Scott Ferguson

12 lures? 11 of mine are some version of a 4" Senko or sinking plastic, and the other is a walk-the-dog type of topwater (could also be a popper). Color or brand of bait is whatever I grab when I stick my hand in my tackle bag. I never saw anyone as fixated on rodents as Mike C. Get some help man.

True, if the dam was removed that area below the dam may no longer be the same as it was before. Just because the dam may be removed, that is not to say that deeper holes will be filled in afterward. It is the intention of the forest preserve district to increase suitable habitat not reduce it. If a good hole is present there now, I believe they will do their best to keep it. It is also true that the area above the dam will be changed too. There will no longer be silt covering the bottom, there will be oxygen for the fish to breathe, and smallies and other fish will be able to move upstream. Removing the dam may even open up a few holes that were not there before. There will be more habitat suitable to smallmouth. The more habitat available, the more fish the river can sustain. Even if one small spot were changed, the improvement of a much larger area of river will more than make up for it.

I've been using cheap Strike King polarized glasses from Wal Mart for years. Most of the pricey sunglasses have curved lenses but due to something with my eyes, that curve adds distortion. The flatter lenses on the inexpensive glasses work very well for me. It's funny, polarization is to me, the most important feature on sunglasses and few of the most expensive sunglasses you can buy are polarized.

Personnaly, I feel that if a big smallie was left alone and not pressured he would stay in a small area. I used to have a few "honey holes" that always produced some big fish and I'd return to those spots once every couple of weeks. Now I rarely if ever catch a big fish from those same holes. Either someone else caught and kept those fish, they just got wise and learned to avoid a big wading fisherman or they moved to a new safer spot. I'll never know for sure. On a natural lake I fish, we caught the same fish from the same spot at least 3 years in a row (he only had one eye). But we only hit that spot once a year. There was another good sized bass with a deformed upper mouth that had been caught and photographed at least 3 times in a local river from 3 different spots at least a mile apart within weeks of each other. So to answer your question, maybe he'll stay, maybe he'll move.

At no time is it ever permissable to use the term "rubber worm".

Good one Mike!

There have been published reports about the disposal of medicines down drains and how they wind up in our streams because they aren't removed from waste water plants but I haven't been able to locate any. I would like to have a good report about what's actually in treated water to show people why wet wading is not a good idea at least in rivers where treated water is being released. I've heard the resaon why the Dupage is usually so clear is that most of the water in the river came from water treatment plants.

Big fish didn't get to be big by being reckless. They are often much more wary and easily spooked. Slow down and cover one mile of stream in the time you may have spent on two miles. Move slower and be more stealthy. In small streams, fish know you're coming long before you get there. When you come to a good spot, stand still for a while and give the fish a chance to drop their guard.

Fish in or very near to the deepest water you can find. Also stay with 4 or 5 inch baits instead of 2 or 3 inches. Of course there's a chance you won't catch anything at all when you stick with big baits, but when they work... Another thing is, it might be time to switch to live bait. Again the bigger the better.

These aren't my favorite photos but they are of my favorite river, the Niagra. Although the falls are the big attraction, if you ever visit the area make sure to walk around Goat Island on the American side. The power of the Niagra River before it reaches the falls is amazing. The river downstream is sqeezed through a narrow gorge creating some major rapids.

For those of you who missed it, the ISA put together a collection of smallmouth articles into a small book called "Strategies for Stream Smallmouth" a few years ago and printed off 100 copies. Almost all of the articles had been printed in the newsletter before, we just compiled them all into one place. Maybe we'll have a few more printed up in a year or two. It's a little expensive to do a small run. Maybe we can do it as a PDF and make it available as a download off the web site.

Sorry, we sold out of that book quite a while ago.

We were fishing the large (4 to 5 inch) chubs with just a hook and a split shot. We just cast them out into areas that the guide knew usually held big fish. Most of the areas were in 6 to 11 feet of water. Some were in areas that the fish will stay in all winter and sometimes we were fishing in areas of deeper water where current was present that held fish year round. Some were near weedbeds, some near rocks. There was no consistant pattern except that the water was deeper than you might fish in summer. Thinking about it, I probably might use live bait more in the fall. I seldom use live bait and the guide, Mike Mladenik, says he never uses it except in the fall. In Illinois, I'd probably use a little bit smaller minnows., These were pretty big baits. Something you might pick if you were after northerns. The Menominee has a good number of very large bass. I suspect reason we didn't catch a lot of bass but the ones we caught were all large was because of the size of the baits. Our local rivers have fewer numbers of big fish so with smaller baits I'd probably get more fish. Here's a couple more photos from the UP

