Jig ’em up or hand ’em over
The top-20 cut in the Illinois River RCL Tour is determined with rods and without
SPRING VALLEY, Ill. – For the competitors in the Wal-Mart RCL Walleye Tour who experienced a strong and steady bite on day one in the first event of 2003, returning to the same spots and strategies was almost a no-brainer. When the similar moves paid off, it seemed the planets were in alignment. When they didn’t? Well, it was time to steer clear of the brink of despair.
Everything clicked once again for Ranger pro Keith Eshbaugh of West Alexander, Pa., who returned to the channel near the anachronistically named Negro Creek. There Eshbaugh, who had been positioned in fourth after day one with 17 pounds, 1 ounce, kicked it up a notch today by handlining the largest six-sauger limit of the tournament with 18 pounds, 15 ounces.
Perhaps Eshbaugh was aided by the intense boating pressure prompted by heavy weights from the area on day one. Or so his thinking goes.
“I saw the jiggers pulling nothing but dinks,” Eshbaugh says. “(The pressure) moved the fish to where I was catching them and away from the banks.”
In addition to a denser crowd, the weather played a factor for everyone on the Illinois River. Air temperatures were down 15 degrees from a day earlier, to about 70, and the sunny skies that had inspired the bite had all but vanished under a veil of clouds. The wind as well made jigging difficult at times and even troubled Eshbaugh.
“When it got windy, it died,” Eshbaugh says. “In between the wind and the calm was good for me.”
Stay or go?
The much-diminished jigging action was a cause for concern for many who wondered whether to abandon the Negro Creek area. “Should I stay or should I go?” posited Lund pro Jeff Manz of Vanderbilt, Mich., who had been in second place after the first day. “You get a pack of boats in there, and they’re stealing fish from each other.”
Manz was bound and determined to do it again in the same stretch where Eshbaugh also was fishing, but Manz had had only one bite (which he missed) before splitting the scene at 12:30 p.m. And so he ran upriver to troll Reef Runner Rip Shad crankbaits on leadcore line and thin, water-slicing Berkley FireLine, connecting on five saugers for 5 pounds, 10 ounces, enough to put him in 16th and the third day of action with a total of 24 pounds.
One pro who opted to grind it out near Negro Creek was John Kolinski of Menasha, Wis., a jigger par excellence who scored a 15-pound, 6-ounce limit to boost him to 29 pounds, 14 ounces, good for third place.
“There’s one little area in there that’s hot,” Kolinski says. “If I pound that one 50-yard stretch tomorrow, I’ll do all right.”
Although one cause for concern among the top-20 finalists is whether the saugers start spawning and go off the feed, Kolinski says the fish he caught had tight bellies that indicated the spawn is not ready to go into full swing.
Another jigger who did not wither in the same area was Ranger pro Ron Gazvoda of Lakewood, Colo., who managed a limit of 11 pounds, 5 ounces to put him in fifth, with 29 pounds, 7 ounces. He, too, noticed the effects of the continuously switching weather and the thoroughly dense crowd of up to four dozen boats.
“When the sun came out, it went pretty well,” Gazvoda says. “The wind blew every which way, and there was a lot of pressure. Through the day it seemed like everyone was down there.”
Gazvoda compensated for the finicky fish with tiny No. 12 trebles tied on stiff 15-pound fluorocarbon line to complement his jig with minnow and to nab the short strikers. Many of his biggest fish, Gazvoda says, did indeed come on the stinger hook.
Now what?
What happens next is open to interpretation. Some folks in the know – and plenty of tournament experience on the Illinois – believe the cooling weather, with forecasts calling for temperatures in the 50s, favors the deliberate precision of jigging. It’s possible another system will keep on producing when all else fails.
One competitor banking on the jig bite is Evinrude pro Tommy Skarlis of Walker, Minn. Skarlis scored a limit of 11 pounds, 11 ounces on the first day, for 28th place, and boosted himself into 13th with 13 pounds, 3 ounces.
“This is a massive cold system,” says Skarlis, another seasoned river jigger. “This is the toughest thing you can do to the fish in a situation like this. You’ve got this pattern rolling through that keeps moving the fish. If anything, this might help out the leadcore trollers.”
One such leadcore troller is Ranger pro Carl Grunwaldt of Green Bay, Wis., who was spotted a spell up from Negro Creek pulling crankbaits on leadcore line – which, as the terminology implies, is lead line. (It is wrapped in a Dacron sheath for manageability and durability.) The utility of leadcore is its ability when trolling to put a small bait on, and pounding into, the bottom with little line out and to cover long stretches of water to pluck one fish here, another one there.
Stay tuned to find out just which techniques do the trick on day three. Gone are 145 boats and their accompanying pressure, but as the weekend approaches, more locals could be out on the water, particularly in popular upstream stretches within a few miles of the dam at Starved Rock. The Negro Creek area will have its share of competitors from the top 20, and with the changing weather and diminished number of boats that pressured the fish into the depths of the channel, the pros and their partners might just have to figure out the tricks and locations du jour all over again.
We’ll see not long after the takeoff for the final 20 begins at 7 a.m. at the Spring Valley Boat Club.
Click here for a preview of day three.
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