Paul Trybul

We are starting to get into the time of year when I stop fishing and start planning for the next season. I like daydreaming of new river fishing adventures while I gaze out my snow covered window. Something that helps facilitate this is looking at arial maps and photos. Looking for access, tracking distance of possible canoe trips, scouting out reefs and sunken islands on clear lakes are all posible with the right view. In the past I liked using the Google Earth software. The free version has high quality in some areas but poor quality in other rual areas. I was wondering what software/websites most of you use. There is probably new stuff coming out all the time and I was hoping to find some better options.

On Saturday December 17th at noon the Northwest Region is having its pizza party. We are having this in the meeting room at Gander Mountain in Rockford. Call Paul Trybul at 815-703-2651 if you have any questions or need directions.

I tried one of the silver carp earlier this year. It came from the IL river below starved rock. I was left very unimpressed with the taste. I don't eat very much of the fish I catch. When I do it is usually walleye, crappie or stocked trout so maybe I'm spoiled.

If we are talking hula grubs, I don't think we should leave out the magic of the chompers hula grub. The green pumpkin and the watermellon seed are my favorite colors. They also make it in a 4" which is a smaller profile than the 5" yammys. For smallmouth I like the 4" for largemouth I like the 5". The chompers are also made of a more durable plastic. I like to fish that on a 1/4oz pro slider head. My advice comes with a warning. The chompers stink something fierce.

You have a picture of Norm holding a fish? I heard that's very rare like catching 2 bass on the same lure at the same time.

You can hike in from the Gorge Forest Preserve on the north side of the river. It's a 10 minute hike from the parking lot to the water. Getting there isn't bad it's hiking back up the staircase after wade fishing will have you feeling the burn. It wadeable at USGS levels under 6ft. The current is strong through this section making it not the best late fall spot. The hike is very scenic especially during the peak of fall colors.

Canoeing from Kish FP to Atwood FP would be the other way to fish under the I-39 bridge.

PaulT - Sorry bud but you info source sucks! I know for a fact they are (or were) pumping into the creek. No crap. I know for a fact.

I was simply repeating what I heard from a person that works for the company that manages the property in question. I was not stating it as fact or my opinion on the subject. I'm in sales after all. This won't be the 1st or last time a customer feed me a line of bull.

I do like the after photo in your other Kilbuck post. Thats the way it should be.

Nice job Terry. The company I work for does business with the company that manages the landfill. I was there the other day and I got a little of the inside scoup. If you look at the map on the article you can see 2 quarries, the landfill quarry on the right of the Kilbuck and there is a clay pit on the left with a bridgless road crossing the Kilbuck. Over the past year or so they have been excavating the clay out of the clay pit to make a future landfill. To get closer access to the highway they have been trucking the clay via the river crossing. Basically everytime a truck crosses the Kilbuck the clay gets washed off of the tread of the tires and the river bottom is stirred up. I know farmers do these river crossings to access fields as well. This was going on with dozens of trucks per day for awhile. They claim there was no dumping or draining into the river. Since the recent public outcry (that's where you and your article comes in Terry) they have redirected the truck traffic to edson road by the hunt club. It's a little more distance to haul but they want to do what's right for the environment.

So Terry your words have been heard and rerouting the trucks may be the solution to the problem. Hopefull the clay residue will wash out with the early spring rains and we can look forward to a sucessful smallmouth spawn in the spring of 2012.

Since the prospects of fishing a high muddy river don't appeal to me, I've decided to get my outdoor fix by hiking into the woods. The 3+ inches of rain the Rockford area received earlier in the week really has the fall mushrooms going. I've been finding a lot of shaggy manes, oysters, and today I found a mother load of hen of the woods under 1 oak tree. I picked the 2 clumps to the right and left of the tree. They weighed about 5 pounds each. The clump in the center was massive. I think I would need to come back with a wheel barrel and pick up truck to get that one. I left it since how much fungus can one family eat?

It said I only used 15% of my allowance. I still think there is an overall allowance for our site that trumps individual allowances.

Tried uploading pics from work the other day and it wouldn't work. Figured it was because they restricted some things when they made some IT changes. Just tried at home and it won't work either. Any ideas why or where I should check to see what is screwed up?

 

Got a real pretty 18.5 tonight... Also some cool bugs from camping a couple weeks ago.

I had the same problem too but I was able to post after this post with pics. The problem is out website has a maximum that we can host. What I did was go into my history of uploaded files and I delete some old pictures that I sent in PM's. This freed up memory and allowed me to post a few pics. Our site administrator should be able to fix this.

