Tuesday, July 7, 2009

Des Plaines River - July 3, 2009

Photos from this trip:

Chris and I got an early start. We got to the river and hit the "usual" spots only to strike out. After a while of throwing lures and catching nothing but dirty river water, we moved to a spot I haven't fished for a while and finally found fish.

Before we got there, we saw the coolest thing. A raccoon climbed up an access ladder to reach a conveyor belt that moves material across the river from one power plant to another, then hopped a ride across the river. Smart creature - I wouldn't want to swim in that river either. Every cast we made left a mist of black spray on the white surface of the boat from the line flying off the reels.

We spent some time moving around the area where we found fish. Chris tried a few different lures and caught fish on a couple of them before settling on the same thing I was throwing. He even caught a Northern Pike that I was able to get one photo of before it snapped his line and flopped over the back of the boat into the water with his lure. Same thing happened with a couple other fish, but the important thing was that he got them in the boat.

We didn't catch a lot of big fish, but there were enough to keep it interesting. We later went to try one of the discharges and there was more current flowing out of it than I've ever seen. The only spot where we would have been able to fish it from already had a boat on it so we moved on and tried an area I'd never fished before. By this time the river was a zoo. There were a lot of pleasure boats, water skiers, and jet skies. How folks can get in that water is beyond me. It amazes me that the fish do so well.

We hit the road and got the boat home and then scrubbed it down, inside and out. The water temp was in the mid to upper 70s with the discharge being only 80 which was 10 degrees cooler than the last trip. The bright sunshine we had most of the day didn't help the fishing, but we made the best of it. I was able to get some decent photos of some of the wildlife we saw including snakes and birds. that always makes for a worth while trip.

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