My wife Crystal and I went out with fishing guide Mike Mladenik on the Menominee River in WI on Monday September 25. Using red tail chubs, and 5 inch Senkos, we got about 25 to 30 smallies. While the numbers weren't huge, the average size was. The smallest was 15 inches. We had 3 over 19 almost all the rest were 17 or 18. I've never had a day with that many big bass. This 19.5 incher was caught on my second cast of the day. (The first cast yielded a 17) Crystal got this 19. On Thursday, we went back out with Mike Mladenik to a different part of the river, this time above a dam. It was a little slower today. 18 bass. I got 2, 19's, a couple of 18's of the rest, only 3 were less than 16 inches. I got one fish on a plastic and all the rest were on the chubs. I'm not one for live bait but when the guide says that's what works, who am I to argue. If I'd have stuck with plastics today, I wouldn't have gotten much. I tried several types of plastics even while I had another rod with the bait in the water. The big red tails were the ticket. Tuesday and Wednesday, we went hiking in the UP. One of the hikes was 10 miles long that took us along the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore on the Lake Superior shoreline. It was a long hike for two out of shape hikers but the views were spectacular. Some of these cliffs are 200 feet high. The trail wove along the edge of these cliffs for 4 miles. I never knew this existed till we got here. Well worth the sore legs and feet.

Try a Case Salty Sinkin Minnow or Salty Sinkin Shad. Fluke style baits that sink like a senko. No weights needed

Since it won't stop raining around here, I'm going up to Wisconsin and try the Menominee River with Mike Mladenik and see if I can catch some of the huge bass he showed us at the Blowout.

Some of my knowledge about the DuPage comes from someone who has spent more time there than I will ever be able to. My own experience goes along with what he told me. These days, when the river is more like chocolate milk than gin, I find somplace else to fish. Is it impossible to catch fish when it's up and muddy? Of course not. But it is a lot more difficult than when the water is low and clear. So many areas are so weed choked that is seems it's never as clear as it used to be.

Baitfish on the surface means that the fish is injured or dying and therefore are an easy meal for a bass. They don't have to expend a lot of energy to get fed. Senkos are similar in that the slow fall mimics a dying baitfish that is cannot swim so it can be easily taken by predator fish. I believe that lowlight conditions are favorable to predator fish like bass because it allows them to "sneak up" more easily on prey than in the bright conditions of the afternoon when they have to have other means to conceal themselves. Again, the bass can expend less energy to catch prey during lowlight times so they feed more often when pickings are easier. On some bodies of water, fish become accustomed to sight feeding. Lake Erie is a good example. The water in Erie is generally on the clear side and walleye are used to feeding by sight. After the wind blows across the shallow waters of Erie for a couple of days, it stirs the water up, makes it cloudy, and bite shuts down. The DuPage is also like that. Rivers like the Fox are cloudy all the time so bass need to use feel to locate prey. When the water there comes up or gets dirtier, it doesn't have nearly as big an impact as it does on the DuPage. These are my theories and I'm sticking to them.

I almost said I'd use a walk-the-dog bait like a Sammy, Zara Spook or my new favorite, the Skitter Walk. All of them cast a mile and that Skitter Walk is the easiest bait to walk that I've ever used. Current is not always your friend with walk-the-dog baits so if I had to tie it on before I got in the water... But, I had to add the confidence factor which tipped in the Pop-R's favor.

You're all fighting for second place. The set-up, very early morning, in the summer and it has to happen in 10 minutes dictates a PopR topwater. I got a 20 incher last year in exactly these same conditions (except for the waist deep in a river part). Topwater baits will call fish in from a long distance and in low light conditions, the bass have an easy time finding a noisy bait silhouetted against the sky. Given the short amount of time, unless you threw it right on the head of a smallie, livebait just can't cover water quickly enough to put the odds in your favor. If he was already next to the eddie, Gary might have a good chance. Of course if he was 100 yards away it could take 10 minutes to get there. And Jude's floating Rapala acts like a top water except that it's not as noisy. Yeah, I'll go with the popper.

This thread is not at all what I was expecting.

Golf isn't complicated. Hit the ball, find it, hit it again. It is expensive though. You don't often have to pay to fish a good section of river but a good golf course will cost plenty.

We've been teasing Rich for years about buying a computer with a shift key. To see how much of an effect it had, just look at the post above this one.

If you're getting out the ruler to measure a 6 inch bass, it either means ...actually it don't know what it means, but I'd have to say some kind of therapy should be considered.

The problem with waterproof cases is that they not only cost a considerable amount, but they also make what was a small camera pretty bulky. Not a great thing to be carrying while wading. If you plan on doing any scuba diving or snorkeling, it might be something to think about as I'm sure you can take these cases to lower depths than you can the waterproof cameras that are only good to about 5 feet under water.