asherman

I have a pair of lightly used, Canadian made Sorel Dominator boots for sale. You will not find warmer boots for ice fishing. You literally cannot buy boots like this anymore, as Sorel has moved most production overseas. These have thick wool felt linings and were rated at 100 degrees below zero. Boots like this have sold on Ebay for over $100. I am selling mine for $80 including shipping. I can email you a photo if you are interested.

Unless you are willing to drive to Chicago Fly Fishing outfitters in Chicago, which is an excellent fly shop, you pretty much need to order online except for the limited basic stuff that you can find at Cabelas or Bass Pro Shop. Taking classes is a great idea that will not only help you to learn how to tie, but you will also learn what tools that you need/want to buy. In my opinion, your toughest initial decision is what type of vise to start with. The best thing to do is to borrow one to make sure that you really like tying. If you buy an cheap starter vise and really like tying, the chances are good that you want to quickly replace your inexpensive vise. That is what happened to me. Chances are good that in a few short months you will start accumulating increasing amounts of feathers, hooks, and sparkly materials. Here are some links to articles about vises. Vises1 Vise2

Cory, I will be there. Alan

I use the fly rod around 80 percent of the time. I use a spinning rod for wade fishing in the early spring and late fall when I want to fish slowly with or when I am fishing with float n flies. I also use the spinning rod when I am fishing in lakes.

Float N Fly fishing is pretty simple. Any fixed float that suspends the jig will work. I have Power Pro line on most of my spinning rods, so I use an eight to ten feet leader of 8 pound test fluorocarbon leader at the end of my line. Mono would work just as well. A longer rod works better than a shorter rod, because the longer rod makes it easier to keep the line off of the water which means better control of the float and the jig. Last year I pulled the cobwebs off of my old nine foot noodle rod and it worked well. Some of the best results that I have had with the Float N Fly have occurred when I found deep pools or eddies where I could keep the float/jig stationary and twitch it.

I would love to get my hands on the new rods that will be available to cast. Unfortunately, I have to work on Saturday. Bummer.

Having a large number of skilled anglers pound a shallow river for several days while keeping the fish in baskets would have to have a negative effect on the fishery, both short term and long term. It is just a matter of how bad the negative effects would be. I certainly would not want to be fishing that river right after the tournament ended. I fish for relaxation and to enjoy the company of my buddies when I'm fishing. I also enjoy the challenge of figuring out what it takes to to catch the fish. Competitive fishing sounds more like work than fun to me.

If I had to pick one fly, it would be a pearl sparkle minnow.

I think that the reason that the reason the Kishwaukee river has so many dinks compared to larger fish is due to habitat as much or more so than angling pressure. I run into other bass fishermen occasionally and I have never seen a wading angler on the Kish with bass on a stringer. Much of the Kish is a slow moving, shallow river that has long sections of sand or mud stream bottom. There are not a lot of strong current areas or big riffle areas that help dissolve oxygen into the water. There are not a lot of big, deep pools that hold lots of big fish. That adds up to a less than ideal habitat when compared to the Kankakee River. I have had similar experiences when I fished the Apple river. Lots of small fish but only a few big ones. If you know where to fish in the Kish, there are places where you can catch larger bass. You just have to put in your time.

Bridges can be nasty places to wade because sand and silt and really pile up around them. I've noticed that some of the rocky sections of the Kish that I have fished recently have way less silt than there used to be. The recent high water probably moved that silt and salt to other places. I always wade with a wading staff and one of the great things about a wading staff is that it can be used as a probe to find drop offs and quicksand before you step into the abyss. I'm glad to hear that you are OK.

I've never seen a water moccasin in Northern Illinois. If one swam that close to me, I would probably get my waders wet from the inside.

Steve, I'm sorry to hear of your loss. Please accept my condolences. Alan

In my opinion, a full sinking line fished with a heavily weighted fly fished in three feet of water would be hard to handle and would give me the same results that the guy that you saw was getting, which is lots of hangups. With that setup, you have the opportunity to snag both the fly line and/or the fly. One of the advantages to using a sinking line, a sink tip line, or a sinking leader is that you can fish either an unweighted fly or a lightly weighted fly, which I think is more fun to cast than a heavily weighted fly on any type of fly line. If I felt the need to fish with 1/8 ounces of weight on the end my fishing line, I would use a spinning rod. If I wanted to bang the bottom with a fly rod in three feet of water, I would either use a weighted fly (certainly less than 1/8 ounce)with a long leader and floating fly line or a lightly weighted fly fished with a five to seven foot sink tip leader (or sink tip fly line). I would save the full sink fly lines for deeper water.

Unfortunately, my plans have changed and I will not be able to make it on Saturday. I will have to get my Kish fishing done on Sunday.

Count me in. Alan

I have a Cortland stripping basket that I bought to use for fishing from small boats in Canada. The basket works well for that application, where it helps a lot in preventing the fly line from getting tangled in various parts of the boat. I have not used the basket as much as I should in other still water situations, such as bank fishing. When I have used it for pond fishing, it has worked well to keep the line from getting tangled in rocks and weeds. When I'm fishing in public waters such as parks or forest preserves, it makes me look more nerdy than I look already. I do possess the skill of coiling retrieved line in my left hand and I do that when I don't have a stripping basket, but it does not work as well as a stripping basket.

Don, My suggestion would be to go to one of the LL Bean stores and buy a pair of LL Bean brand wading boots. After you wear out your new boots in one or two trips like you seem to do, just take them back to the store and they will replace them. LL Bean has replaced my boots twice.

