Last week, my good friend Amber drove through Chicago for a
visit, en route to New Hampshire. Amber, being from Western Montana and
having guided white water for several years in the Flathead and West Glacier,
has introduced me to countless Western rivers. I saw her visit as a good
opportunity to show off some of the water that I fish here in the
Mid-West.
We spent a day floating the Kankakee River, my go to fishery
for day trips and summer smallmouth for as long as I can remember.
September is one of my favorite months to fish the Kankakee
and this year has been no exception. The smallmouth bite has been fierce.
Fish are aggressively feeding before water temps drop and things slow
down for the Winter. The Kankakee, along with most local rivers this
year, is low but exceptionally clear.
River grass and weed beds cover
large stretches of the water but provide great cover for fish and filter much
of the silt that clouds the water.
As usual, baitfish and small crayfish patterns have been the
ticket for pulling fish out of runs and away from weed beds. Dry
flies and soft hackled nymphs, with a little persistence, produced a few fish
for us in the early morning.
I definitely accomplished my goal of showing an old friend
that there’s more to Northern Illinois than endless suburbs and smog.
Here in Chicago, we might not have the Blackfoot River or the Bob
Marshall Wilderness in our backyards but if you get a chance to spend a day on
one of our local smallmouth rivers, just imagine a few mountains on the horizon
and you won’t know the difference!
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