How many fish you caught tells you how you did for the day. I caught a dozen fish. I caught A fish.
But how many you missed tells you what the potential for the outing was.
Say you go out for a couple of hours and land one smallie. That sucks for you. No matter how you look at it that was a pretty bad day of fishing. In that two hours lets say you did not have a single other hit. Well, that really sucks for you. That's about as bad a day of fishing you could possibly have. Unless you were out those two hours, didn't catch a thing and also didn't have a single other hit.
Those days happen.
Say you go out for a couple of hours, land one smallie and get hits from 20 more. The type of hits that almost rip the rod from your hand. Fish take you for rides all up and down the river. Fish come flying 3 feet out of the water and spit your lure back at you. The same fish hits the lure 3 times as you slowly reel it back.
That still sucks for you, but the potential for your outing went up dramatically. You just potentially had a tremendous two hour stretch of fishing. You're just clueless on how to set a hook. Practice doesn't always make perfect.
For the past three and a half years I've lived a two minute walk from the river. Directly across from my closest access point is the mouth of Blackberry Creek. Before I lived here I used to drive from Elmhurst just to fish this stretch. Now I hardly ever fish it. A couple of years ago I had this idea that a few times a week after work I would walk over to the boat launch near Route 47 and wade down to the small creek near me. I wanted to at least mentally document how the fishing changed every week from April into November.
Problem is, I don't really like this stretch of the river. It's beautiful enough, especially as you get down around the islands. But I was never convinced the fishing was all that good. Something about the cover and structure.
So this year I more or less decided to try this experiment in the area above Orchard Road. I drive by here on my way home from work every day. On a good day I'm at Orchard and the river by 6:15 and suited up and making my first cast a quarter mile up stream around 6:30. The cover and structure along this stretch holds a lot more fish than down in Yorkville. And virtually nobody goes there.
At least once a week I've stopped here since May. The results have been what I expected up until July and then things just died. I was having those days of one caught fish and one missed fish almost through August. I would have the potential for up to two hours to have a potentially good trip. Then the fish would prove me wrong. That sucked for me.
I knew that eventually the fish would turn back on and I wanted to see when. That is part of the hundreds of other things I pay attention to on the river. Water levels, air temperatures, water temperatures, water clarity, bait fish activity, wildlife along the river activity, humidity levels, what does the sky look like.
Speaking of that. It was pretty nice on Thursday.
On this day the potential for a good hour and a half trip was high. The deer were on the rail road tracks. Chipmunks were hurrying in front of me to get out of my way. Hawks and great horned owls were looking for rodents. More birds than I could identify were feasting over the river on the big bug hatches coming off the water.
Fishing a 1/16th ounce plain head jig with a 1/0 hook and a 3 inch pearl Producto twister got me 7 landed smallies and 9 that did everything I described earlier above. I don't care what any one says, that is a pretty good hour and a half well spent. If I had a clue how to keep things hooked, it would have been an even better night.
It's all in the potential.
Plus, for the past two months fishermen have been complaining how dismal the fishing has been. I've kept telling them wait till September. It will probably suck till then. Well, three days into September and the fishing trip potential has gone up.
Took one picture of one fish and it wasn't even the biggest. But it was fat. I was impressed by that. I tried to get a shot of it against the clouds and the shooting rays of the sun. I know I took a few different exposures to get the effect I was looking for. For some reason only one shot was on the camera. And that one sucks. But I'm still impressed by how fat the silhouette is, and the potential that's started for September.
