Paul Trybul

Bald eagles are such a beautiful majestic bird, especially up close. I just came back from fishing in the northwoods and I had a cool bald eagle close encounter that I wanted to share. I was fishing on a largemouth/bluegill lake with my father and the bass fishing was kind of slow. I switched my 2nd rod over to a bobber and small hair jig to fish for some of the big bluegills I saw along the shore. The bluegills were just killing this hair jig. As I was reeling one in, a largemouth in the 20-22" range follows my bluegill up to the canoe and engulfs it. I was only using a small hair jig so there was no way I was going to land this bass. The bass held on for a long time and finally released the bluegill right at the canoe. I let the 5" bluegill go but it was doing the death twitch at the top of the water surface after being in this basses mouth. As our canoe drifted away I noticed a mature bald eagle leave its pearch on the tree and swoop down low right over our canoe and over the bluegill. On the 2nd pass the eagle extended it talons grabed the fish and flew it back to the nest. In a span of 5 minutes I had 2 very visual wildlife experiences I will never forget.

Jude, We discussed this pretty heavy on the officer board over the winter. There was a situation on the Dupage a few years back when like 20+ guys showed up to fish a skinny section of water. The concerns were brought to my attention from other officers in a proactive type of way. Like Gregg said we have had several outings in the NW region and never had a problem before. I figured I'd cross that bridge when I got there. Well last Sunday with 12 guys showing up I pretty much had to cross that bridge. I would have liked to spend a little fishing time with all the anglers but that wasn't possible. I think in splitting up in 3 groups we did the best we could to minimize the impacts. The water was up so the group I led did little to no wading. The water temps had dropped in the mid to upper 50's and I observed no bass on the beds at this outing. I did within a few days after the outing start to notice fish on beds in the Rock River Basin on some tribs and the Kish. I only scheduled one spring outing because in the past they got rained out. The weather and water flows are much more stable in summer and early fall. We are all C&R anglers so I didn't really think of the impacts on spawing. Its not like we tournament fish where we relocate male bass miles from the spawning bed. I know some anglers don't fish during the spawn but I fish whenever I can March through November regardless. This topic is definately a concern for me now. My next planned outing is on water skinnier than the south branch of this kish. My thought is to do a RSVP system with the 1st 6 to respond are in. At that time the meeting location will be revealed and we will split into 2 groups of 4. 1 group led by me and another led by another club officer. I'm not ready to give up the whole small water outing thing in our NW region just yet. If we take away small water we are pretty much just left with the Rock River which is an improving but not that great of a smallmouth fishery. The Kish outings can still work but we need to be prepared with group leaders and split up into groups of 4 and hit different areas. These are my thoughts but I am open for any input. These are just some of the challenges we face as a growing organization. We have to weigh the value of the social parts against the impacts against our goal of improving smallmouth bass fishing in IL.