Tim Smith

Sure Mike. But you're going to have to do some negotiating for access.

A local stream was killed out by an ammonia release from the U of I. Every fish in the river downstream of the waste treatment plant was wiped out for miles and miles (except for the ones that managed to get away into adjoining streams). A fellow I know managed property on this stream and had caught a 20" smallmouth severalt times out of a particular hole on the stream. During the kill, the smallmouth disappeared. The next year, a 20" fish was back in the hole. Same one? Don't know. But the point is that quality habitat attracts quality fish. Even if they are reshuffling over time, something big is likely to be in that spot until something or someone removes it. I bet there is some data out there about this.

Brief update here... Used veteran's day to try to break this drought. I tried some adjustments based on this discussion this time out. I like inline spinners, so I bought a few #3s to try along with the #2s (bigger baits). I also decided to buy one of Eric's white spnner baits (1/8 oz. Booyah) and brought along the worm rod to see if the 5" jerk baits would make a difference. I also stopped messing around with new water and went back to a more reliable spot. All the baits caught fish...but.... The top four fish were still only 14, 13.5, 13 and 13. The fish were very active and I had a great time, so I'm not going to complain. Those four fish and the dozens of 10-12 inchers seemed to be what's out there to be caught right now. The four larger fish were all over the map. Two were in fast water behind a boulder. One was in deep water in a seam beside a backwater. One was in a log jam. A #3 mepps caught three. A #2 mepps caught one. The jerk worm caught dinks. The spinner bait caught dinks. It has been a while since I fished a spinner bait, and today was a useful reminder. I have always favored an inline spinner (Mepps) in flowing water (and I still might favor it in very fast water), but today reminded me there were several clear advantages of the spinner bait. It had a much softer landing than an inline spinner (With an inline spinner, I'm pretty happy if the bait makes a sound like an egg cracking when it hits the water. With the spinner bait, it was more like a pat of butter falling into pan). I was able to fish it much more slowly than an inline spinner It was much more snag resistant I could see it better in the air and was able to make finer adustments during the cast which increased my accuracy quite a bit. That more than made up for the slightly shorter casting distance. I will definitely give this bait a more thorough tryout next year. This time out, it worked like a charm on coarse woody debris. I slid it over the logs and into the scour holes with nary a hitch. Unfortunately, the only things it caught were 10-12" spotted and largemouth. It didn't do much in bouldery riffles. I guess I'm done for the year now. This is still my smallest fish year of the last 3...but it was fun trying to break the jinx. Next year...I'm going 20".

Great stuff, Jamie! I agree with just about all of it.

ISA to open competitive bidding for conservation grants! Over the past few months it has become clear that the word is out. The number of requests for our financial help and manpower in conservation projects around the state is increasing steadily. That’s good news for the ISA and good news for Illinois smallmouth bass. The ISA is a willing and able partner for conservation in Illinois. Our task now is to be as effective and thoughtful as possible in that role. To help us in that goal, we are in the middle stages of creating a new, open granting process. By early next year, a form will be posted on our web site that applicants can download, fill out and submit to request funds for conservation and education projects. A panel of ISA officers will review, compare and score grant applications based on their merit. Once the most deserving projects are identified and selected, funds from the annual conservation budget will then be allocated to get the work done. Projects will be evaluated for their adherence to stated ISA priorities in conservation and education, relevance to the membership, and potential for future partnering, co-operation and collaboration with the ISA. The new approach differs somewhat from the current system. As things stand now, the officers receive a steady stream of informal funding requests throughout the year. If all the officers deem a request to be worthwhile, funds are allocated to it from the conservation budget. Eventually, the conservation budget becomes depleted during the year and the contributions stop for that year. Up to now, this process has worked reasonably well. It could bear improvement. The new system has several clear advantages: It will allow the ISA to take control of its’ charitable giving by more carefully and systematically prioritizing our contributions. It will increase the number of requests for funding, giving the ISA more choices about the way we spend our conservation budget. It will create an even higher level of transparency for our charitable giving. It will increase our visibility within the conservation community and give us a stronger leadership role in setting the conservation agenda in the state of Illinois. The new system will also have a direct impact on the average member of the ISA. More than ever, our conservation funds will be operating at the member’s behest. Keep an eye on the ISA forum discussions over the coming months. Officers and members will be discussing the ins and outs of this new system. More importantly, we will be working to define our conservation priorities. You are a vital part of that process. Who should the ISA help? What do we want to see accomplished? As in any ISA venture, its’ success depends entirely on our members. Your participation through dues, volunteerism and the Bronzeback Blowout creates the fund that does this work. This is a great opportunity to make a statement about who we are, to guide conservation work in Illinois in positive directions, and to build on the good work we’ve already done! The ISA officers have some specific ideas about the kinds of grants we would like to fund. Here are a few of them. Projects that focus on conservation of whole ecosystems with smallmouth bass being an important part of those ecosystems Projects that involve ISA members directly through participation or at least indirectly by having membership support Projects that are integrated into the conservation community and have evidence of support elsewhere such as matching funds What do you think the ISA should be supporting?

