Paul Trybul

I witnessed something last night that I have never seen before in many years of fishing. I have to give this guy credit and what he did was perfectly legal. I had to be in Marseilles last night for business. I had a few hours to kill so I explored fishing the Dresdon dam on the Fox and Marseilles dam on the IL river. Both areas have restricted access for a few hundred yards below the dam, limited shorline access, and water levels that are dangerous to wade. I think the Dresdon dam is a widow maker at any level. Anyway as I was about to leave, I was walking up to a group of people fishing one of the few prime shore spots off of a sandy point. At the same time a guy and his grilfriend walk up and asked to see fishing licences. It was obvious that this guy wasn't the DNR. There was a little bit of a language barrier but the guy kept asking and stopped being so nice about. He then proceeded to tell this group to "go home" if they didn't have fishing licenses. He then pulled out his cell phone and said you have 2 choices. You can go home now or wait until the DNR gets here after this phone call and pay your fine. Suddenly the language barrier was removed and they packed thier stuff up and left. I have to give this guy credit for his bravado. The ISA does give out the yellow poacher cards with local enforement numbers for the different regions. The next time you go to fish your favorite fishing hole and you see someone in it maybe it is worth asking 1 simple question before you go find another spot. "Can I see your fishing license"?

Went out today for about and hour and found about a dozen late sprouters. 1 grey and the rest were fully matured yellows. One was huge. The season is just about over but there are still some fresh ones to be had in the northen part of the state.

I didn't see the Kishwaukee river on this list. Weird since it has several canoe launches and a canoe outfitter.

I did read somewhere that the spawning period is spread out longer in the southern states more than the northern states. The process of spawning still takes the sames amount of time for each individual fish but the population as a whole while be more spread out down south. The 3 weeks sound about right for the male bass to fan out a bed, guard a bed, and leave the fry on their own.

Hit the mother load today in 2 spots in Winnebago county. My father and I must have got a hundred in only a few hours of hunting. There were a lot of big yellows up to 6 inches high. We also found some big clusters. This is the 1st time I ever had to go back to the car to empty out a bag so I could go get more. The 6th wettest spring on record is making for a good spring of hunting.

I don't think the height of the water is as important as having stable water levels during the spawn. A flash flood can blow out the beds or silt them over. A big drop in water levels can leave beds high and dry.

I finally found some today in Ogle county. A little over a dozen. Mostly little greys about 2"-4" tall in heavily wooded areas. It seems kind of late that they are just starting up here.

I'd stick with the morels, much safer and I can't image you would find a wild mushroom that tastes better. At least someone is finding them. Mushroom hunting has been very humbling for me. I figure if I stick with it and pay my dues exploring, that it will become rewarding for me.

There does seem to be a point when the water temperature reaches about 60 degrees that the bass start hitting plastics better than hard baits. Just an observation that I've made. Nothing beats trial and error and good field testing.

I checked out 1 of my spots in Ogle County and I found nothing. It still may be too early in Northen IL for heavily wooded areas.

If you are finding yellows in central IL then there should be some greys here in northern, IL. The rivers are high and muddy so I might as well go hunting.

It's got to be getting close since reports from past years show some showing up at the end of April. We have had a lot of rain and warm weather lately. Is anyone finding any?

I am open to rescheduling mine. I will need to wait until we get closer. I have 2 young kids that always seem to have things going on.

Don's advice is pretty solid and he has been to Quetico & BWCA a few times. The moving water tip is especially good. Places where creeks and rivers flow into lakes are golden. You know alot about smallmouth and they can be caught on alot of different techniques but I'll give you some advice on walleye. The time of year will matter because walleye can become very depth specific and that why you'll want a lot of different jig weights. In absence of moving water most of the actively feeding walleyes in a lake will be at a specific depth range. In late summer that can be 20-25 feet deep. It is important to try to make mental notes of how deep walleye are being caught at when you do start catching them. A portable depth finder can be worth it weight in gold if its walleye or lake trout that you are after. The other advice I'll give for walleye is bring some gulp leeches, minnows, and crawlers. They travel a lot better than live bait and on some days they work just as good. The other thing you can discuss is the wonderful pike fishing opportunities in the BWCA. Some lakes have more 18-24" pike than you can shake a spinnerbait at and some lakes have fish over 40". Weedy bays that have easy access to deep water will be the best big pike spots. Hooking into some dumb aggressive pike in shallow weedy bays will provide some great long lasting memories for the scout boys. Spinnerbaits, spoons, and a johnson silver minnow for real weedy areas is all they will need for plenty of pike action. Pike are actually very good eating if you know how to fillet around the bones.

