Claire caught a monster!

Somehow, Claire and I found ourselves standing in the Fox River at 6:30am on the Fourth of July.

I had planned to go regardless; as any faithful reader knows, I will forgo sleep at the drop of a hat to do some good fishing. The night before, Claire suddenly announced she wanted to go with me. She hesitantly asked what time she'd have to get up. I said 4:30am. She groaned.

We had packed the car, drank our coffee, said goodbye to Walter- standing there, confused to see both of us up so unnaturally early- and hit the road. After a short drive we were now in the river, fishing, just as the sun was coming up.

On Claire's third cast, she got hung up on some rocks, she thought. Then she started yelling "Fish! Fish!" I looked over and saw her light rod doubled down... and heard the drag sending line out to the river. "And it's pulling my line!" I yelled some celebratory profanity and waded over to her as fast as I could.

The fish broke the surface a few times as Claire furiously tried to reel it in. I caught glimpses of a big brown figure in the water. For a moment I wondered if she'd gotten a flathead, but it wasn't fighting like the ones I'd seen. Then I saw the snout of a smallmouth bass, but I wasn't sure how big it was.

I reached behind me, grabbing the new net I got for fly fishing, and scooped up the smallie. As it came out of the water I saw how big it was and probably released some more profanity. Holy crap. This was a big fish!

I was torn between admiration and jealousy for my wife, the big-smallie-catcher. I don't think I'd ever caught a smallie that big on the Fox. I got some nice fish on the Rogue in Michigan, but still. Claire, on her third cast, caught a monster. I lipped it, took out the comparatively tiny jig, and gave it to my lovely wife to hold.

Claire got a biggun

I busted out the tape measure (something I don't often do, but I wanted to know how big this one was) and it measured at least 16". It seemed like it should be longer; perhaps I measured wrong, maybe I have a bad sense of length. Either way it was a giant fish, and both of us were overjoyed. We placed the big fish back in the water, and a few moments later she came to and swam away in the splash of tail I've come to expect. I wiped the water off my glasses.

We celebrated for a moment, I changed to the fish/grub Claire was using, and started casting. We both got some hits, but neither one of us could set the hook. One hit I got, a sharp, single "TAP" cleanly cut off the tail of my twister. Could it have been a walleye? After a while I suggested we move upstream and see if we couldn't find some more fish. Claire reluctantly obliged, not wanting to leave "the promised land" of the big bass.

We worked our way upstream, occasionally getting some hits. I saw a guy fishing on the other side of the river, he was working his way downstream as we went upstream. That stretch of the river is wide enough I couldn't quite make him out, but I had a hunch who it was... based on the particular hat, the cigar...

"Are you Chris?" he shouted across the river. I said I was.. paused.. "Who are you?" I asked.

"Ken!" he shouted back, working his way toward us. Ken G! Ken G of Waterdog Journal and years of fishing the Fox- the same Ken who uses jigs with white twisters (which accounted for my first Fox smallie).

Claire and I fished our spot as Ken waded over to us. We started to get lots of hits, caught some fish; things were turning on. Ken came over and we met face to face, although in some ways I felt I already knew the guy. We'd exchanged messages and emails; I'd read his blog a lot, and I think he'd read some of mine too. It was good to meet the man behind the posts, so to speak. He asked us what all the shouting had been, and we told him about the big fish. Actually, that's not what he asked... he asked "What was all that 'oh #%^$ oh #%@$' about?" Apparently my voice carries down the river. Ken said he knew it was me by the beard and the laughing.

As we talked, Claire and I had clearly found a good spot to fish- the water on the surface was slightly different in this one particular spot, which is why I first cast there. Hit after hit came from this area, although as before we had some trouble setting our hooks. Ken said there was a dropoff right where we were fishing; some deeper water, apparently stacked up with smallies.

In the next hour or so, I hooked into somewhere around 15 fish and landed 8 or so. I lost count. Claire and Ken hooked into a bunch of fish too. All the fish I got were fairly small, but they didn't know it. It was a great time! Maybe even the best time I'd ever had fishing the Fox.

Pretty little fish

All three of us had issues setting our hooks, but we counted the ones we almost landed. All the smallies I got came from around the same spot, bouncing the 1/16oz jig and chartreuse grub/fish along the bottom, downstream.

