March 27, 2007

Fishing at Shabbona Lake State Park, Shabbona Illinois

19.5 Inches, estimated at 4 pounds

Joey and I made our 1st trip to Shabbona in 2007.

We got a late start, hit the water about 12 Noon and fished until 6:30PM. Air temp was 70 degrees, maybe 10-12 boats on the lake, water was 51-52 degrees, visibility about 6 to 8 inches, lake is full with water going over the spillway.

We spent the first 15-20 minutes making a muskie trolling lap around the North End, getting a look at the conditions. TONS of dead and dying shad all over the lake. Big ones, 12-16 inch shad everywhere. This is going to be a good year for muskie fishing !!!! (once the die-off is over)

By 12:30 we were casting for bass in the NE Bay. I was throwing the shallow shad rap (size 7 shad pattern) in 5-6 feet of water. First bass was a 13-14 incher, 2nd bass was a plump 19.5 incher that was in the 4 pound range. I think the bass bite will really explode as soon as the water clears up a little (Shab bass don't like me when they can only see 6 inches).

Joey was much more interested in the hundreds of big shad, than the bass fishing.

Look at this Monster Shad

That's a 4 inch (size 9 shad rap) he has tied on.

About 2 PM, I doomed myself by foul-hooking a big fat carp with my shad rap. Joey went nuts.

That carp fired up his Catfish Fever from last Fall. So our trip became a Channel Cat Safari.

Shabbona has some huge catfish, and they were really hungry and easy today. We caught about 15-16 cats, with many 5-8 pounders and the best one in the 10 pound range. Just for fun, I tossed them into the big muskie net (52 inch deep bag), and left it hanging in the water to act as our catfish "Livewell" until we tossed them back. Joey loved it, and the channel cats seemed quite content sitting in the giant net.

Here's a VIDEO CLIP of releasing some catfish

This clip had to edited down to fit in the YouTube file constraints.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VN9IoZ6ZEzw

Good Luck Everybody !!!!

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