Erik

Really great competition this time. Was fun to keep track of..unfortunately for me, from the bottom.  Congrats to Colin, Eric, and John for putting up some truly awesome scores. Just about everyone had really respectable scores though. Unfortunately for me, I didn't have a ton of time to fish and the stretches of the Fox I fished weren't very productive when I did have time. That's fishing though sometimes! I believe there's another in October for any who missed out this time. I won't have any more time to fish this time around, so I think i'm gonna sit this one out. 

Congrats on the Tourney win and thanks for the kind words, Eric! Means alot coming from the best on the Fox in my humble opinion. It was fun and I really did put in the best effort I could. Those bump boards really have a way of humbling you..fish I would swear were 18+ only measure 16! 

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They've been in the river at least since the early 80's. When they were designing the water treatment plant I work at, they had to take this into consideration. If they get into our process, they can do alot of damage.

Very interesting, thanks for sharing! They very briefly mention the Fox in Illinois and I have heard a tracking study was done years ago..this reminds me to try to track that down again.

Reading about Eric's continued success on the Fox, I keep going out to the St. Charles pool. Much to my frustration, my results are only 5% of Eric's. However, another regular out there told me about seeing schools of shad recently. I saw my first one yesterday, a mature gizzard shad. It was about 8 inches, upper jaw longer than lower jaw, blueish patch on the shoulder, dark spot had disappeared. I'm assuming that this is a recent development in the Fox. Am I off base? I curious what others think about the impact of this species on the river.

Yes, the gizzard shad do seem to be a recent addition to the Fox. I first started seeing them in 2008 and at the time I had a conversation with a gentleman who has been fishing the river a very long time. He claims to have never seen any in all his years until recently. I believe The last survey (2007) shows them being present in very small numbers. as far as impact, I really have no idea but I would think they would be beneficial as forage.

I work at the Drinking water plant in Elgin. My boss has asked them to notify us in the event of an untreated release...as of yesterday (2/26) he hadn't heard anything. This doesn't necessarily mean anything because they have failed to notify us in the past, and they are a little downstream of us. We get notified of untreated releases of wastewater Upstream of our plant pretty frequently. I believe they are required by the EPA to notify us. You guys would be suprised how often this happens. Algonquin and C'ville have done it frequently in the almost 10 years I've worked there. Usually during heavy rainfall or snow melt.

This was alluded to in the poll topic on spawning and something I've been wondering about the last couple years. It seems the high water would open up some new habitat and make some of the usual spawning habitat unusable due to higher flow. Would Smallies use the new habitat the higher water opened up, or do they always return to the same areas? Can we expect some not so great year-classes from the last 2-3 years on our local rivers?

If you want to stay within your 100$ range Shimano Compre's are nice. As of two years ago they also came with a warranty...not sure if they still do?

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I had heard of the ISA previously, though. Great organization and I love the site! Not sure what took me so long!