How do I fish this river?

[Landon P 0]

This is the Fox River. It runs through a small town that is about 40 mintues from my house. I've jigged for walleye on it and caught catfish but nothing on a fly rod. My question is how do I fish it for walleye, smallmouth, maybe even catfish. 

[troutmaster08 0]

Catfish will sometimes go for a muddler minnow. For smallies I would throw clouser minnows. Walleye have been known to go for wooly buggers and definitely bring a few sculpin imitations or stonefly jigs.

[xterrabill 0]

I have caught many bass, pike and even musky on the fox with spinning gear but farther south then you are, I would try crayfish and clouser patterns first probably in deeper shaded areas for lm/sm bass near rocks, wooly's are always a safe bet too.

[Landon P 0]

How do I get the flies down deep? When jigging you have to use quarter ounce jig heads other wise the current will take them. 

[mikemac1 0]

I would recommend two books that will go along way toward helping your fish the Fox,

Fly Fishing for Smallmouth Bass (Harry Murray, 1989)

Smallmouth Strategies for the Flyrod (Ryan, 2004)

Back when I was stationed in the East, these works helped me catch a lot of smallies in the mid-Atlantic and in northern Minnesota and Canada.  I don’t know anything about the Fox, but if there’s a decent population of smallies there, this information will help.

 

[TIER 0]

You might want to try poppers if you can find slow enough water.

[xterrabill 0]

weighted fly's and sink tip line, cast upstream of target and let sink far enough down to be at target depth without snagging (that's the hard part). trial and error, be prepared to replace some fly's and tippet, finding structure with eddies and current breaks as you do with most rivers and streams is key. myself, anything over 5 foot down I wont even try to fly fish it unless its a slow pool, some of my experience comes from fly fishing the root river (racine wi.) not the fox, but I often think about trying it, if you feel a bump on the line, set the hook.

I have had great days on the fox river, fox river chain and the connecting channels casting spinners and ice fishing, but have not fly fished it.

read, look up as much info and youtube vids as you can, do your homework, be prepared, there are several fox river websites that came up with a quick google and many vids, fly fishing too.

good luck and tight lines

[Philly 0]

How are you planning to fish it?  From shore, wading,  boat, canoe.  Different tactics for each.   That looks like a deeper stretch of the river, don't see any signs of rocks or structure near the surface,  thought the opposite bank looks interesting.   Does the bank you're standing on have similar structure?    This time of year I'd fish top water flies for bass, poppers, sliders, gurglers, Chernobyl ants.   If nothing else it will help you locate fish and it's more fun than just blind casting and hoping your fly will land near something hungry.   You can fish them a couple of ways.  Cast straight out and let the fly float down stream a bit, then strip it back toward you across the current.   Cast down stream at an angle,  let the fly drift toward the shore, then retrieve it parallel to the shore a couple of feet from the bank.  Besides, there's got to be more species of fish in that river than smallmouth, walleye and catfish.    Subsurface, if you have to, I'm a dry fly snob, clousers, crayfish patterns, hellgramites, weighted woolly buggers and zonkers. 

Walleye,  good luck.  The only time I fish for them is when I go up to a lake in Northern Ontario.  I've been going there for 30 years, 20 of those years I've been fly fishing.  I think, I've caught a half dozen with the fly rod.  None of them bigger than 15 inches.  Problem is they're usually in 15 and 25 feet of water, and they hug the bottom.  I use a sinking line to get my fly down.  It's just too much work.  A lot easier to thread a leech or a night crawler on a 1/4 oz jig and bounce it off the bottom.  

As xterrabill says, do you home work.  I had to google the river to see where it was and found a couple sites the showed me the river and another about fishing it.  If you're near one of the dams and you can fish below it do that.   Good luck.

 

 

 

 

 

[Landon P 0]

Thanks guys. Fox always gives me chills whenever I'm in a boat on it. Current is weird and pretty fast. I would be fly fishing it from shore. 

