Paul Trybul

From a smallmouth perspective November through late March. Pike are a cold water species and if you are on to good pike spots that can produce up until the water isn't soft enough to fish. It's not like every smallmouth vacates the Kish as I have caught smallmouth in early March and early December before. Like Joe stated it goes from a 20-40 fish/day potential, to a 1-4 fish is a good day after October and before April.

Here is a smallmouth bass migration study done by the Wisconsin DNR on the Embarrass & Wolf Rivers. Seasonal Migration of Smallmouth Bass in the Embarrass and Wolf Rivers Wisconsin.pdf

Every river has its own dynamics. I could debate that the Kishwaukee River smallmouth have a greater need/opportunity to migrate that say Fox River smallmouth. First of all, the Kishwaukee has only one dam versus dozens on the Fox which gives them the opportunity since they aren't trapped in dammed up pools. For need, I think there are several factors that give Kish smallies a greater need for migration versus the Fox. #1 the Fox is bigger and deeper on average than the Kish offereing more wintering habitat per river mile than the Kish. The other factors would be flow and artificial warm water influences. The fox has a greater CFS flow than the Kish preventing deep ice formation in the winter. Also consider the large amount of flow that comes water treatment plants and storm sewer drains off salted parking lots in the winter on the Fox River. You add all that up and the Fox simply does not freeze as solid as the Kish in the winter. I don't think 3 feet of water gets it done as a wintering hole on the kish which is a river that 90% of its depth is less than 3' during normal river flow.

If anyone has any questions about the outing, feel free to give me a call 815-601-0619. There are opportunities for floating and boating.

That's pretty cool that you got that close for a picture. Normally they are very shy around people.

Here are a few pics of my canoe set up. It's actually very stable with the outriggers. I've stood up and fished out of it. The danger is getting the outriggers caught up on something. Then they quickly change from a benefit to a liability.

They were in my canoe that was equipped with an outrigger stabalizer. Normally that set up is very stable but this river section has fast current, rapids and boulders. They got it a jam, got one of the outrigger floats up on a boulder which then drove the other float into the water. Once the current grabbed that it was over and they flipped. They rearanged who was in front and in back and used much more caution after that and there were no more close calls.

That is good family fun there

So what's the next thing they'll get us fisherman to buy, an underwater remote control turtle. Let's start an infomercial and pitch it on shark tank.

Your best resource for up to date reports and intel is lake link. Those lakes get reports almost daily. Late summer big lake fishing can be challenging as the fish spend a lot more time working deep structure and sometimes suspend randomly. A tip for Lake Geneva is go really early or at night. The pleasure boating can get pretty obnoxious on that lake and it gets very choppy by 10am. The water is super clear so lite line or flourocarbon leader will get more bites. Delevan always has a algae stain to it in the summer. Deep weedlines is the mid summer pattern there for pike and largemouth. There are plenty of docks to fish.

That was a pretty good read. I need to travel to Iowa for work occasionally and they mentioned some rivers I have driven right over. I also believe in river bass migration. I see it with a lot of tribs of the Rock River, Kish included. The Kish does have wintering holes where I have caught fish in March and December however they don't support the entire population.

We had 5 anglers attend the Apple River wade outing this Saturday which includes Paul T, Paul T Sr, Frank, Jason, and Jeremy. Outside of me and my father the rest of the group were all Apple River 1st timers. River conditions were good and the weather was perfect so I felt confident we could all catch some smallmouth in an aesthetically pleasing setting. I'll let pictures do most of the talking while I provide brief narration. My father caught a quality 15-16" smallmouth on his very first cast. We spot hopped a couple different areas and found fish of various sizes everywhere we tried. As we waded through the clear rocky stream we were amazed at how the water was just teeming with life. Crayfish and minnows were very abundant along with frogs tadpoles and this madtom. The fishing was a little more diverse as we caught smallmouth and largemouth bass along with several green sunfish. Everyone in the group caught fish and enjoyed what I considered a quality outdoor experience. Thank you for all that attended and a special thank you to Frank for bringing a delicous lunch with beverages that he was generous enough to share with everyone. My father experienced a fall on some rocks so we ended up cutting out after lunch. I pointed the rest of the group to some quality water and they fished on through the afternoon. I got some texts later in the day stating that the fishing stayed pretty steady in the afternoon as well.

So far we are up to 5 that have RSVP'ed. There is still room for 3 more. Let me know if you are interested.

Thank you for posting this Terry. At this time I have only had 1 RSVP. This is a small stream so I am limiting it to 8 anglers. I fished it yesterday. While all the other IL rivers are flowing high and stained, this one is running at normal levels and very clear. I was able to get quite a few interested to hit topwater. Combine that with some scenic views of a small stream cutting through limestone bluffs and you have what I call a quality outdoor experience. Call me if you are interested in attanding on August 6th. Paul 815-601-0619

Those are some tanks. Once you get changed from ISA Forum Registrant to ISA member, you should be able to upload a profile pic.

There's that and some of us no matter how good we think we might be don't want to turn a relaxing enjoyable hobby into a competition. Personally I get to scratch that competitive itch every day at work so fishing is an escape from that. Being someone that has never supported tournament fishing, I do however like the format of this event. Its not done during the spawn, no live bait and its catch, measure, photo, with immediate release. You also don't need a lot of money or an expensive bass boat to compete.

I've only fished it in southern wisconsin. River access is better in wisconsin that it is in Illinois. There is not good access outside of galena.

You captured a beautiful stretch of river. Looks fishy

I know we have a few mushroom hunters in the club. I found my first morels of the season about 2 weeks ago in central IL. They have been out in good numbers in the state line last weekend. The average size is good with all this rain and I'm finding other spring mushrooms too.

You will get a lot of views with that tag line

I'm sorry to hear about the loss of your father Terry. I also have a conflict on Saturday as I recently registered my son to take an assessment test to see if he can get into the gifted program for High School.

My list has probably changed a bit over the last 10 years. 1) suspending jerkbait - cold clear water - favorite brand = lucky craft pointer 2) walk the dog topwater - late spring & fall - favorite brand = lucky craft sammy 3) popper - summer - favorite brand = chug bug 4) hula grub - late spring through early fall - favorite brand = chompers 5) senko style plastic - anytime - favorite brand = bass pro stick-o's

Thanks for letting us crash your breakfast party. I always enjoy good fishing talk with like minded anglers. What were the abandoned canoes biting on?

Count on two Paul Trybul's being there.

Had a good time sharing breakfast and the river with you guys. I led the non traditional fly fishing group. Technically Jim was fly fishing but he was using a tenkara. To me it looked like he was fishing with a 12 foot telescoping cane pole with no reel and a fly at the end of his lie. It started out with me, Jim and the 2 seventy year old Paul's. My father dropped of early because he had things to do. The other Paul caught one but the section I picked had some rugged wading. Paul caught one nice smallmouth on a tube but then he dropped off mid morning. Jim wanted to fish and we kept pushing on. A few hours into it we ran into Jude and fished for a few more hours. Handicapped with a cane pole, Jim did pretty good catching 3 different species of fish along with his personal best 17" smallmouth on a topwater fly. Jude caught about 10 including a 16.5" smallmouth. I caught around 15 including my biggest local smallmouth of the year. A fat 18" smallmouth went for a slider and senko fished in a distinct current break. I really enjoyed the camaraderie so thanks for putting this together Terry. I hope your group found good fishing and good times.