Lake Shelbyville Illinois Fishing Blog

This time of the year I’m not doing a lot of fishing ,so I’ll try to give some tips and information. When you are putting new line on closed or open face spinning reels there is a right way and wrong way. The first thing you want to do is place our line spool on end and take the line off one end or the other. To determine which end is the right one you thread the line threw the eyes of the rod and tie it to the reel. While holding tension to the line begin to reel it on and after a few cranks stop and between the first two eyes above the reel pull about 2 ft. of slack line and turn it lose. If the line hangs without any twist your OK, if the slack line turns into a twist, then you need to turn your line spool over and take the line from the other end of the spool. By doing this you will always get your line on the right way the first time. Once I know which is the right end of the line spool I mark it (this end up) that way I can save time. Every spool will be different so you need to check them all. For level wind or baitcasting reels you spin the line spool from the side there is know right way or wrong way, just put it on tight as you can by holding tension to the line.

With the temps getting cold you want to be sure to drain the water form your boats and motors so they don’t freeze and break some thing. Fishing this time of the year can be very good , but when your finished at the end of your trip trim your motor all the way down and give the water a chance to drain so you don’t trap water in the hub.

no fishing

Fished with clients for whites today and kept 24 , all were caught on 1/8 oz. lead heads and 3 in. tails one to 3 ft. in the coves on the sand banks.

no fishing

We did no fishing today, but we have some deer hunters staying at the old house this week and this morning one of them killed a big 15 pointer with a bow.

no fishing today.

Barb and I got out for for a short time in the afternoon just to enjoy the nice day. We fished a little for crappie deep and shallow and caught them both ways on 8th. and 1/4 oz. tubes on wood. Had one nice bass and seen others feeding on shad and seen one big musky chaseing big shad on the surface. The coves had cleared up and looked good I’m sure we could have caught whites in the coves, but we didn’t try for them. The coves were full of shad and we seen lots of activity in them. The water temp was in the mid 50’s.

When I’m not booked to fish ,it seems like I have to many ofter things to do.

no fishing

no fishing today