After a while, we tried some other spots where baitfish were breaking the surface, but none of the big fish under them wanted to play. Eventually Ken headed back upstream and we headed back to our entry point- where Claire caught the giant. I tried busting out my fly rod, which I'd been carrying on my fancy (and heavy, now filled with river water) fishing backpack. I think I casted ok, at least in terms of hitting my targets, but I definitely have a lot to learn. I switched back to my spinning gear but it seemed the bite had dried up.

Smallie stash

Claire and I called it a day, at least a morning- we hiked back up the trail to our car. As we were leaving Panera I realized I left my fly rod on the grass by the car- we scrambled back to the park, and thankfully it was there.

°°°

On our way home, we stopped by the Dupage to check out the spot where Claire caught so many fish a few weeks back. We saw plenty of green sunfish swimming among the weeds and shadows in the extremely low and clear water... Exploring upstream of the bridge, we found an area that looked amazingly fishy. Right now the water seems too shallow for it to hold many fish, but my guess is with a little more depth that spot will be on fire! I can't wait to come back. I really like exploring new spots, although Claire is usually the one finding the spots.

I lifted up some rocks to see what was under them, and was intrigued to find crawfish scurrying away. Looking at the bottom of the rock, I saw tons of little shiny moving things I could only guess were the larval stage of some river bug. I thought about nymphs in fly fishing, those weird flies I don't quite understand yet. Maybe when these squirming puddles of mud things grew up, they would rise up threw the water, some of them being eaten by hungry river fish. Maybe that's what was up with nymphs...

Slowly wading, not really fishing, I found some really big crawfish. They were very pale, almost white, with pink around their head and claws. I reached down to pick them up, slowly, but not slow enough... With their characteristic backwards jumping move, they escaped my grasp, perhaps only to become some smallie's next meal. It occurred to me I should get some white tubes with pink tentacles for when I return to this spot...

Chris Ties Flies

Fishing has been a little slow lately. The drought-like conditions, the low water levels, the non-stop heat wave... These have all contributed to less than stellar fishing. Saturday I hit the Fox with Sam- he got 3 or 4, I got one tiny one.. But it was my first smallie on a crank!

My first fly... Messy and rough around the
edges, but....

Sunday morning I waded with Osprey (Rob) for quite a long time, but there was zero action. At the very end I managed to hook a tiny smallie for a split second on a white jig and twister. When the little fish threw the hook the whole Algonquin Valley resonated with my profanity.

Not sure what happened here

Over the weekend I got a fly rod! This was to replace the one that broke and I just returned it. That, coupled with the horribly uncomfortable weather outside motivated me to tie some ties.

Early yesterday morning I tied my first tie, and tied a bunch at lunch, and even more after work.

I stepped out for 15 minutes at lunch, fished the new tiny secret green sunfish pond, and got five. My first fish on a fly I tied myself! I stayed for a few more minutes and caught 4 more fish on the fly.

...It caught some fish!

Right around sunset, I headed for a spot on Salt Creek to do some more fly fishing with my new rod and new flies. It's a humbling experience learning something new like this; just when I think I have a good idea how to handle a spinning rod and reel, fly fishing happens. It's a completely different game.

I'm enthralled by this new world of fishing; the miniscule lures, the finesse and calmness needed to cast them, the infinite combinations of feathers, hair, and thread that are used to create them. I love making wooden lures, fishing with tube jigs, and tossing texas-rigged worms in front of bass... But I'm starting to love this too. I like the contrast between giant bass spinnerbaits and tiny flies can barely see, but somehow the fish can.

As I fished I had plenty of tangles, my fly line wrapped around my rod about a hundred times, the tiny flies with their tiny hooks got caught in tiny branches everywhere... To get a better angle I actually stepped in the creek, but quickly decided I didn't much care for the experience. I saw a little bass swimming around. At one point I had a black wooly bugger, I believe one tied and given to me by Mike Muston, right in front of the bass. I watched him approach, eat it, then immediately spit it out. Apparently I missed the hookset, but I was so enthralled just watching it happen, I didn't care.

I moved to a different spot and tied on a white fly I'd tied earlier. I've been following "recipes" for flies, in an effort to learn the basics before I try any fancy stuff. I've been trying to tie a wooly bugger, but I can't get it to come out right. I don't have all the right materials, so I'm improvising with what I have. This one is tied with goose feathers I found (for the tail), black yarn for the body (scraps from Claire), and turkey hackle (I think that's what it's called.. from my buddy Mark). I weighted it with some thin wire tied around the hook shank. It looks amazing in the water; it pulses and moves with the water in a way I've never seen plastic do.

