Illinois Outdoors

Articles

Rock River is Tops for Big Cats by Don Dziedzina
Articles >>

During the dog days of summer, those who love to fish are always looking for a new hot spot. There is one that I learned about this past summer and it just gets better and better as the fishing season seems to be shutting down. Fall fishing is great on the Rock River.

Here in Illinois, the Rock meanders south from the Wisconsin state line by Rockford and continues through residential and farmlands all the way down to the Mississippi River in the Quad Cities area.

I had the opportunity to fish the river below the dam at Rock Falls and Sterling as a guest with Matt Jones of the Catfish Academy.

Jones who is also known as Cat Matt, loves to fish for catfish. He has a fully rigged catfishing boat with all the rods and reels set up for huge fish. I even noticed that he had no electric trolling motor.

“I don’t need one.” Jones explained. “Catfishing is the only fishing I do and when you cat fish, you don’t use an electric trolling motor.”

Avid cat anglers most always anchor over catfish holding spots. They’ll place the boat above the location that they want to check out, set out an anchor, and then fish out the back of the boat.

Jones’ boat is well equipped for catfish angling. It’s a wide 18 foot jon boat, with solid diamond plate floors. It’s easy to walk around in as there is plenty of room. He has rod holders on the port and starboard side of the boat and is set up to run as many as six rods out back comfortably and without any of them getting tangled.

Being a guide specifically for catfishing, Jones gets clients from all over the Midwest. For a bass angling guide, a good day would be when your client would catch a five pound bass, maybe two. For catfish guides like Jones, a good day is when you get a thirty or forty pound flathead or a couple dozen channel cats that are from five to ten pounds.

I don’t mean to paint the wrong picture here for you. Fishing is fishing and it’s not called catching. Some days the fishing is good, some times it could just be better. But a catfish guide trip with the Catfish Academy is more of a learning experience.

Jones loves to put his clients on fish, but he also wants to teach people how to fish for cats on their own. His guide trips on the water are intended for the client to catch fish. But, more so for Jones, his goal is to provide the people in his boat with a lot of knowledge so that they can go out on their own on any river and catch catfish in quantity and quality.

Lessons learned will include rigging, boat position, bait selection, and more. You’ll also get an education on when to go for catfish too.

“A lot of people don’t believe that we can anchor in one spot and catch fifteen to twenty inch channel cats one after another, all day long.” Jones said. “And when I tell them that the time to do that is in February or March, they just think I’m kidding them.”

It’s true though. In the winter when the ice is off the river, catfish anglers can catch dozens upon dozens of cats from one wintering hole on a river. The fish just stack up like cordwood and if you can find them, you’re in for some heavy action.

Jones has a website, www.CatfishAcademy.com and its worth checking out. By registering on his site you can view a number of catfishing videos and you just won’t believe the size of some of the fish he catches. There’s even a video of a winter fishing trip and you can see that it doesn’t have to be ninety degrees outside to catch catfish.

If you’d like to give the Rock River a try, there’s a free boat launch about 5 miles west of Rt. 40 on Rt. 30 (west of Rock Falls/Sterling). If you would like to have Cat Matt Jones of the Catfish Academy give you some on-the-water lessons, give him a call at 815-590-1469.

Spend a day on the Rock River and you will quickly learn that the Rock River is truly a catfish haven. But that’s not all. You’ll also see that great fishing is not that far away.

- Back to Index of Articles -

• Back To Top Of Page •

• Site Navigation Map •