large monitor and time on your hands

[Special Ed]

Open up a separate window and go to www.wolfrivercam.com

Select the Fremont cam from the map and shrink your window size so it sits with just the view-able camera image somewhere on your desktop.

Supposedly the "peak" white bass spawning run is right around Mother's day weekend and the white bass spawn at 57 degrees. I think temperature has less to do with timing. Looking at the wolf river cam, there are no white bass. None, zero, zip, ziltch. Last reported water temp from Fremont was 55 degrees. Being only 3 days since the "peak" you'd think you'd see a few stragglers, or even the fish coming back down river into Winnebago. This is not so. Peak happened a week earlier, and in colder temperatures that 57 degrees.

Right now there are a lot of small male perch following around big fat female perch. Perch are moving up river to spawn now. I would venture to guess that if Ken spent some time on creeks above the N. Aurora dam he would find perch in the creeks. I don't know why, but I've always found good numbers of perch north of Aurora.

Also on the camera view is a fair amount of big fat female smallmouth bass. Moving very lethargically. These fat females will be dropping eggs soon.... All the while in colder water than what is flowing on the Fox AND the DuPage, and at the same time that we have big fat females moving onto beds in the DuPage and presumably the Fox.

The fish don't go by the Christian calendar and they don't have thermometers handy to tell them when they should make babies. Time of the year is critical. By this I am referring to the meteorologically recognized markers of seasonal change: length of daylight period and moon phase.

When I was a kid i grew up fishing the DuPage river. For 6 or 7 years my weekends, holidays, and breaks were spent wading the stretch from Washington & Ring rd. to Knock Knolls park. Some days I fished till my feet hurt from walking on river rock in old tennis shoes so I would perch along shore and watch the fish react to schools of baitfish, other predatory fish, flying insects, emerging larvae, etc. You can learn a lot about your environment if you have the patience to sit and watch them in their natural environment. Something you can't do at a fish hatchery.

[ThunderStick]

When lilacs are blooming, the smallies are spawning.

[Ken G]

Perch don't particularly like current. From North Aurora up the dams are closer together, therefore slow moving pools.

They're all coming from the Chain. Stocked at one time I would guess.

Lilacs, moon phases, earthquakes....

Temps control everything. Bug hatches, bait fish activity, in water critter movement. All that observation of surroundings is coincidence and was an early way of associating one thing with another. An early form of science before the tools were invented to measure the details.

You want to see the smallie spawn come to a screeching halt, have a cold spell. They'll then give up and absorb all those eggs back into their bodies.

Lightning and thunder is the god Thor getting all pissed off at humans for not sacrificing enough virgins at his altar. No, really...

[Special Ed]

Show me a year where it got too cold after the smallies started bedding where they re-absorbed their eggs. Please include evidence of this re-absorption.

Fish will have eggs in their bellies, and make the migrations to spawning habitat regardless of what the water temperatures are. They will do this when they are full of milt or spawn.

The only thing temperature would effect would be successful spawning. If there was a dramatic decrease in temperatures their metabolisms would diminish, spawning activity would slow, and very few if any fish will successfully deposit/fertilize eggs.

What if we installed a cooling system in a creek that kept the water at smallie spawning temperature? Would they just spawn non-stop? Temperature DRIVEN spawning is illogical. Temperature dependent recruitment is totally reasonable.

[Ken G]

Show me a year where it got too cold after the smallies started bedding where they re-absorbed their eggs. Please include evidence of this re-absorption.

There's a picture of an egg laden/degrading smallie on my blog somewhere.

Read up on your fish. You'll see.