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Four hours of fishing starting at sunrise.
Montgomery, high water, crap plant fishing.
Yes, I can wade in water at 3200 cfs cause I know this stretch like the back of my hand.
First hour, 45 smallies landed.
Four hours later, 124 smallies landed.
Figure missing one for every two landed, probably more.
I needed it that morning.
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I haven't been out fishing since Labor Day weekend. It used to be rare that I would go for such a long stretch without getting out. But now it's become the norm.
It didn't help that just the week before the river was flowing at near record levels. Certainly the highest I had seen it in the 12 years I've been fishing it. I almost went out fishing at this spot in Montgomery when the river was flowing at it's peak, which measured just a hair under 20,000 cubic feet per second.
I have this self destructive urge to see nature at it's most violent.
I've fished this spot at some pretty high water in the past and really didn't think much of it, even after one episode where I nearly got swept under a log jam. I'm still trying to get the crap stains out of my waders after that one, and it's been over a year. But, after driving along the river when it was at it's peak, I decided it would be best if I passed on this type of high water fishing.
It was a wise decision. I don't have too many of those.
Sometimes a good day of fishing can be attributed to the skills and observations of the fisherman. In twelve years, even though my time on the water has been drastically reduced, I've averaged about 100 days a year wading the Fox or one of its tributaries. That's 1200 times in 12 years.
You would have to be an idiot to not learn something after doing it 1200 times.
But then sometimes a good day of fishing can be attributed to pure dumb luck. Dumb luck that puts you in the right spot at the right time. My skills and observations over the past twelve years were telling me that the conditions were ideal for fishing the Montgomery crap plant. It was pure dumb luck that I actually got to go.
The first bit of dumb luck is having a 13 year old daughter that has better things to do than hang out with her dad every other weekend. That's what happens with divorce and visitation. The parent gets to decide. Do I make her show up no matter what? Or when a phone call is placed on Friday afternoon and she's asking if she can go to sleep overs with friends all weekend, do I let her go be a 13 year old girl and hang out with friends. I choose to treat it like I never left. Go be a kid. I tell her and her older sister to never feel guilty about having other things to do. And I let them know that at their age, I barely recall having conversations with my parents let alone hanging out with them.
So I suddenly found myself with Saturday morning free.
The second bit of dumb luck was having strained my back a week earlier. It hadn't hurt that bad in a long time and it didn't seem to want to go away as quickly as it usually does. This made walking on anything but level ground extremely difficult. Every little misstep sent a jolt of pain down my leg and up my spine to the base of my skull.
With this sudden free fishing time I had available, my first thought was to go hit Little Rock Creek in the northwest corner of Kendall County. But the terrain there could hardly be considered level ground. I joked with my wife about how to find me if something went wrong. She joked back by saying, trust me, I'm not coming to find you.
So even though it was a good half mile hike to the river, at least it was relatively level. So crap plant fishing it was.
Like I said, pure dumb luck got me there.
At high water you basically have 3 choices if you want to get out fishing the Fox River.
You can walk the shore line, casting downstream as tight as possible to the shore and reeling back as slow as possible. This bores me to tears and I'd rather not fish if I can't get in the water. Even if it's just off the shore. But you will catch fish if you choose to do it this way.
You can go fish one of the many creeks that feed into the Fox. They come back down to normal much faster than the river. This was true this day. I had already done some scouting to prove my point.
Last is the clear water outflow of a treatment plant. You can then follow that clear water down stream continuing to fish the line between the muddy river and the clear outflow.
That's what I chose to do. I was glad that I had made the wise decision of not going out to this spot when the river was at it's highest. The wall I walk on to get to the fishing spot is about a foot wide and about four feet high. The water was flowing less than a foot from the top, making the water a little over 3 feet deep where it usually flows ankle deep this time of year.
The highest the water has been in this stretch when I've fished it puts the water ankle deep on top of the wall. I thought that was a lot of water. Right up against the wall is a tall chain link fence that follows along the river. The debris line, all the junk stuck to the fence from the high water the week before, showed that the river had come up three to four feet above the top of the wall. A wise decision to not go fishing here at high water, but I would have liked to see this close up. But even that probably would have been pretty stupid.
I hadn't fished here myself in quite some time and I knew that with the near record high water, nobody else had fished here recently either. When the wall ends, you have to hike a narrow path on the shore. The hike along the shore proved me right about the lack of fishermen, not a single foot print in the muddy shore. Not only that, the usual well worn path was over grown, which meant that even before the flood, not many had bothered fishing here.
For years I had been telling people about fishing this stretch, especially under these conditions. Between the guiding, fishing classes, and the seminars I've put on, easily 200 fishermen knew about this spot. They must all be busy and not get out much anymore.