I tried to make a wooly bugger...

As the sun set, I watched my little fly swim around the creek. I thought I'd have some luck with a white fly since I'd had so much luck on white twister tails in the same spot (even though all the baitfish seem to be brown). Turns out, I was right about the color! I saw a little bass approach the surface (my fly was just below the top of the water) and quietly slurp in my fly. Fish on! As soon as I got him on, I suddenly remembered I still don't know how to fight a fish or reel one in on a fly rod...

It wasn't much of a fight, it seemed like the warm water temperatures and probable lack of oxygen were messing with these fishes' mojo. Somehow I got the little fish in. I set down my phone, set the timer, and got some pictures of my first bass caught on a fly I tied.

My best impression of a trout angler holding a bass

A few minutes later, as the sun went down behind the trees on the other bank, a slightly bigger bass found my fly. This time I tried to focus more- despite my excitement- and try and remember what the internet told me about what to do when you're fly fishing and you catch a fish. I've been spending a lot more time learning about the casting part, I mostly forgot about the fish catching part!

I stripped line with my left hand (I'm pretty sure "strip" is the fly fishing term for "pull line in with the hand that isn't holding the rod") while I held the rod in my right hand and held the line with my index finger. I'm still not sure if I was doing that right, using my finger as the drag... When the bass went left, I moved the rod right; when he went right I went left. Soon he was tired, and I brought him in, awkwardly pointing my rod to the sky and struggling to reach the fish.

Fish #2 to fall for my untidy fly

After a while the heat and humidity was too much to bear. Somehow the temperature seemed to be going up after the sun set. I thought I'd do a few casts with my spinning rod that I brought just in case something happened to my fly rod. Apparently I'd forgotten how to cast a spinning rod, as my fingers caught the line, closed the bail, and my little jig smashed into the water like a bowling ball into a kiddy pool.

99 Fishing Trips

I go fishing a lot. Every trip used to be a huge adventure; setting foot into the outdoors was a major production because of my unfamiliarity of it. Going to Busse and exploring the Amazon had a lot more in common to me than improvising over the chord changes to Cherokee at 300 beats per minute. That I could do. Since then, I've spent a great deal of my time outside. Many weeks I'll go fishing every day, sometimes more than once per day. A lot of these trips are quick and to the point, without much adventure or story to relate... But I do want to record some of the highlights of the past week or two- the parts I haven't yet posted. Here goes...

Claire and I went fishing on Lake Pleasant in Michigan (near Hillsdale); I caught a bunch of little bass, and hooked into one on her "last cast" real close to shore, but it threw the hook.

Walter and me on the way to Lake Pleasant

My father in law let me tag along with him to his golf club- while he golfed, I caught 10 awesome largemouth bass out of some golf course ponds. My first time fishing a golf course (with permission or otherwise)! 9 of the bass came on a Heddon Torpedo I found floating at Busse a while back. It was amazing; a landscaper driving by on a riding lawnmower gave me a tip to use something that floats and makes a lot of noise to land fish there, he'd been fishing there for many years. I tied on the Torpedo, cast it out, and the bass took swipes at it. I didn't even have to move it much, once it landed on the water usually three or four bass would come investigate, eventually smashing into the lure like a ton of bricks.

This one apparently swallowed a little animal...
Mouse? Muscrat? I'd never seen that before!

Probably the biggest of the day.. I don't usually put fish
on the ground, but this one fell. It was probably
a safer way to remove the treble hooks too

I've been looking for new ponds to fish; my go-to retention pond is almost entirely filled with weeds and a thick floating scum. The fish are still there, and they're still biting, but sometimes I want to use a crankbait! I "discovered" a new, tiny pond next to an office building. Surprisingly, it doesn't say "No Fishing." I pulled some fairly big green sunfish out of there on my trusty jig and twister.

Big ol' green sunfish- hit like a bass!

I went night fishing the other day, hoping to catch another one of the retention pond catfish. Something possessed me to use hotdogs as bait. The internet says you can do that, so I did. After tremendous difficulty casting without tossed the hotdogs off the hook and into the water, I finally managed to get a line in the water with a hotdog on it. While that stewed I tossed out some topwaters for bass, which got hits every so often. Nobody connected though; it wasn't all bad, as I got to watch the almost-full moon rise and try out my new headlamp with a red LED. Pretty sweet. When I was packing up, around 12:15am, when I went to reel in my hotdog line there was something connected- something big! After a pretty awesome but short fight, I saw exactly what I hoped to see. A big old (channel?) cat.

