No Bite on the Illinois River

[IL Hunter]

I got a chance to get out on the river for a little bit yesterday. Not a single bite. I'm thinking it's gonna be quiet until the post spawn. When I was out about 10 days ago they were biting like crazy and the males had their heads all swollen up. Sure isn't much fun when the catfish won't bite.

[Boogie68MHS]

I was at Florence last Saturday and did real well, never caught anything over 8 pounds, but never caught any thing less than 3 pounds.
The water is really high.

[Rivercat2]

I have been fishing all week and been doing real well cought a lot of 10 to 12 pounders on shad.

[BigCatDreaming]

I also had a good weekend on the Rock River in northern illinois but the weekend before was hell. Keep your head up man their out there

[IL Hunter]

The illiois river at valley city is so low right now its not even funny. I'm not even sure how the barges are still running.

[Boogie68MHS]

The illiois river at valley city is so low right now its not even funny. I'm not even sure how the barges are still running.

Yeah the bottom dropped out at Florence, we still have 10 to 14 feet in the channel, but the gar have moved in and they will bite anything.

[IL Hunter]

It seems like as soon as the water gets up they back the river up again at Lagrange. I havent checked the channel but it can't be too deep. The cover is just about all out of the water.

[LanceRomance]

It seems like with the water so low (water levels seemed to drop all of a sudden this year) most of the cats will fall into thier summertime haunts. Right now I'm just trying to find the deepest holes in the stretch of river I fish.

[Boogie68MHS]

I just got back from 4 days at Florence and the water level actually rose until Saturday. The wind blew so hard right out of the south we couln't fish much, it was so strong it pushed our 20 foot jon back up against the anchor ropes and we could not hold sideways.
The fishing was pretty poor and bait is scarce. I'll give it another shot for a week around the 5th of July.

[IL Hunter]

Boogie I might run into you sometime down there. I fish with my girlfriends dad on his boat and we put in at Valley. Saturday he told me how rough the water was. Sunday we went out and there wasn't much biting. Finally we caught two that weighed 4 or 5lbs each. They bit within 30 seconds of each other and that was it for the action for the day. The river is still low, but it looks like the bit eis starting to come back a little bit. I havent had much of a chance to fish latley so even catching one 4lber was nice for me.