Bass fishing is hot on Rock

From the Janesville Gazette (11.07.09)

The past 10 days have offered some of the best smallmouth bass action anyone can remember on Rock River. Unfortunately, few are out there to cash in on a bite that may set the bar for years to come.

Water temperatures tumbled here several weeks ago, falling right past numbers where bass feel compelled to feed heavily before slowing down for the winter. Although nights remain cool, water temperatures have actually rebounded several degrees to register nearly 50 on those rare sunny afternoons.

Smallmouth are attracted to the warmest water where food is easily available right now. They are congregating near shallow, rocky points in less than two feet of water—sometimes even shallower.

Tributary and drain tube entries near points are proving to be especially attractive to these fish, which are gorging primarily on minnows that call these small creeks home.

Not every point with a creek entry or drain tube is holding fish. Unproductive water can be eliminated with just a few casts of a yellow twister tail on a small jighead.

When you finally find fish, there will likely be a pile of them. Don’t go looking for other fish once you find the fish. Change the presentation slightly once action slows on the twister. Try other plastics. You can catch bass all day long with a lively fathead minnow suspended about 6 inches beneath a cork.

Because these fish are so vulnerable right now, specific locations of two Rock River honey holes can’t be provided. But this much can be said: If you probe every point and creek entry on the west side of the River between Afton and Beloit you’ll eventually find the fish.

When you do, please free these fighters—and don’t spill the beans to those folks who lack the gumption to go prospecting.

This bite will come to a screeching halt when water temperatures fall into the mid-40s. You can look for this to occur within a week or so. When this benchmark arrives, don’t put away the rod.

It’s walleye time!

Tailwaters at Indianford, Monterey and Beloit dams and similar spots above Lake Koshkonong are obvious places to start looking for walleyes. Water from the VFW down to the tip of Blackhawk Island above the lake is probably the most productive community spot on the entire Rock River.

The community aspect of this spot is not conducive to stringing a limit of fish. If you’re in a pack of a dozen boats and see one fish caught every 20 minutes this does not mean the action is fast and furious.

A better strategy is targeting the interface of slack water and faster water, commonly called a backeddy.

Since the Rock is a medium-sized river, backeddies are generally small, perhaps the size of an Olympic swimming pool, often smaller. It doesn’t take much time to probe such a spot with a jig and twister or jig and minnow combination.

There are dozens of potential walleye locations between Indianford and the Highway 14 bridge west of Janesville.

If you don’t know what a backeddy looks like, drive out to the Highway 14 bridge and look directly downstream from the concrete pilings that support the bridge.

See the quiet water between current plumes passing by on either side of the pilings? Those are backeddies.

If you’re wondering, Gee—could there be a walleye there?, The answer is yes.

But you will catch them only if you’re the first one to present a hook in such a way that the walleye living there can’t help chomping down.

Ted Peck, a certified Merchant Marine captain, is an outdoors columnist for The Janesville Gazette.