23" (channel) cat caught on hotdog!

I recently started a new job; it's fast-paced and exciting, I'm really enjoying it, and because I'm working from home my commute is substantially shorter. For the most part, when I close up shop in the "office" I head out for some fishing. Much of it has been local, especially in the morning and at lunch. When I'm not fishing, I've been making lures. I think I'm getting the hang of it now; I've probably made 15-20 wooden lures now. Some of them work great, some are complete failures.. but I learn from each one and use that experience on the next.

My copycat of a Heddon Torpedo, made out of cedar
This one got a lot of hits at night at the pond

Glow-in-the-dark firetiger crank made of balsa

That firetiger crankbait, which glows in the dark because I mixed green, yellow, and glow paint together, might be my most successful crank yet. I made a little video (and the music) of the lure in action.

And then yesterday morning, I caught a fish on it!

I carved it, painted it, fished it, and caught this fish with it

This one dives medium deep and has a nice wobble. So far
one fish has taken a swipe at it

Oh yeah, and I got a fish finder! It's a Hummingbird Piranhamax 160. So far I've taken it out twice, and I love it. It's great to find out what's beneath me. I took it on the yak to Busse, found some fish in some deep holes, but couldn't get them to connect. I also took it to a big local retention pond (not the retention pond) and discovered the whole pond is about 2-3 feet deep with a thick mud bottom.

Yesterday I hit the local pond with my new fly rod for about 10 minutes and saw tons of little bluegill hanging out in very shallow water. I caught about 5 or 6 of them in rapid succession; one I didn't even know I hooked and ended up back-casting it 20 feet away from the pond! It seemed fine when it swam away.

Last night I kayaked the big retention pond; didn't catch any fish but I did catch two bullfrogs mostly by accident. It seems they'll take anything! I considered keeping it after reading Dan the Impractical Fisherman's post about bullfrog legs, but read the season for them doesn't open until June 15. When the season opens, might I keep a frog or two and try some wild-caught frog legs? When the zombie apocalypse happens I might need to...

Whew, that was a lot of fishing trips. Last night marked my 99th fishing trip of the year. I've caught 111 fish of 13 different species in two different states while kayaking, wading, shore fishing, still fishing, and fly fishing, at pretty much all times of day, on live bait, grocery store items, and lures both store-bought and homemade.

I caught my first walleye a couple weeks ago. I even almost caught a fish with my bare hands! I think I've had a great fishing year so far; I've learned a whole lot, spent a bunch of time outside, and generally had a great time doing it.

Although I've learned a huge amount about fishing, the primary thing I've discovered out of all these trips is how much I like the outdoors. I like catching fish, but if I had to be inside to do it, I doubt I would have gone fishing 99 times this year.

CB Goes Fly Fishing

In an effort to get these posts written up and out there (I've got about 9 completely undocumented trips I want to tell you about!) I'll keep this short and to the point. Edit: I'll try and keep this short and to the point. Already I'm rambling.

Rogue River guide Rob Vink

Rob took me back to the good old Rogue River; after demonstrating proper fly casting technique for me, I butchered it entirely, but yet he put a fly rod in my hand and told me where to cast. It's a small miracle I even made it to where we were standing in the river, after tripping over every rock and slipping on every weed along the way. Rob moved through the woods like some kind of cougar, he navigated the rocks in the river like some kind of river creature. Although I followed the same path he took through the water, every step or so I almost ended up face down in the river. He claimed it was his experience, but I think maybe he had magic wading boots.

After a few tries, I somehow managed to get the tiny little dry fly to land kind of where Rob told me to put it. It was so strange, all that line flying around all over the place; the little tiny fly indistinguishable to me among all the other stuff floating on the surface of the water. Eventually I got the hang of it, kind of. I created huge tangles of the strangely thick and colored line every other cast, got the fly caught on trees, and generally felt like a total newbie. I was a total newbie; just like when I first started fishing a couple years back. It was frustrating and exciting.

I did my best to keep up with Rob's cat-like navigation of the river. I didn't fall in, but I came extremely close every few steps. We made it to a spot, Rob told me where to cast, I did my best to get the fly there... and then... there was a fish on the end of my line.