[mikechell 0]

Not to derail the fly fishing talk ... but if you're fishing from shore, is it too deep to wade out a few feet?  If not, then get out there and cast ahead of you as you work your way upstream.  If it IS too deep, then why bother fly fishing it?  You're catching fish using other fishing methods ... stick with what's working.

I consider fly fishing to be a shallow water method.  By shallow water, I mean anything 6 feet deep or less.  If I need to go deeper than that, then I switch to spinning or level-wind (baitcaster) gear.  I just don't see the advantage of fly fishing deeper than that.  AND ... if you're fishing from shore, how much back casting area will you have?  Will you be limited in where you can fish by the lack of clear area behind you?  If so, score another advantage to other methods of fishing.

[Landon P 0]

23 minutes ago, mikechell said:

Not to derail the fly fishing talk ... but if you're fishing from shore, is it too deep to wade out a few feet?  If not, then get out there and cast ahead of you as you work your way upstream.  If it IS too deep, then why bother fly fishing it?  You're catching fish using other fishing methods ... stick with what's working.

I consider fly fishing to be a shallow water method.  By shallow water, I mean anything 6 feet deep or less.  If I need to go deeper than that, then I switch to spinning or level-wind (baitcaster) gear.  I just don't see the advantage of fly fishing deeper than that.  AND ... if you're fishing from shore, how much back casting area will you have?  Will you be limited in where you can fish by the lack of clear area behind you?  If so, score another advantage to other methods of fishing.

I thought it would be cool to fish the same stretches with new methods. It gets deep quick and tops off at around 20 feet right near the bank (once again it is a weird river) if ypu go farther on that side it is all around 2 feet but to far to cast and to shallow for out boat. Plenty or room to cast it is all open and there is even a disc golf course for when i get bored!

[Poopdeck 0]

Tough to see from the picture but the current looks pretty lazy. Swinging clousers is always a good bet. Swing them so they rise up with the rise of the bank. If it's still hot as hell where you are I would bounce a slow tube down deep with spinning gear because they are probably in the deepest holes they can find with oxygenated water. Although they are a warm water fish they are like you and I and they also slow down during the super hot weather especially in a river with not much turbulent water to keep oxygen levels on par with their metabolism. 

I have a weighted line but I find no enjoyment fishing fly gear down deep and generally fish floating line 95% of the time. You can try early morning with poppers and large white royal wulff as well. Right now smallmouths are about as spread out as they can be which makes fishing for them one here and one there with no real pattern so don't be discouraged just keep at it and slow down your fishing. I went out on Tuesday and we managed 1 an hour for 6 hours. The slower you can fish right now the better until the water starts to cool off a bit. When those leaves start falling they will put the feed bag on and become much easier to pattern. Everything will come alive again come fall. 

[Mark Knapp 0]

4 hours ago, mikechell said:

Not to derail the fly fishing talk ... but if you're fishing from shore, is it too deep to wade out a few feet?  If not, then get out there and cast ahead of you as you work your way upstream.  If it IS too deep, then why bother fly fishing it?  You're catching fish using other fishing methods ... stick with what's working.

I consider fly fishing to be a shallow water method.  By shallow water, I mean anything 6 feet deep or less.  If I need to go deeper than that, then I switch to spinning or level-wind (baitcaster) gear.  I just don't see the advantage of fly fishing deeper than that.  AND ... if you're fishing from shore, how much back casting area will you have?  Will you be limited in where you can fish by the lack of clear area behind you?  If so, score another advantage to other methods of fishing.

Not to talk for Landon but I'd do it for the challenge. One of the things I really want to do some time is catch a really big laker in a deep lake on a fly. Some of them will be suspended 80 feet down.

[mikechell 0]

5 hours ago, Mark Knapp said:

I'd do it for the challenge.

Probably true ... but we already know, you're a bit ... not right ... in the head!

😁

[Poopdeck 0]

How would you get the fly down 80'?