Lockjawed fish make second day of fishing not so good

STATE # 11 - ILLINOIS

MARCH 2018 - LAKE OF EGYPT

SPECIES CAUGHT - Black Crappie, Spotted Bass, Bluegill, Channel Catfish

This Illinois fishing trip started out with a plan to fish Rend Lake for multiple species with guide Nick Shafer from Benton. A flood filled Rend with muddy water so Nick implemented the backup plan.

He picked me up at my hotel in Marion and we drove pulling his boat to the Lake Of Egypt located south of where I stayed.

Nick asked me what I would most like to target in our backup plan so I chose Crappie out of all those that occupied this lake.

So we hit the water to find the crappie unresponsive to conventional approaches and Nick said, “Paul I have a method that will probably be a little harder than what you are used to but I have won tournaments with it,” I can’t remember if he gave the method a name or not but he showed it to me and I slowly caught on to this drifting jig fishing that woke the sleepy fish up just enough to get them hooked.

The bite was so faint if I hadn’t had him for a teacher I don’t know if I would have caught over one or two. I remember being conscience of that unofficial stat (how many would I have caught on my own) on this day that yielded 27 of them instead. Also boated was a Channel Cat, a Spotted Bass, and a Bluegill. Only three shy of the 30 limit was a major success on a cold day in the 2,300-acre warm water reservoir that serves as a cool down lake for the Southern Illinois Electric Power Plant.

When we called it a day and went to shore that afternoon we got a couple pictures and then Nick filleted my fish for me. I remember offering to help and he refused saying, “no that’s my job”.

I talked to a couple other guys coming out of the water while he was cleaning the fish for me and both their boats came out of the lake empty handed. The most I seen from any others was a boat with one fish and another with two.

Once again I was successful in choosing the right fishing guide when planning my trip as this southern Illinois native made me feel at home in a lake with a foreign name.

After fishing all day with the best Crappie fisherman I have ever hit the water with, we weighed our options for planning day two.

After not making sense out of any other lakes we came back to this power company-owned lake and hit it side to side and end to end making a few of them bite and got 15 of them early and then these fish went into lockjaw mode so we called it off a little early and I left the Lake Of Egypt a better Crappie fisherman than when I entered it. Nick was easy going and easy to make friends with and an excellent teacher of his method of fishing. I am glad we had this controlled lake for a backup plan that was clean despite all the flooding going on in the region.

I spoke with Nick today about fishing with him again with a different target in a different lake. I am looking forward to that hopefully for this summer.

His fishing guide services cover Rend Lake, Kincaid Lake and the Lake Of Egypt. Nick also guides for waterfowl hunting of multiple species and is a year round guide. He is based in Benton and can be found at www.rendlakefishingguides.com.

He is on Facebook as Nick Shafer. Thanks Nick for waking them up when nobody else could make them bite. This was educational to me for one of my home native fish species that I am catching more of now. Thanks to Nick for being excellent at his services and taking part in Fishing America with me.