Illinois Blue Catfish a New Angling Adventure for the Suburban Fisherman

The rain and wind have been giving us some fishing issues lately, the rivers are up, it is to windy for kayaking, and bass have been a virtual yo-yo of biting activity.

A small few of us DuPage Anglers needed a change, something different to break up the usual line-up. The discussion started on catfish and stopped on the possibility of blue cats at Lasalle.

There are both blues and channels that swim there so I prepared an arsenal of bait for both whiskered foes we hoped to combat.  We had:

Crawlers

Smelt

Chicken livers

Red worms

Dough bait

Stink bait

Also the night before the outing I was carpin and noticed some splashing along the shore I grad my net and managed to catch a zip-lock bag full of fresh shad!

What started as a 2 guy outing quickly changed to a five-guy group as DA members called each other to see where they were fishing for the weekend. This trip included Sooner Bass, Dark Star, JcCrappies, Wacky Bass, and myself.

We met at 4:45am to give us enough drive time to get there for the park opening at 6.

Quick stop at Mc Donalds then a drive full of bull-shooting fishermen laughing and trading fish stories.

In my over analyzed planning to not to forget any catfishing tackle. I forgot to bring a jacket and the wind was ripping across the lake. Sooner loaned me a vest and DS lent me his jacket. Man I was still cold. Once you catch a chill they suck to get rid of.

I was nervous and had my doubts about the blues. I have fished channels my whole life so those I had covered, but blue cats are a rare gem in northern Illinois and I had never caught one before so my confidence was at level “pondboy stinks”.

We get set up and my first cast I get a small channel cat! Yes! Some of the pressure is off. We caught a couple dozen channel cats among us. These small cats are in Lasalle in force and it just takes slip floats, smaller hooks, livers, smelt, or crawlers. I am sure if we had leeches and minnows those would work as well. You could bring your kids there and have a pretty good chance of catching them.

Through the blowing wind I here someone yell fish on! Chunsum had a blue! Soo cool. I was excited just to see one that was not on TV or youtube. It was a beautiful fish He caught it on the shad I caught. About a half hour later I see my pole dip slightly. I grab the rod from the holder and wham!!! HOLY CRAP I ACTUALLY HAVE ONE!! The blues are natural strong and full of muscle. I love these fish. I was rigged with a 6 foot heavy action rod paired with a Shimano Cosair 300. I had a catfish rig form Jerry’s Flies.

I actually got the rig from a DA outing when I first joined. So glad I had it because it worked flawlessly. This fish also hit cut shad.

Marty Rogers aka Wacky Bass and founder of DA scored the biggest blue of the trip! He let ok a Hearty YAHOO!!!!  It was awesome to see him so excited.

Dark Star was next and there was a ton of excitement down the shore from me. He was quickly followed by Sooner who now had a fish on!!! Incredible. God blessed us all with blue cats. I was sooo happy everyone scored a cat. We scored a few more and we ended with 9 total. I think that was pretty cool since the only one of us with any real blue experience was sooner and none of us had fished blue cats at Lasalle before. All of the blues took the shad. I wonder if we would of caught any of these beautiful fish had I not gotten lucky catching the shad the night before.

If you want to try a new experience and have a different angling adventure, grab the gear, the bait and some friends head out to Lasalle and experience the force of the blue catfish.

Crappie Day Turns to Bass Blast

After a very cold one fish day a couple of weeks ago, I needed to settle the score. I decided to take my kayak for crappies. I arrive to a lake of glass and just a hint of mist on the water. The air even this early is twice as warm as the last trip. I took the first hour just to paddle around looking for structure, memorizing depths, and searching for a school of crappie. Next to a large flat of 5 feet the bottom sloped to 7.5 feet and there were the fish. There was nothing from 5ft down and the bottom was void of life 9 feet and deeper.

The crappie bite started and man was I relieved. I was starting to doubt my decision to hit the crappie instead of going to LaSalle for hybrids and cats.

The bite was not as fast as I would have liked. My old friend Steven Murray of Tarpon Headquarters use to bring a container of crawlers every time we went fishing even on our most hardcore artificial largemouth bass days. This drove me crazy. UNTIL those crawlers saved our asses on more then one occasion. I learned my lesson and always have crawlers in my bait fridge.

I rigged a spinning rod with a raven float, raven shot, and a raven #4 specialist hook. I set it 4 feet down and baited with a ½ crawler hooked in the nose. To be honest I was searching for bonus hand size gills when the onslaught started. BAM! BAM! BAM! The bass came one after another. They totaled 15 fish with 3 of them over 15 inches!! It was a blast. 

I managed to scrape up about 9 crappies as well on minnows, waxies, and tube jigs. One big white measured out at 13 inches. The funny part I only caught one gill all day and it was not even on the crawlers.

The lesson here is to have a back up plan such as crawlers. Don’t be a stuck up idiot and look down on bait or certain lures. The truth is if your eyes are closed, you just cannot see. Don’t miss out on a great day, please keep an open mind and expect to learn from old, young, expert, and new fisherman. In this case going old school gave me the edge to achieve a great day and a wonderful angling adventure.