Andrew's Adventures

Des Plaines River Float Trip

Tue, October 25, 2011

Traditionally, and logically, it would make a whole lot more sense to float the river with small craft such as a canoe, jon boat with small outboard, or a pram. The Des Planes is full of shallow rocks, boulders, submerged man-made structures, stumps, and a plethora of other lower unit breakers. Almost impossible to motor and navigate your way unless you have full knowledge of where things are located at. Despite these hazards and the intimidation of this river, and due to my buddy Dan Cahill’s early spring purchase of a 17 foot Tracker bass boat with a 40 horse Merc, we’ve decided that whatever river trips we’d take, we will float the river in luxury and take our chances.

Playing with fire as I’d like to say.

This past Saturday I floated the river for the first time all year. Better late than never, I suppose. Ever since we last fished in July and tried to film our video project (which is put on hold until sometime in the future), Dan has been working doggedly long hours at work. According to him, the poor man sometimes sits in the office for 12+ hours a day tending to the needs of the American workplace. Despite the stressors of meeting deadlines and servicing the business, he still fishes like crazy on the weekends. Since this was my first weekend back in Illinois in almost six weeks, it was about darn time we finally got together to fish.

This outing was extremely unplanned. After a night out in downtown Chicago and an early morning headache (the joys of still being young and a little stupid), for some reason I began thinking about ice fishing and texted Dan that he still had my auger and that I’d need it by December. Thinking about ice fishing, something that I don’t enjoy much, in mid-October? I guess I am a little stupid. I don’t know if I sent this message very early because it’s been impossible getting a hold of him, or if it was an excuse to check-in and see whether or not a friend was still alive. When you have troubles making contact with someone for almost three months, you just don’t know.

Text Message to Dan (10:27am) :: “I just realized you’ve got my auger. I’m gonna need it in December cuz I’ll be going on a trip to WI”
From Dan (10:44am) :: “Hang on, let me climb out of the coffin…. Wanna float the DPR and get it today?”
Text Message to Dan (10:51am) :: “Holy #%@$! . . . . You are alive? No way!” . . . “I won’t be able to fish anywhere until after 2pm.”
From Dan (11:29am) :: “Come on, 1 pm.”
Text Message to Dan :: “My gear isn’t ready. I can try.”

Dan and I met up at the surprisingly desolate boat landing at 2pm. It was refreshing to see that he was still alive, and slightly off life support. I was surprised that he was a little crazy to take his “new” boat out on this dangerous to navigate river.

The stretch of water we fished was about 1 mile long, and we’ve fished it several times before with his old bass raider that was sold. The stretch of river near the launch area is very treacherous. The river channel is very shallow and almost nonexistent; less than 4 feet deep in many areas and loaded with boulders, stumps, and mid-river drainage pipes (no joke about the pipes).

In order to make our way downriver to where the deep water begins, Dan had to drive the boat with the motor trimmed up so that the propeller was barely beneath the surface. We miraculously navigated past all of the unseen underwater hazards without a single bump.

Once we got to the stretch of water we were going to fish, navigation was easy with a consistently deep 7 to 10 foot deep river channel with the occasional stump and floating log drifting downriver. Dan was insistent that he’d never imagine motoring at full speed down the Des Plaines. But that all changed quickly.

Nearly all of our fishing took place along rocky shorelines, log jams and laydowns, rock piles, and deeper holes. Throughout the entire afternoon Dan stuck with a rattlebait program, an el-cheapo Cotton Cordell that has seen better days. He did not change lures once. Meanwhile, since all I’ve fished for in the last month has been muskies, I was far out of my element and could not get anything going with spinnerbaits, rattle baits, jerkbaits, swim jigs, bucktails or inline spinners. I had one huge strike on a white swimjig within my first five casts of fishing a rip-rap shoreline but whatever it was didn’t hang on. This premature action led me to believe that I was going to have a great outing. NOT!

Our first hour of fishing was about average for the river. Dan quickly pulled in two pike. The largest was a gator for the river at around 30 inches, and a chunk largemouth. All fish crushed his cordell.

One of the nicer fish I’ve seen here all year. Fat and stocky, and perfect shape for its length. Not your typical skinny and malnourished looking fish.

Then for about two hours, the fishing surprisingly died. Neither Dan or I could believe how slow the river turned because a week prior Dan enjoyed an awesome afternoon catching up to 40 fish with his friend. We were back at the same area, fishing one of the most productive stretches of water we’ve ever been on for quality and numbers of pike and bass. It just wasn’t meant to be today. This should serve us as proof that fish will never hold in the same locations in a river, regardless of how consistent the weather has been for almost a week. 

At around 5pm the river kicked out its last action for us with Dan hooking into two more pike off some wooded shoreline areas. Another one was solid.

Everything Dan caught struck hard, on a medium to slow retrieve.

By around 6 pm, sunset came and we ran out of time. This river simply has way too many areas that one could cast to in such a short amount of time. Too many spots, and too many laydowns, stumps, and log-jams to dabble with.

Motoring back, and trying to avoid unseen boulders and stumps, I mentioned to Dan that I’d be shocked if the boat landing was still unoccupied because it always attracts the characters. Sure enough, a number of strange folks were lined along the shore in darkness, apparently pagan worshipping around a campfire, and blasting love songs with a convertible radio. The landing was occupied by at least twenty and cars were lined up along the access road. I wasn’t surprised, but I was more surprised by their methods of fishing, and their choice to schedule a club fishing outing at such a strange hour of day. 

Allegedly one of them caught a 13 pound walleye from this area of the river a few years back. If accurate, I’m pretty sure it would have been out in the news by now. By this time, Dan and I really had to load up the boat and leave. But if we stayed, who knows what type of entertainment we could have had and other stories we would have heard.

Despite being my first time on the river this year, I certainly hope that this won’t be my one and only time.

After all, Dan forgot to bring my auger. At least we have an excuse to fish again next time. Hopefully another river trip can be had real soon.

End Notes:

Not only did I float the river this weekend, but very early the next morning I headed north with some friends to Eastern Wisconsin where we fly fished a Lake Michigan tributary for salmon and trout. The fishing was decent, but slower than expected with only 10 to 20 fish brought in. I’ll get this report written as soon as possible, but it may take a while. A GoPro video I made from this outing has now turned into a feature presentation. I’ll have everything for you as soon as it’s edited. Also - my website was hit badly by a virus, is now unusable, and fixing it has been eating up a lot of my available time. So, it may take a little longer than expected to get my next stories finished as it’s been priority number-one. 

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