I did catch a channel cat on the 30th. My only hit of the evening. I didn't bother with a picture of it because I don't want pictures of catfish. You would think the river was dead. I fished it with a variety of plastics knowing that I would be back out the next day. That day I was going to use a variety of crank baits.

On the 31st I did get 4 big smashes. But no hook ups.

I concentrated mainly on walking around taking pictures since the fishing sucked so bad. I have pictures dating back to 2001 of this area. Before they built the Orchard Road Bridge. Following are all the pictures I pulled together. The words that go with it are all in my head for now. Maybe a winter project. I don't fish during the winter anymore, so maybe I'll take the time to go back and expand on the short stories I've been leaving lately.

Would give me something to do.

Didn't your mother ever tell you don't play on the railroad tracks. Damn beaver just don't listen



And apparently the deer weren't paying attention either.



Last year while walking along the tracks we came across a frog that apparently didn't feel the rail vibrating under it's butt. Or hear the horn blasting since this was right at an intersection. Or hear the loud thumping of the wheels as they came closer. Then it was a little too late.



The islands on the Fox are filled with abandoned signs of how things used to be. Hunting cabins, hunting blinds that are slowly getting beat up or have disappeared in the last 8 years. These are in an order of sorts, but I'll have to fill in the story later perhaps.

Just a picture.



How it looks now.



How it used to look.





You had to get to the hunting cabins somehow. The frame of an old pick up truck. If you know this area you would be as puzzled as me as to how this thing got here. There is no easy way. Maybe there was many years ago.



And the rest of it up on shore.



This is the remnants of the concrete and block structure they used to come to. The rest of the blocks are all over the shore in the river.



In 2001 this ramshackle blind used to sit on top of the old concrete structure.



That year, on Thanksgiving weekend, I caught a hunter going out to use it. It never was a sanctioned IDNR blind, but that didn't seem to stop anyone. Orchard Road bridge wasn't built yet. No one came down here. You could see the small dark speck of the hunter crossing the river.



I hunted out of the one blind when it looked like this.



Almost got a duck, but this blind is in the absolutely wrong spot. No waterfowl in it's right mind would fly down this narrow valley below tree top level.

But that's not why to come here. Most of the sunsets look like this. Which makes it all worth it.