How's this... Upon returning to a fishing companion's vehicle with wet waders and the intention of driving to another fishing location nearby, man shall avoid creating a wet spot on the seat by pushing his waders down to his knees. A variance is granted for vehicles with a peculiar smell.

Hi Mike. Nice list! Flyfishing huh? I don't know, man. I'm awfully immature. I might even have to slow down and enjoy myself if I took up flyfishing. Not only that, the feeble and frail run away screaming when they see my fly casting technique (and some of them still don't escape without injury)...But, yeah, to learn my way around the Kank, I might even be willing to grow up a little bit. That's a very generous offer and I'm definitely going to take you up on it. Heh. Catch fish, catch hell. It's all good.

EPA site with press coverage of pharmaceutical releases in wastewater up to 2004 http://www.epa.gov/esd/chemistry/ppcp/media.htm Toxic effects of wastewater on fish http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/links/doi....1997.tb01969.x Effects of surfactants on wastewater toxicty http://md1.csa.com/partners/viewrecord.php...p;setcookie=yes Discussion of Eurpean bans on surfactants http://pubs.acs.org/hotartcl/est/97/jul/euro.html I've had the opportunity to go through the EPA data for stream water quality in Illinois and I can say a few things about general trends. I have had the experience of being called out for saying relatively innocuous things about potential wastewater effects, so I’ll have to be careful here but some things are obvious enough to point out without getting sued. Typical plants are releasing millions of gallons of waste water a day. Contaminant levels from wastewater plants increase during the summer because waste releases remain constant and water from rainfall drops due to higher rates of evapotransporation. More people means more wastewater, so places with a dense population like Chicago area streams almost always behave this way. In addition to the contaminants discussed above, treated sewage can also have microbes and some of those are pathogenic. Chlorine is often added to eliminate these, but sometimes has the effect of inducing dormancy rather than lethality. Miles downstream the level of chlorine is diluted and the microbes can re-emerge from dormancy and cause problems. Ultra violet light treatment appears to be more effective in killing microbes. I have no problem wet wading or taking my kids to wet wade in clean streams like the Middle Fork of the Vermilion. I would not wet wade in the Chicago area (although to do field work, I’m often immersed in contaminated water anyway) and I would not wet wade anytime I smell that sickly sweet treated sewage smell. If you have been on streams for any period of time, you have probably learned to identify that. I believe it comes from perfumes in the household products that get flushed through the plant.

Yep.

Lures hitting the water isn't the first thing I think of when I hear a splash in Chicago...cement galoshes maybe...but not lures. ...and don't insult my grandmother that way. Here's my experience fishing with my kids, Mark. This one will fish with me... This one thinks I'm an idiot.... And yeah, it's the same kid 2 years apart. They sure get smarter as they get older.

Actually, wow, what an avalanche of great information. Let's see...how much of this fits me... 1. Fish more. Yeah, 5 smallie trips this year and it doesnt' look like it's going up from there...minus a new wife, fewer kids, less community work and a bout in the unemployment line. That's going to be about it. 2. Fish high water. This one still rocks my world. The only fish I've EVER caught in high water were at the clear water seams along feeder creeks. Some day I'm going to try this, but I may have to get liquored up first. 3. Fish systems with bigger fish. Yes. Definitely. Everyone invite me to your best spots, I'm ready to go. Pay no attention to that GPS unit in my back pocket. 4. Bigger lures. I've got my bacon-sugar-glowstick mouse and I'm ready to go. Maybe if that doesn't work I can switch back to a storm swim bait or white spinner bait. 5. Softer presentations and hit my targets. I might be doing well enough here. Mark H. and Steve J. have seen me cast. Hopefully they can testify that I usually hit the water or at least something or someone close to the water. I'm also great at catching canoes. I do get lazy feathering casts sometimes. 6. Stand and wait when arriving at a fishing hole. This one is new to me. I'm big into stealth and long casts, but I like the idea of letting a the fish resettle once you arrive...hmmm.... 7. Fish large live bait. I do have those circle hooks left over from redfish fishing on the gulf... 8. Learn to lie more proficiently. Did I say 13"? I'm sure I meant 18". 9. Fish deeper water. I buy the deep water premise. But I also recognize that big fish wander a bit as well. Steve Jordan pulled a 19.5" fish out of the same water where I was scoring dinks this year...and it looked like it came out of 2' of water or less. I've seen the same thing on stream surveys. Most of the big fish are deep, but quality cover can lure them into skinny water. 10. Ask the ISA when you're stuck. Wow. Great input!