That is all good advice Norm. I can look to some of my spring successes and most of them come from areas that you've described.

I tried that yesterday while fishing the north end of a lake. Caught my first bass of the year,actually 7, but they all came on suspending jerkbaits, lucky craft pointer or x-raps. I couldn't buy a bite on the rattle traps. I think the suspending jerkbaits will work good in the rivers when they clear up and drop to more normal levels. I like to start the year with any minnow imitators: Gulp minnows, suspending jerkbaits, float and fly's, twister tail jigs, and the best minnow imitator of them all, live minnows. In Rockford area, I'm getting water temp readings in the upper 40's for small tribs, and low 40's for Kish and Rock.

If you spend enough time fishing spring walleye runs below dams, you will see enough banjo pucking that you will just pick up on it after awhile. I never heard it called that but I know exactly what you're talking about by the context. I picked that tip up when I first moved to Rockford 10 years ago and started chasing walleyes. I think the best tip I ever learned, I learned on this website about 6-7 years ago. That was to fish your plastics on a charlie brewer slider head in snaggy rivers. This was probably the biggest reason I went from a guy that caught 150-250 smallmouth a year to 800-1400. It really opened up the rockiest snaggiest parts of the river that used to be very frustrating for me to fish when I was more of a bait dunker. Plus when you fish the sliderhead, the banjo pluck doesn't come into play very often.

I never had any major questions or concerns about the way tournament fisherman handle and care for the fish and mortality rates. I would figure mortality rates would be better or average for tournament guys due to their experience and lack of live bait fishing. The concerns I have with tournaments are when they are conducted during the spawn. I never thought it was a good idea to pull a male bass off a bed and release at the other end of the lake after a weigh in.

Jonn, I can only of think of 2 places that could produce a smallie of that shape and size in Northern IL. Lake Michigan or Lake Victoria in South Beloit. I wouldn't rule out a private lake or quarry either like a Max Mcgraw. It doesn't look like a river fish from Illinois.

I like line in 8-10# test range for river smallies. You will need a medium action rod or stiffer to get good hooksets if you use mono. Especially if you fish with the hook weedless inside the plastic. If you use the superlines or braids (fireline, powerpro) you can get away with lighter action rods. Actually you should use lighter action rods because they will compensation for the lack of stretch in the line. Longer rods are nice for keeping your line up out of the current. They aren't always practical though. I like shorter rods when hiking through the woods, fishing small streams with overhanging trees or when fishing out of a canoe or kayak.

I did a bunch of research around this time of year last year on kayaks because I wanted to buy one. What I learned is there are a lot of different trade offs in performance and you can't ever get everything you want in one style of kayak. If paddling upstream is what you want, you can get one that will perform well but you will have to make sacrifices in other areas. The best kayaks for paddling upstream are the long skinny ones that track well. These kayaks are typically not as stable and they don't turn very well. If you are on a small stream with bends and down timber you could get into trouble and with out a lot of skill you will have a hard time manuevering. They stay in straight line which helps you go faster but they take several paddle strokes to turn. I chose a wide stable short 8' sit on top kayak. It is very bad with paddling upstream. I wanted something light, easy to portage, stable and manueverable for small streams. Plus when I fold back my 60/40 seats in fits inside my honda civic. I got what I felt was important to me but I had to sacrifice speed and tracking upstream. In a perfect world I would have 2 kayaks. One like I have and a long skinny touring one.

If anyone wants to work the booth, they can call me on my cell phone 815-703-2651 and I can meet you at the door with a vendor pass to get in for free. Another perk for helping out.

The one lure thing is such a tough question because the answer depends. My answer is different depending on time of year, water temp, water clairity, forage base in the body of water and if I am fishing up river or down river. I would say most of the time you can't go wrong with a pumkinseed colored yum crawbug on a charlie brewer sliderhead. Smallmouth feed heavily on crayfish in most bodies of water during most of the prime fishing season. The yum crawbug looks about as realistic as you can get. Put it on a slider head and you can fish it pretty much anywhere. The crawbug is really just a very detailed tube jig so it could be put in that category.

I would look into an anchor pulley system. That would be the only major modification I would make until I got in on the water and saw how it performs. You could look at different accessories like a good highback seat, a quality PFD, paddles, and make sure to get it registered with the state of IL.

Met a fishing buddy named Kevin Dells off of a fishing website called CLF I think. Fished with Kevin a few times and he went on and on and on about the ISA and all the great things they do. Verbally beat me into submission is a good way to describe it for me too. Turned out I was a smallmouth junkie and it was a good fit. I wonder what Kevin is up to these days?