And I didn't know how to reel it in!

I asked Rob how to reel it in, holding the line with my left hand, the fish just splashing around. I wondered if it wondered what I was waiting for. Following his instructions, I pulled the weird colorful line with my left hand while he got out his fancy trout net. In a few seconds the fish was netted, and I had landed - with Rob's help - my first fish on the fly!

First fish on the fly!

It was awesome- when I hooked the little rainbow trout it felt like I was grabbing it with my arm. When it did it's thing and tried to swim away, I had the sensation I was holding it by a string. Which I kind of was.

I couldn't believe that smart little fish could, out of all the stuff floating on the surface of the water in that scum line, pick out my fly and identify it as possible food.

I also couldn't believe I caught three more in the next hour or so- on the fly! As we waded, I practiced my back cast. That contributed to my constant tripping, but I think it also made my casting better. Pretty soon it was dark, Rob caught some trout too, and we headed back to the truck after a successful trip.

°°° 

The coda to my little fly fishing prelude, if you'll let me get away with writing something like that, is the fly rod and reel combo I bought when I got back to Illinois. After spending an hour trying to make sense of all the new terms- backing, fly line, tapered leader, tippet - and learning some new knots, Claire and I headed to the pond. Since she encouraged (read: tolerated) my purchase of a fly rod, she made the first few casts on it. It was tough, due to the weeds everywhere and the scum all over the pond. Pretty soon she switched to a spinning rod and I manned the fly setup.

First cast, my dry fly hit the water nice and light, I saw a bluegill come up and take it, swim away, and it was on! I reeled in the line with my hand, and there it was: my first fish on my first fly rod.

There! Can you see it?

I caught a bunch more 'gills, and even got a bass! As the sun set, we kept on casting. Once it started to get dark I realized why I'd never heard of night-fly-fishing. But we kept catching fish.

First bass on the fly

While I struggled to control my fly line as the sun set, Claire caught two nice bass on a texas-rigged chigger craw I set up for her. Although I caught more fish by number, she caught more fish by weight. I'm fine with that arrangement.

Claire and her nice bass

Where's CB and is he fishing?

The answer is right here and yes, of course I'm fishing.

A variety of circumstances have prevented me from my usual flurry of blog posts as of late... One of them is the new job I started last week. So far I'm very much enjoying it- I'm working from home, my new coworkers are awesome, the job is exciting and interesting, and there's a lot to learn. Since I'm working from home, those 3 hours I used to spend on my commute are no longer travel time anymore.

It was during those 3 hours of travel I wrote most of my blog posts. Sitting on the metra, typing on my laptop; that's where most of CB Fishes came from.

The story behind this brown trout?

It didn't feel like hanging around for another picture

Now, there is no transit time to my job (besides the 10 second walk up the stairs). Once I'm done with work, instead of sitting down and writing new posts I head out into the world and go fishing. Or kayaking. Or pretty much anything else besides sitting down in front of a computer and typing up a post.

I've certainly had some adventures recently- now they're getting older, sitting on the shelves of my "need to blog about this" library. Last weekend in Michigan I experienced my first canoe trip with Mark and Rob, caught some trout; then went fly fishing for the first time under the expert tutelage of Rob Vink, fly fishing master. Naturally, I came back to Illinois and purchased a fly rod/reel combo. Saturday night Claire and I went to the local pond, where I proceeded to catch 3 bluegill and a nice largemouth bass on the fly!

First cast, first flyrod, first bluegill on the fly

It's been exciting, with the fly rod in my hand I feel like a complete novice, the way I felt with a spinning rod about a year ago. To be clear, I'm still a total newbie to fishing, but at least I know how to handle a spinning rod and jig. The fly rod, well, that's another story. I can catch some fish with it, but I have a suspicion I'm doing it wrong...

Claire caught this one on a black and red chigger craw

Should I still blog about adventures that are more than a week old? I think I will. When will I be doing that? A very good question. In the meantime, I'll keep posting new pictures to Instagram and Facebook should you be so inclined to see the most recent catches even without the story behind them. I've also gotten on the Twitter bandwagon: follow @cbfishes to get a stream of mostly fishing-related posts shorter than 140 characters. And a bunch of pictures too.

One of 5 smallies I pulled out from one spot
on the Rogue River in Michigan