June 20, 2007

Fishing at Shabbona Lake State Park, Shabbona Illinois

Joey and I were out for a full day. Beautiful weather. Water temps 73 in the morning, 78 by late afternoon. Visibility a foot or less.

We fished the shallow weeds of the NE and East Bays with blue black grubs and chatterbaits. Towards evening, we spent an hour trolling crankbaits along the dam face in 7-25 feet of water. We switched crankbaits on every pass, and caught 1 or 2 fish on every pass. No big fish today ( 4 "keepers" at 14.5, 15, 15.5, 17 "), but a good number of smaller fish (20-25 ??). I needed to quit being lazy and work out a deeper pattern for bigger bass, but he was very happy catching the little guys in the weeds, so who cares... (But I've been hearing unsubstantiated rumors that numbers of Big Bass have been coming off the dam and out of the trees in 20-25 feet of water on drop shot rigs and soft plastics.)

We also spent an hour catfishing in the NE bay. He caught 2 small channels (14 and 15 inches) and had a much larger fish get off in the lilypad stalks, Ooops.

Lunch and dinner at the Lakeside Restaurant, IceCream to cool off.

Finished the day throwing scum frogs in the slop as the sun went down, got a few more little guys.

Good Luck Everybody !!!!

Completely unrelated (this is NOT and AD), I got the other boat back this week from getting a big nasty gouge in the top-rail fixed. (an inch wide and 4 inches long, through the metal-flake and deep into the fiberglass)

The guys at

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