About 10 years ago I designed a top water lure and built a few prototypes. I check all the catalogs now and then and still have never found or seen ones like it. I almost had Dicks Sporting Goods interested, but that's another story.
Back then I was in a rod and gun club in Virginia. These lures were primarily to be used on largemouth bass. Top waters are my favorite lures to use for pond bass. The lakes were not very pressured and I was catching quite a few on the lures. I eventually had to quit using them out there. I was gut hooking too many bass. With other top waters I used this never happened. Considering that mine only have one set of treble hooks set about the middle, this result caught me by surprise. I attributed their success to fishing lakes that were practically unused.
So here in Illinois I tested them differently. I went to a lake in DuPage County that got a fair amount of pressure. The couple of days I went I purposely picked days with high skies that were on a weekend. People were fishing all over the lake. The conditions with the high skies should have shut down the top water bite. I caught a bunch of fish with them.
I then put them away and ignored them for years. I never brought them out to the river. Smallies feed differently in rivers then bass of any kind in lakes. In lakes they are pretty much looking up. They can do that. There's no current to push them around. In rivers, for the most part the bass are somewhere near the bottom looking for the food that is generally on the bottom. I know you can catch river bass on topwaters, but again, if you're going for numbers that's not the lure to use.
So this evening, by the time I got on the water I had decided that I was only going to use the top water and nothing else. An hour and a half later I had 5 big eruptions on the lure. 4 of those got hooked enough that I could feel the weight and it was substantial. One of them I got close enough to see that it would have easily measured 16 inches.
And that's why there are no pictures of fish. I just suck lately at landing the big ones.
Every time I go out to this stretch I take a picture of a wash out that's ocurring under some rail road ties. Between visits we've been getting some pretty good rains and I've noticed that each time the hole is just a little bit bigger. I have still another more recent picture I'll put up later. I've reported this to the head of the Public Works Department in Oswego. He's passed it on to someone at Railnet. I hope someone has come out to look at it.
If not and you hear of a train derailing and landing in the Fox River just east of Orchard Road, now you know why.
A long time ago I had noticed something that was going to happen eventually because of the breach at the old south Batavia dam. I sent out warnings. I told them what was going to happen eventually. They thanked me and did nothing. And then one day a work crew was out there repairing electrical lines after the tree I told them about finally fell across the electrical lines and effectively tore them out and put a good chunk of Batavia in the dark.
I guess that got them going. Hopefully it won't take a train in the river to fix this one.
In the mean time, this is a nice stretch to visit.
