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Subject: East Fork Onley, Illinois
Submitted by Fisher X (ip 209.107.239.72)
Date Fished: 4/27/2008
Water Temperature: 60
Water Clarity: 2-3 feet East Fork Lake, 26 27 Apr 08
The week leading up to the fish off boasted days in the 80’s and nights in the 50’s but on Friday a strong front blew through dropping the lows into the lower 40’s and a blue bird day on Saturday. Reports from the previous 2 weeks claimed 20 lb 5 fish bags were needed to win. I arrived early Sat morning to clear skies, air temps around 40 and a stiff breeze from the NW around 12mph. The water temps started out at 59 and ended the day around 63. The water was clear but slightly murky by east fork standards. There was less grass than normal too. You could see about 2 feet or so into the water. Another tournament took off so the lake was under pressure all day. I went to the back of the 5-finger area looking for bedding fish. It was the same as last year-only males were left guarding freshly laid eggs (no fry, no females). I popped a 16 in keeper on a gold rogue and another on a WM/red senko. The bedders would not touch a thing. Because they were small males I elected to leave bedding fish alone. It wasn’t worth the time. I left the area and went to the new house cove. I marked bedding male fish as I worked back but they would only look and not bite. I got back to the concrete walls and nailed a 17 inch skinny fish on a blue-back Bandit 100. I stopped where the coffer dam once was and nailed 2 keepers and a short on the bandit. I pulled up and went to the ramp early. 4 fish roughly 9 lbs. I had 2 areas with biters and 2 patterns to work (excluding bedders).
T’ment morning was a copy of Sat. Temps started at 42 and warmed to 63 by afternoon. The sky was clear until noon then it lightly hazed over. Again 2 other small tments went out adding to the pressure on the lake. I immediately went to the shallow back of the 5 finger area. My son got a keeper right off on the rogue. Then I lost one (a keeper male) at the boat. We had several swirls and misses. About 7:00 a wind came up from the north and shut off the rogue bite. We made a couple of attempts at bedding males with no luck. About 8:00 we moved to the points and started cranking for post spawn females. I caught two shorts fairly quick and then about 9:00 popped a 4-13 out of 5 feet of water on a five finger secondary. She was mangled from spawning. We stayed with the crank with no success. At 10 we moved to my second area with the new houses. We cranked the old coffer dam area. We caught 3 shorts and a small keeper in short order before they stopped. We worked points the rest of the day until about 1:00 with no luck. We returned to the 5 finger area and cranked up two nice 1.5 lb crappie off a point. We went back to the back flat and my son jumped a fish on the rogue right before quitting. Little did he know if he would have landed that fish he would have won the t’ment with 3 skinny males. At the weigh-in guys only had ones or twos –all skinny males. My 4-13 ended up winning. Once again the weather and being a week lake on the spawn pretty well relegated East Fork to a piss poor fishing day for everyone.
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