OK, I'm...writing that one down... ...wrap mouse in bacon, cover with sugar...insert glow stick... Where do you put the hook?

Scott and Jonn, thanks for the responses and I totally buy what you're saying as a general rule. But...how about this for a twist. This year my experience was the exact opposite. All the "bigger" fish I caught were on smaller baits. I know that's backward, but that's what happened. The bigger baits would produce a dink here and there but not much of real size. The small baits produced the dinks (and more of them), and then most of the 12 and 13 inchers showed up too. I'll rarely be in a fishable site wider than 50'. In the past I've felt the splash and action of casting a larger bait "overwhelms" these streams and the potential to spook them was high. So...I hit them quick with smaller baits and then move on. The way I normally fish is run and gun, targeting active fish in prime habitat and then moving on if the bite doesn't show up after 6 or 8 casts. If something hits, I'll settle in and fish a spot for a while, but the big fish are usually the 1st or 2nd ones caught out of a hole, and often on the 1st or 2nd cast. It's not uncommon for me to cover two miles of stream wading, skippping over shallow runs with limited cover. Would I still have done better to just stick with the larger baits and held out for the more substantial fish? Maybe plastics are the answer? I gotta be missing something...

So we're most of the way through the "big-fish" season now and it's becoming clear to me that I am stuck in a rut. I've had a couple of fair days fish-wise on the Vermilion drainage this year, but my biggest fish this year was 13". Size-wise, this is my worst year in the last 3. Granted, water conditions kept me out of a couple of my favorite spots, but I'm looking at Steve Jordan's results on the same water and thinking I have definitely missed something. Lures that attracted solid fish in the 14"-16" range in the past (small rapalas and #2 Mepps Anglia primarily) are robbing the cradle this year. Where are the big fish?? This looks like a question for the ISA... What strategies do you use when only the dinks show up to bite?

I don't remember the ones he mentioned specifically, Mark....let me get back to you on that one. He focused on them for a big part of the talk, though. I'll check the abstracts. Maybe it's in there.

The treatment plants clean up some things and don't get others. They are a vast improvement over what we had before (nothing), and we have had huge improvements in streams since sewage treatment became the law...but caffiene, endocrine disrupters (yes, oral contraceptives), surfactants and other things go right through the plants we have now. Apparently in Europe they're talking about a "super-oxidation" processes that completely destroys all organic molecules before they're re-released back into streams. There was a talk about ground water in St. Louis as well. Apparently 20% of test wells in that area contained caffiene. Think about that a minute.

Mike, I was a speaker at Water 2006 last week and a speaker there indicated that these kinds of intesex fish are showing up downstream of waste-water treatment plants wherever scientists have looked for them. He didn't have any cases from Illinois, but the cause (endocrine distrupters from birth control etc.) is present here so these things are likely to be happening. The stream he studied in Colorado where this was happening with white sucers was pristine except for the wastewater being put into it.

Al...in Louisiana, we would use a dead chicken supended on a stout hook a foot and a half over the water...bring a pistol when you go check the bait.

Amazing shot, Gary! What a cool post!

This one's in the Little Vermilion... You can't see the deer crossing the ice very well, but it's still a nice picture of one of my favorite places.

Nice fish, Steve! That's the biggest spotted bass I've seen from the Salt Fork in a while. I've been there 3 times recently and it's beginning to sink in that these fish might still need a subtle presentation. I did well with a #1 mepps, then it was slow the next week when I was throwing the #2. I went back tonight and switched to #1...and suddenly I'm landing decent fish again. The smaller plastic crayfish imitation also outfished the larger one.

Fortunately, although I don't get paid to do this specific thing, this is part of my work so I'll be there unless some emergency pops up. I do hope some more people can make it. My son helped me drain pond experiments when he was 5. That's something he still remembers.

If you can make this, Trent's a super guy and pond draining is a truly interesting activity. Along with all the bass, the pond tends to be full of interesing animals. ...well worth the trip if you can make it.

Thanks for the heads-up, Jim. I saw a talk today about Asian Carp. It looks like they might be using phermones to attract them toward traps soon. There was also a report about efforts underway in Illinois to make them into pet food and food for inmates. The speaker said they taste good... ...I remember some people being skeptical about that before. Has anyone tried one yet?