10/4/08 Batavia Report

From the Wisconsin border to the Illinois River, some of the best and easily accessible fishing in the Chicago area.
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Ken G
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10/4/08 Batavia Report

Post by Ken G »

Decided to take my own advice and hit Les Arends Forest Preserve and if time allowed, the creek that flows through it.

Wound up with 35 smallies total, 11 out of the river and 24 out of the creek.

Found out that 1000 cfs flowing water pushes harder than I remember and near record floods dramatically changes the shoreline, the bottom and what's lying on the bottom.

More story when I can get to it. The camera was acting like shit today, so missed a lot of good pictures.

But here's a few. Sorry, no fish pictures. Didn't think of taking any.

This is what it was looking like when I got there. The geese and ducks hadn't left for the fields yet and they were all over the place. The fog was thick enough to give them an odd ghostly appearance. Tried to take others just before this, but that's when my camera decided it was only going to record one shot for every four I took. Of course, the ones I missed were the better ones. That kept happening all day.

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With these next two, I was trying to catch the way the light was shimmering off the water and onto the limestone. The light was bouncing all over it from top to bottom. That's why the shots look over exposed, but they're not. The light was just very intense. I should have put the camera in movie mode.

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Over the past 8 years I've watched this small foot bridge over the creek slowly get beat to death. Somewhere in my collection is a picture of how it originally looked. This last flood did it in. There were trees all over the place that washed down the creek. Some were 4 foot in diameter. This pile simply broke the bridge in half. If you look at the wood of the bridge to the right, you'll see that the wood was easily the size of railroad ties. All the water and trees snapped them like toothpicks.

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Ken G
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