Last weekend in March, second weekend in April.
By the time the colder weather of November settles in, I'm wrapping up fishing for the year. I've become a warm weather fisherman. At least it seems that if it gets below 40 degrees, I have no interest in standing around in water anymore.
Since I don't ice fish, I've given up on winter fishing all together. I've been out enough in December, January and February over the years to know that I can go target fish. The warmth of my house keeps me from venturing out into the rivers and creeks. The pleasures of walking on shore line ice shelves, dropping from them down into icy waters and wading around the river are no more.
When March rolls around, if the weather is cooperating and starts warming things up, I once again start thinking of getting out some where. This year March was pretty much as miserable as the rest of the winter. Cold and snow, too much snow at times, was putting a lot of water into the river and that water was cold. The Fox came up to high flood levels and the bulk of it was coming from the snow melt north of Elgin and into Wisconsin. The river itself was basically unapproachable. The creeks on the other hand were all in fine shape and on the last weekend in March I decided to go check one out. I have to get out at least once in March no matter what the conditions.
I decided to go check out Somonauk Creek, the creek that is dammed off to create Lake Holiday. The creek on the upstream side of the lake gets fish runs of all species in the spring and it's a matter of being there at the right time. Everything is temperature driven when it comes to spring fishing and I had a feeling that the last weekend of a cold March was too soon to see anything happen.
DeKalb County has a forest preserve called Sannauk on Route 34 that makes access to the creek very easy. Wading the stretch that runs through the forest preserve is easy until you get close to Lake Holiday. The flow of the creek then pretty much stops and deepens, making it impossible to get too close to the lake. I hit this area a couple of times in spring of 2007 at just the right time. White bass, crappie, bluegills, largemouth and smallmouth were all in the creek. I did notice that if the water was a little stained, the fish were a lot less spooky and much easier to catch.
This time I was too early. The water was cold and clear and completely devoid of fish. I waded over a quarter mile of it and didn't get a tap. The nice part was that I had the whole preserve to myself for about 2 hours. Never even saw another car in any of the parking lots. That kind of solitude was exactly what I was looking for that day.
I decided to go to the down stream dam side of the creek to see if any fish were moving around in that stretch. At the dam were 3 other fishermen. They were standing on the rock bar just down from the dam and casting into the pool below the dam. I could see they were catching nothing. I headed downstream from the road to see if anything was staging further down. On the way I took the water temperature, it was 44 degrees. Not quite where I wanted it. I realized I had forgot to get the temperature of the water running into the lake, it would have been interesting to compare the two.
Another hour of wandering, casting and checking out water produced nothing. It was exactly what I expected, so I wasn't all that disappointed. Just a little cold. The warm home was sounding good.
I knew I wasn't going to be able to get out for another two weeks and I was hoping that the weather would start to cooperate in that stretch of time. I was being far too optimistic. Just the opposite happened. It got cold, snowed, sleeted and rained from up into Wisconsin to south of I-80. The river shot up to even higher levels and stretches north of Elgin were closed to boat traffic. With the bulk of the new flow being snow melt from up north, I assumed the water was cold.
Though it had a week to calm down before I got out, more than a week was needed. It never warmed up and the river level didn't come down much. I looked over my usual creeks and though they were a little high, no big deal. I planned my second trip for the year to be back at Somonauk Creek. I knew by then, regardless of conditions, some fish would be moving around.
Time came to get out fishing and on that day I found myself between Oswego and Montgomery, near the crap plant I like to fish. It had been a good five or six months since my last trip here and I decided at the last minute to give it a try. I had already driven past the stretch I normally wade across and knew that stepping into the river would be suicidal. I've also given up on walking across the rail road tracks. Not because I care one way or another if its safe. In Yorkville I live just above those same tracks and I've pretty much memorized the schedule. I know when to stay off the tracks. Not because it's illegal, I don't give the legality of accessing fishing spots much thought. I go wherever I want until someone tells me not to. Which in twelve years has only happened once.
I don't walk the tracks anymore mainly because other fishermen read what I do then go do it themselves. I don't care if they get arrested doing this, that's there problem. But I would feel pretty bad if some knucklehead got themselves run over by a train based on information I had given out. At least I think I would feel pretty bad.
Looking across the river from the east side, I could see that the wall on the west side that I normally walk on was under water in a couple of spots. That meant that if I fell into the river the water would be almost up to my armpits. Considering that the water was flowing just above 6000 cubic feet per second, this meant one wrong stop would have me tumbling down the river. And as well as I know the river and get cocky about stepping into it at high water, the possibility of that one step being possibly fatal had me hesitate. For about a millisecond. I drove around to the west side, parked under the Route 30 bridge and hiked the tracks down to the river.
I've walked the wall on the west side numerous times, night and day, high and low water. I don't remember ever walking it when the water was this high. Walking through the water was a little unnerving, but I knew the wall and how wide it was so I was soon stepping along like any other time. I stopped a couple of times and vertical jigged in some likely calmer water spots. At high water like this the fish will most likely be tucked into the shore in spots like that. But when you're heading to a spot where you're likely to catch a fish on the first or second cast, high water dabbling loses some of its luster and I skipped over quite a few likely spots to get to the outflow.
The water at the outflow was higher than I had ever seen it. Even at high water I'm used to standing next to the shore in water up to my waist and combing the area. Today getting in the water was impossible. It was probably shoulder deep. Part of the shore I normally walk on was under a half a foot of water. I stood on the edge of the dry shore and caught a smallie on the second cast. I would wind up catching 17 smallies and 1 white bass in the hour and a half of fishing I would do with the two biggest smallies measuring 16 and 17 inches.
I started out using what I had tied on. I've switched to using plain unpainted lead head jigs and I had a small pearl twister threaded on to the hook. This caught me about ten smallies relatively quickly plus I was losing one fish for every one I landed. When the bite on the pearl twister died, I put on a pumpkinseed twister with a chartreuse tail. When the bite died again I put on a small green helgramite and caught a couple more.
In the middle of catching these fish I decided to stand on the part of the shore that was slightly sloped and under a few inches of water. My feet immediately went out from under me like I had just stepped out onto wet ice. I landed hard on my back and stopped myself from sliding any further by grabbing onto the grass next to me. I thought getting up would be easy until I started sliding closer to the edge of the shore. I knew it was a straight drop down into water up to my armpits, so this wasn't good. I was slowly sliding into the river and flailing my arms and legs like a turtle on its back. On my right was a concrete wall with a fence on it. I was able to reach up and grab the wall to stop the sliding then reach further to grab the fence. When you can't get any traction with your feet, hauling yourself across slippery mud while laying on your back is much harder than you would think.
When the bite died after a couple of catches on the helgramite, I called it quits. The sun was coming through the clouds and that always shuts down the fishing. The outflow water is crystal clear and the fish don't seem to like the sunlight. Eighteen fish in a couple of hours wasn't a bad way to start the season. I knew I wasn't going to get out again for almost two weeks. If the weather behaves, I'll be hitting a couple of creeks. The fish will have to be there by then.