Chicago, IL suburbs - FOX RIVER report with Photos

[Jig'nMinnow]

Today was a decent day to be out on this river which is rated at a C+ in my River Grading System...that's how it is to me. Today wasn't the best, but we still caught a few fish and did lots of scouting and exploring, but like any day of fishing, it's still better than the best day at school, or at work.

My 'ole man and I started the day out a Blackhawk Park, about 3 miles south of South Elgin, IL. The water was high, and higher than usual, especially for this shallow stretch of the river. We began using Mepps & Rapalas (jointed & floating) spinners like always, just covering some water quickly and hoping for some fish that we usually find by all of the fallen trees & log piles. With the heavier current, we really weren't getting the control that we needed for the baits. While fishing with a Chartreuse Jointed Rapala, I had a nice surprise, a smallish 15-20" Channel Cat.


Blackhawk Park Forest Preserve


Fallen Trees - My favorite type of river structure, especially on the Fox river... Very little current.....Blackhawk is loaded with this structure along its many islands & river banks.

After a short while of covering water with my new favorite bait, the Rebel F93 Wee-R Crankbait,

I finally hooked into something fairly large off a wood-infested shoreline, here's what happened during the "Battle".





"The Battle" yes, it took me a good 4-5 minutes of fighting off this redhorse sucker on 6lb P-line CXX. This could be a Carp tho... You can tell that I dont fish for Carp or for the rough-fish very often. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Notice in the last picture, the fish just inhaled the crankbait. I was using this to cover some water while wading to a spot. Lucky Catch? Who knows?
Mepps spinners & shallow-0diving cranks are the baits to use if you ever plan on covering water while wading... It will help you score some fish.


After fishing my favorite place on the Fox for a good 2hrs, we headed down to Geneva to check out if it was good enough for fishing. We ded some scouting, and this place along with Blackhawk could be in this next Friday's plans during the Chicago Regional Globalfisher.com outing.

Next we headed down to the Lower Batavia Dam - waste of space!! Barely any water goes over the dam, and the ILDNR is taking their time planning to demolish this place.. Sorry, but no photo. We fished about 500yrds downstream of the Dam and scouted an area south of Glenwood Forest Preserve (off of rt 25). Now that area looks very promising, but didn't catch anything.

Afterwards, we checked out the North Aurora Dam area, and downstream near the I-88 overpass, it also looked decent, but didn't fish there.

Finally, we ended the day over at Leslie C. Arends Forest Preserve in Batavia, IL (off rt. 31). This is a very beautiful stretch of the river, but from what I saw, it looks very mucky and muddy to even wade. Especially in the side channels. The main river is where I want to go!


Main river channel (goes from left ro right in photo)


mucky side channel


mucky side channel

TOTALS
----------
- 1) 4-5lb Redhorse Sucker
- 1) 15-20" Channel Cat

- I also caught myself a 3" aquarium-sized Green Sunfish, that was in very shallow water at Arends FP. It's still in a state of shock in my tank... not good!

From my observations, the Smallies are still out of the picture. With a warm-up, things will change till next Friday.


JIG

[DementedFish]

Thanks for the report Jig'n Minnow! Illinois sounds like a cool place!

[Gerald]

Thanks for the report and GREAT photos.

[Wahoo!]

Awesome report Jig! That fish looks like a carp to me, but I could be wrong. Your pictures are great. Thanks for sharing!

[GlobalFisher]

Great report Drew, I like the pics!