once the water clarity improves a little, and the chance is always there that the next cast may bring you the fish of a lifetime! You won’t know until you hit the water and give it your best shot.
Please remember to let the big pigs go, and we will have a trophy fishery for years to come. The big girl in the first pic required a couple hours in the livewell with an oxygenator running, then a release in a slack water area with some extra TLC, but with a little extra time and care, even a seriously stressed girl can be revived and successfully released.
A bigger pic of the big girl. Never found one with this kind of girth this early in the summer!
Your bite seems to be in full swing John
Nice fish
Nice report John and some great looking fish!
Nice report John. Sounds like the size restrictions on those pools are having good results. That is good to see.
WOW what a hogg.
Nice fish and report John! Good to see you getting on the water.
Nice job bro!!! Gotta get back there. Give me a call.
That is a real toad John, it looks like a late fall fish! I have a weeks vacation coming up in early July. I hope the water is a little clearer by then. I looked at it last night , it looks like chocolate milk. Congrats on a real trophy!
Nice report John and congrats on that big ole, girthy walleye. She’s a beauty!
Way to go John
Those are nice fish on a way tough pool
Stay with em!!!………B
That ‘eye is a chunk, John! Nice job!
I have been very impressed with the effects of the slot limit here. In the short term I have decided to “settle” for not having many “keeper” fish on a given outing. Many things could be worse than having successive outings without a fish small enough to eat!
I understand it is tough for the tournament guys, and the meat hunters. It has become quite easy to see who the meat hunters are judging on a person’s opinion of the slot. I hope they understand in the big picture this slot will be good for them as well, as the population is increasing each year. We are currently in a cycle where the eater fish are from a couple off years for the spawn, but as these hordes of bigger fish have a chance to reproduce for successive years, there should, with a couple good spawns, be a fantastic impact on both quantity and qaulity of fish in the system. Until then we’ll just have to live with netting and releasing all these big girls.
I am glad to see your catching some .. I don’t think that Big Girl made it tho ..as you were off the water and it looks very dead unless you have some way of bringing back the dead ..and there nothing wrong with eating your catch..
Actually she did make it Butch. I live 100 feet from a slough. It took time and effort to get her oxygen level up, but she was very much alive when I released her in the slough.