What I sent Dale for Wednesday.
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The story in my head is four to five times longer than this. It involves observations of other fishermen, none of them positive, conversations with a few that I ran into, all positive, and the step-by-step observations I make while wandering down a creek.
This is the short version, it will do.
I have yet to throw a lure in the Fox River this year. A far cry from year's past where by now I've made numerous trips to the river and pictures show that I've done well at times. Not interested yet. Seems like more work than I care to put in right now.
Instead I've been waiting on the creeks. I've always spent time in them this time of year, but this year I'm curious about the effects last year's drought may have had on them. We really haven't had that much water so far this year and the creeks are already low. It's still early in the year, we'll have to wait and see.
Saturday I spent a half hour in one. The results were the same as last week. Completely devoid of life. This is the latest I've seen the creeks go with nothing to show. The predators won't move in till the different carp and sucker species move in, along with the minnows. The predators feast on the carp and sucker eggs and the minnows. There's a reason brighter colors work in the creeks this time of year. Google carp and sucker spawn.
I've been keeping an eye on three other creeks. So far they're all behaving the same.
Sunday I went pond hopping. There's a series of four ponds I like to fish. Three of them hold decent populations of gills, crappie and largemouth. Two weeks ago the two deeper ponds were 90% ice covered. Only the shallow pond was open. They're now all open. Though fish could be seen in the deeper ponds, the fish were noncommittal.
The shallow half of the shallow pond was where the fish were hanging out, nothing in the deeper end. Wound up catching a dozen largemouth and a crappie and the bite from all of them was still a bit tentative.
The ten day forecast shows that after Wednesday there will be no more nights below freezing. This is what's needed. The water has been ice cold. I have a feeling next week I'll start seeing fish in the creeks and from then on, I'll be following them up stream.
I'm also predicting that in the next two weeks the dam on Blackberry Creek will be gone. The timing on this couldn't be more perfect.
http://waterdogjournal.com/2013/03/31/b ... g-isnt-it/