Until then go like you are going to make a post. Under Attach this File there is a section called "help with attaching files". I clicked the blue link and then went into the manage attachment section the left. This allowed me to view every picture I have ever posted on this site. If you delete pictures you have sent in private messages it won't effect past posts and it will free up memory for future pic posts.

Maybe we should all go in there and clean up our old pictures starting with PM'ed pictures to help keep our hosting memory down.

I have something coming up family wise that will prevent me from hosting the Rock River wade outing in Rockton, IL this Saturday. If there is interest, we can reschedule this for October 1st or 2nd.

I'll be there. I might even bring some hackle feathers if you fly fisherman are interested.

Do they ever take a break or are they discharging murky water 24/7?

What.... there are other species besides smallmouth bass?

I've never fished the Sugar. I hear it has smallmouth but I've also heard the part that flows through Wisconsin is better that the deeper sandier IL section. The Kishwaukee river has been disappointing for me for about 3 years in a row now. Its hard for me to recommend a productive section. Taking the time to float it is definately more productive than wading. I would also avoid "tuber alley" on the weekends during the summer. That is primarily bewteen Baumann Park & Kishwaukee Porest Preserve. Too much craziness to try and catch fish.

I don't recommend kayaking the Apple. During normal summer flow it gets extremely low and rocky. Also they don't allow boating/floating in the State Park section. That pretty much leaves you with knocking on doors to gain private access.

Dave,

Rich filled me in on you plans for the weekend. I'm glad you had fun fishing with the family. I guess I was doing the same thing when you had your outing a few weeks earlier. I thought you might recognize the last picture. It looked alot better than it produced. Plastics both large and small had the best results on our outing. Low and slow was the way they wanted it except for a few. We still need to get together and fish sometime this summer.

Gregg, I was planning on giving you a call. Were you thinking up north or local?

4 ISA members, Paul T, Paul T Sr, Rich V & Deb C gathered for the NW regional fishing outing on the Apple. We had a little light rain and some heat in the afternoon but other than that conditions were pretty good. Rich arrived first and said he observed 2 other anglers fishing wacky style senkos. He said they caught about 1/2 dozen each. You hate to fish right behind other anglers that look like they know what they're doing, but that's the way it goes when you fish public land sometimes. We actually did OK. I caught a nice one on topwater on my 2nd cast.

Deb caught close to a dozen on senko style baits

Rich stuck with the fly rod and he caught a few. I tried a lot of different lures. The only thing I caught more than 1 fish on was hulagrubs. As a group I estimate we caught & released around 30 smallmouth which is pretty slow for the average Apple outing. We did get some quality fish up to 18" and enjoyed some nice scenery.

I'll just tag the Kishwaukee River Forest Preserve sampling on to here.

 

Kishwaukee River F.P. Stream Sampling, 7/14/11

 

All of the smallies, rockies and many of the catfish had to be all sacrificed for contaminate test. The DNR cuts one fillet from the fish wraps it

in tinfoil and ships it off for testing. They were a bit stunned when they offered me the other half of the smallmouth fillet and I refused. I just couldn't do it.

Before they began to fillet the fish I took a close look at the smallies and rockies. One smallmouth did have a small peach spot near it's tail and so did one rockie.

Turning down the fillets on fish that were suspected of contamination. Good call.

These reports are very cool. Thank you for participating and keeping us updated.

The life of a river fish is pretty tough. They have to deal with alot of adversity with disease being just one of them. I read up on that furunculosis and it sounds like it is most common to salmon and trout species but has been found in other species. The north branch of the kish has been known to be a very clean river in comparison to other area rivers making you wonder how furunculosis gets in there. This may be a stretch but distillery is not to far from Belvidere mill race where the spring trout are stocked. Is it possible that the hatchery trout were the carriers since this disease is more common with trout and salmon? I haven't seen those sores on smallmouth that I'm catching in other areas of the Kish. It seems like when non-native species get introduced to waterways that is when the problems start to happen. Purely speculation on my part but I'll be interested to see if they find this furuncuosis farther away from Belvidere.

If you have an injury, the Apple isn't the best place to go stumbling around. Give me a call if you feel better.

Saturday the 16th we are having our NW regional Apple river outing. The meeting time will be at 8AM. This is a small scenic river so we ask that you RSVP to make sure we have enough guides. Please contact Paul T at 815-703-2651 if you plan to attend. Current conditions show the river is flowing at a low level which should be perfect for wading. I'll bring some chicken feathers for any flyfisherman that are interested.

She actually has a variety of breeds. She has mostly polish and bantam breeds like silkes. Some are mixed and those are the ones I end up butchering because they are not show quality. The colors range but mostly blacks, browns and reds.