Mike, There are some good trout streams within 90 minutes of the Dells in Marquette and Waushara counties, which are to the northwest of the Dells. The Sand Country streams in that area are pretty unique, with slow moving, crystal clear water and sand stream bottoms. If you decide to fish there, take a short fly rod or practice your roll casting, because these streams have overgrown banks. PM me if you want more information.

The South branch of the Kish has risen over six feet in the last day and is still rising. It will be a while before anyone is going to be able to fish there. I'm going to check into the rental rates for an ark. I might need it.

Due to the rain and high water, the Cast and Compare outing has been canceled. According to John, the rising water on the Fox at the Glenwood forest preserve is creeping well up into the park. We will let you know when this event is re-scheduled. Alan

Buying a standard depth finder and making your own mounting setup with a board (I use a piece of aluminum bar stock) and a C clamp works great if you are fishing from a vessel with a transom. The suction cups that come with portable often do not stick well to the transoms of boats that have anything but perfect surfaces. If you are fishing from a canoe, using the bar and c clamp mount may or may not work, depending upon the canoe. I have found that the suction cup mount, though not perfect, works well on a canoe. A canoe is not moving fast enough to have the force of the water dislodge the suction cup like it does on a boat with a motor. I like the suction cup mount for canoeing because it is quick and easy to remove the transducer when you have to paddle or drag a canoe through rocks or anything that could damage the transducer. If you make your own mounting system, make sure that you include some type of small rope or cable to secure your transducer mount to the boat just in case the mounting bracket or transducer gets disconnected from the boat.

I'm not sure if there are any smallmouth bass in the Des Plaines, but I have seen northern pike stranded in puddles after the river has flooded around Wheeling and Mount Prospect. I have seen people catch carp and bluegill out of the river, too.

Last summer, I sent my well used Simms Guide weight waders to Simms because the seam between the neoprene booties and the Gore Tex legs was leaking. The waders were pretty old, but Simms waders are supposed to have a lifetime guarantee on the workmanship. I sent the waders to Simms and their response was to charge me forty four dollars for replacing the neoprene feet. My waders were pretty old, but I figured that it was worth it to have the waders repaired so I could use them as spares. I didn’t wear the repaired waders last year (I used my spare pair), but wore them twice this year to make sure that the repair was OK. Both times, I noticed that the repaired neoprene boot seam area was stiff and had some spots where the material was bunched up. The bunched up areas caused the waders to dig uncomfortably into my shin due the pressure from my gravel guards. The second time that I wore the waters this year, I noticed that the neoprene foot seam was leaking in pretty much the same spot where it was leaking the first time that I sent them in. I called Simms repair department to find out how they were going to handle this, because I didn’t want to send the waders in a second time. The response from the person in the repair department was that I should use Simms web site to get another return authorization number and I should send the waders in again to have the feet repaired again. I was not .pleased with that response. First of all, I did not want to pay to ship my waders to Simms a second time because this time it was Simms fault that the repair did not work. I also did not have a warm and fuzzy feeling that my waders would be any better the second time around. I figured that I might have wasted fifty dollars or so on getting my old waders repaired. I started thinking about buying a different brand of waders. Before I pulled the trigger on buying some different waders, I decided that it might be worth sending Simms customer service an email that detailed what had happened. I sent the email to Simms in the morning, and during my lunch break the same day, I received a call from the head of customer service at Simms. He told me that he was not happy with the response of the repair person that I had spoken to and he apologized for what had happened. I was given the opportunity to buy a new pair of wader at a significant discount. I jumped at the offer and ordered a pair of G3 waders. I was pleased that Simms had made this offer and I told the customer service manager that I was happy that they had done what they needed to do to keep a satisfied customer. I guess the moral of this story is that if you have a bad customer service experience with one person at a company, don’t make the assumption that the whole company is like that.. It is worth your time to contact someone else that might have a different approach on what it takes to properly take care of a customer’s problem.

I've been fishing some sections of the south branch of the Kishwaukee river going on twenty years. From my viewpoint, smallmouth bass populations have fluctuated quite a bit over that time. When I first started fishing there, the river was recovering from a big fish kill. Initially, I started catching just a few small fish but after a few years, the size of fish increased and so did the numbers. There were a few years of poor fishing, but for quite a few years, the fishing was very good with numerous 40 fish days. Around five or six years ago, the Kish seemed to full of smaller bass, but I wasn't catching many big fish, except in the fall. Three or four years ago, the average size of bass that I caught went from up from around 8 inches to 12 inches with some nice big ones in the mix. The numbers were pretty good, but there were no forty fish days. The past two years have not been great. I have caught a some decent fish, but the numbers have been down,especially with smaller fish. When I fish spots that have always held good numbers of smaller smallmouth bass in addition to rock bass and I only catch a few, I know that something is up with the fishery. I think that the floods have had a lot to do with the decline in the fishery. There is hope, though, because the high water has cleaned the silt out of some rocky areas, which should be good for the fishery.

My daughter is going to be spending the summer at the University of Illinois in Champaign. I'm thinking about driving in from Chicago and arranging a father/daughter fishing trip. Can anybody that has fished the Middle Fork give me an idea of whether the river can be fished by wading or if a canoe or some other type of water craft is necessary to fish that river? It looks like there are canoe rentals available for some sections of the river. Any information would be appreciated. Thanks, Alan Sherman