I knew for sure I would catch a dozen fish, maybe 20 if it turned out to be a good morning. I was here at the right time. Since the water is clear, you have to be here right when the sky is just starting to get light. The sun on the clear water usually shuts the bite down.
Usually I get in the water about 100 feet upstream of the outflow, but with the river up, I didn't feel up to fighting the current yet. The shore is a good three feet higher than the clear water of the outflow, so walking directly up to it can sometimes spook the fish. But I had no choice. Luckily the sun was still just below the horizon. First cast, first fish and first fish landed. As I was releasing the fish, directly below me in the clear water was the bright belly of a large fish. At first I figured a big carp had gone belly up and settled on the bottom. But then I recognized the distinct shape of a flathead catfish. It was easily three feet long. I knew eventually I would be in the water so I decided to wait till I fished for awhile before getting in and disturbing the spot. I figured it was a dead fish, it wasn't going anywhere. Besides, it was in water three feet deep so the best I was going to be able to do was kick it around.
For the next hour I stood in the same spot, shuffling my feet back and forth to keep my legs from cramping, and landed 45 smallies. It didn't matter where in the outflow I cast, the fish were everywhere. Considering that for every two or three fish I catch, I miss one, I was having a pretty good hour of fishing.
When I finally got in the water and continued fishing, I got closer to the belly up flathead. It's fins were moving. I could see them flailing around. The water was a good three feet deep so I couldn't just reach down and flip it over. I wedged my foot against one side of the big cat and tried to turn him upright with the end of my fishing rod. It didn't work. I tried to right itself, but then just slid into deeper water, disappearing from sight.
My wife called to let me know it was now 9 A.M. I was just releasing my 74th fish and it had taken a little while to catch that one. The bite had definitely slowed, and I seriously considered leaving. I was debating in my head whether or not to continue down stream. With the higher water and my sore back I just wasn't sure I was up for it. Since I was already past the mouth of the outflow I looked down stream to size things up. In this next stretch of about 150 feet, I had never hooked into a single smallie in all the years I've been coming here. The clear water was pushed up against the shore and there was a distinct line between the two types of water. Minnows started jumping around on the mud line. A boil appeared where they were jumping. I made a long cast and caught a foot long smallie.
Damn, now I had to go down stream. If the fish were in this stretch, I was certain it would be better further down.
Two hours later, I had landed a total of 124. The bite never really did shut down completely and the fish kept hitting well after the sun was on the clear water.
The only other time I had caught over 100 smallies in one outing was on the Apple River in 2004. And that took around ten hours. I'm not sure I've ever caught more than 50 on the Fox before.
I don't think a day like this on the Fox will ever happen again.
This is the largest smallie caught at 17 inches. I guess if you want to measure to the end of that odd growth on its tail, it might measure 18 inches. I've caught this fish before, I remember the tail. I just don't remember how long ago it was.
This next smallie was only about 14 inches, but the coloring on it was quite beautiful. I kind of like the way the colors in this picture turned out and I didn't even have time to beef them up a little.
I wanted to get a picture of this junk stuck to a tree and I also wanted to see if I could wade through waist high fast water. I made it through the water and got the picture and also decided I didn't want to wade through waist high fast water any more. The first two pictures is where the junk in the third picture came from, the Nicor clean up site at North Avenue in Aurora about 4 miles away. To Nicors credit, they did a decent job cleaning up the mess they made. But, they missed a spot. I'm sure I'll find more tucked in out of the way at some point.
I wandered down stream from the treatment plant following the clear water flow that was pushed up pretty tight to the shore. Lots of new log jams blocking the flow. This spot is where I started to catch fish again. From here down for 100 feet I caught about 45 smallies and lost about 30.
If you look in the middle of the tree of this next picture you'll see a 12 foot 4X4 tucked into to it. When I got under it I couldn't reach it. It was about 8 feet up. That's how high the water was just a week earlier. Look at how the trees line this shore. It's a beautiful under cut bank.
This next shot is a closer look at the shore line. From the base of the biggest tree to the river bottom is about 2 feet down, now filled with water. You can see that the water is barely moving and this area was swarming with bait fish. The smallies were on a rampage, chasing down anything that moved.
You can tell in this next shot I'm standing under a tree right on the line of the current break. The fish were sitting from the edge of the fast water all the way to the shore on the right. Fishing under this tree is where I missed most of the fish. It was next to impossible to set the hook and I spent a fair amount of time getting my rod tip and line out of the branches.
One of the bigger fish that came from that current break.
It's about a half mile trek down the tracks to get to where I fished. I always run into deer. Occasionally a coyote, coon, possum and rabbits. And every now and then, one of these.
