2008 Time On The Water Show Line-Up

1. Lake Shangri-La
   Shang has always been a very interesting lake. Located right on the Illinois/Wisconsin boarder it has been a very good bass lake for years but receives very little attention. Part of the problem is that lake access is limited do to virtually no trailer parking. There is a good public gravel ramp but you have to know a resident or give one a few bucks to park your trailer in their driveway. Because of the limited access the lake isn't fished hard and the bass population has been able to sustain itself without any stockings. Like a lot of Midwest lakes water levels have been down in recent years and vegetation now grows all over the lake. Many areas in the lake become difficult to fish after Memorial Day do to the weed growth. But if you can get there in early spring Shang can be about as good as it gets. In this show we were targeting pre-spawn bass located around bogs with a bait called a rattle-shake. We had a great day and were home for dinner.
2. Wolf River
   Our second show of the season was on the Wolf River and we were facing many of the same issues as in our first show. Where do the bass go when low water levels move them off there usual structure? On top of that we were faced with weather that wasn't really predictable. In such occasions you go with what you know. I headed into a backwater area that was about as reliable as it gets. But guess again, the sea walls that usually had two feet of water on them now had only inches .After trying the baits that I thought would work I had to make the switch to finesse baits. The fish were defiantly still there.
3. Lake Jacksonville
   Filming on a new lake is always a challenge. It's a lot like fishing a tournament; you have a very limited time to find fish and the figure out how to catch them. Friends had told me that Lake Jacksonville was a good bass lake. And after a little looking I found out why. This show was shot in September, normally not a good time to fish. But we found some shallow fish that cooperated. This is also a show that wouldn't have happened without certain bait. Usually there are several patterns going on at the same time. We tried a lot of techniques on this trip. One worked very well.
4. Lake Wisconsin
   This show was shot in October, but you wouldn't know it from the looks of the place. Summer held on for a long time in 07 and while I thought this would be a fall fishing trip we found water temps in the 70s and fish feeding in summer locations. This might have been one of our best trips of the year. In fact we had a little morning flurry that was awesome. I caught fish on buzz baits, sencos, and the bass were hitting spinner baits so hard that I had to hold on to my rod. Lake Wisconsin is an incredible fishery and we will defiantly be back.
5. Big Green Lake
   This year the show title should have been Windy City Bassing. Again we were making our first trip to a lake. Big Green has a reputation for big bass. This trip also had big winds. This huge, deep trophy lake was shrunken down to one little fishable bay. Lucky for us there was fish there. We caught both smallmouth and largemouth bass and even caught one big one shallow. This trip is more about making the best of the conditions that you are faced with than a show about just catching them. Rarely do we find all the conditions right. If you're a person that can go fishing at the drop of a hat this show might not be the giant hunt that you are looking for. But if you are like the rest of us that take our fishing trips whenever we get a chance, this show might just show you how to make the best of a tough situation.
6. Madison Chain Buzz baits
   Someone in Madison doesn't like us. We have now tried several times to show what an awesome fishery that the Madison Chain was but Mother Nature always gets in the way. For our second consecutive trip the Madison winds blew so hard that we were limited to fishing very small areas of the lake. Luckily the chain is so good that you can still find ways to catch fish even when choices are limited. I was able to find some shallow feeding fish in an area protected from the wind while we didn't catch any giants, we did catch more than enough to make our trip worthwhile. I'm not giving up on Madison, sooner our later the weather will let its guard down and show us the giants that live there.
7. Wolf River
   For a change it wasn't that windy on this trip, it just rained from the minute we launched the boat till the time we took it out of the water. It rained so hard that this fish couldn't even find my top water baits. Instead I fished isolated structure up and down the river. By the end of the day I was not only drenched but had caught a pretty respectable bag of fish. Fishing tubes and grubs on seawalls and stumps are usually two of my favorite ways to fish. But at the end of this trip I was wetter than the bass.
8. Mississippi River pool 13
   This trip was about more than just fishing. We spent some time with bass fisherman doing what they love while helping others. The Twin River Bass Club has been doing incredible things using a bass tournament to raise money for children's charities. The important part of this show is about their tournament, but we also show some great Mississippi River bass fishing from this year and past years.
9. Lake Wisconsin
   We let our friend and partner Dave out of the office for this one. Together we fished Lake Wisconsin for bass using to different techniques. While sometimes this is a problem it wasn't on this trip. Dave aka Froggy spent the day throwing his frog into lily pads and any other scattered grass with great success. I on the other had pitched skipped and flipped baits behind him. This was a day when two different techniques worked. You will have to decide which one worked better. The only thing for sure was that Lake Wisconsin is a heck of a fishery.
10. Madison Chain
    If we film on the Madison Chain the wind is going to blow. I need to right that down somewhere. We are almost ready to produce a full length motion picture on where to fish on the Madison Chain with the wind blowing. But at least we keep finding new locations. On this trip I was able to throw spinner bait in two feet of water and catch a bunch of bass. All of this only a couple hundred yards from the ramp. Add this show into our making chicken salad out of chicken you know what series of shows. There is almost always a way to catch bass, sometimes you just have to keep trying different techniques until you find one that works.
11. Wolf River 2
    This trip is a continuation of our earlier trip. It's still raining and the bass are still biting. We refined some of the techniques that we used in the first show and were able to catch bass using the same patterns and expanding upon them.
12. Lake Jacksonville
    This was our second show on Lake Jacksonville and our second show filming with Rob Russow. Rob is the president of The University of Illinois fighting Illini Bass Club. If he is any indication the future of bass fisherman is defiantly on the rise. On this trip Rob catches a lot of fish on a jig while I have success with a selection of other baits. It was a lot of fun fishing with Rob; I hope that I don't have to fish against him in the future.
13. East Fork Lake
    This time we fished East Fork in the fall and I was lucky to have Bass Pro Shops pro-staffer Kevin McLean in the boat with us. The bass were stuck in-between summer and fall patterns and we never found a group of fish. But between the two of us we were able to catch some good ones. This was one of those times when you put the Minn Kota on high and cover as much water as you can. Several times throughout the day we caught fish in places that we had fished earlier without success. Fishing in seasonal transitions can be tough, but sticking with it is usually the answer.