The Rock and Mississippi Rivers

The Rock River at Dixon, Illinois

This post is extremely overdue. I've been doing a lot of stuff besides writing blog posts... Things like fishing, working, playing with little kids, fishing some more; generally not blogging.

Easter weekend Claire and I had a mini-vacation trip to Lincoln, Nebraska. A good friend of mine invited me to come play some Easter services, and I thought it sounded like a fun time! I figured maybe I could get in some fishing too...

I spent a long time in Google Earth figuring out where to fish- I mapped out all the rivers we'd be crossing on I-80, consulted windycityfishing.com, and generally obsessed about it. Ended up stopping in Dixon, Illinois, which was apparently the boyhood home of Ronald Reagan. There was an ad for a Reagan bike race which read "You don't have to be a republican to ride"

We stopped for lunch in the quaint town, parked our rental SUV, and I suited up and headed into the Rock River. I'd heard there were smallies in here, as well as tremendous catfish. Turns out the spot we found was just mud and muck, and no fish obliged my repeated efforts to inconvenience them for a short photo shoot.

Once in Nebraska, I had some down time hoping to do some Nebraska fishing. Headed to Walmart to get a NE fishing license, but after waiting 15 minutes to talk to the fishing department guy, he told me the computers were down and he couldn't sell me a license. Discouraged, we headed to a dog park instead, where Walter had a great time exploring what must have been very very smelly grass.

On our way home, Claire suggested we stop at the Mississippi, on the Illinois side of course (since I couldn't legally fish from the Iowa side). It was almost sunset, and couldn't have been more beautiful. The river seemed more like a lake; it was so wide! It didn't make any sense to me, I couldn't see the currents and seams, and had no idea how to approach shore fishing it. I fished for a while, throwing most everything in my tackle box, but if they were there they weren't interested.

We got a real nice family photo though, so it was still a great stop.

Sunset on the Mississippi