Season Opener Report: It Was Rough

After my pre-season run-in with a decent sized smallmouth in my local stream, I was determined to catch more.  Saturday, I donned my vest, grabbed my spinning gear, and took my little girl fishing again.
I didn't realise we had gotten so much rain!
Upon seeing the swollen flow of coffee where the Menomonee River ususally flows, I almost just turned around and headed home.  But I decided I could use the walk anyway, it couldn't hurt to try.  Right near the first bend under the Wisconsin Avenue bridge, I started seeing the suckers.  Lots of suckers.  I made a few casts with a lead head "Woolly Bugger" jig I tied for spinning gear and I caught a couple suckers.  As I put the first sucker back, my little girl told the fish "Bye bye."  It was one of the cutest things I have ever seen.  I wanted to find some game fish though.  We walked a long way, not seeing anything but rough fish.

Much higher water than last week

Very fast flow

My hand tied "Woolly Bugger" jig

Sunday, I went out again.  But this time, I went with rough fish on my mind.  You can only catch what's there, right?  I rigged up a purple Mister Twister, went down to the river with a half hour to kill, and I absolutely slayed the redhorse!  In 30 minutes, I caught eight suckers!  I literally spent more time unhooking fish than I spent fishing.  A couple of them were bruisers too!  A couple were foul hooked, but most took the Twister right in the mouth.

Monday I went out with about a half hour to kill again before work.  There were much less suckers, but the ones that were there were nice sized fish.  There were a lot more carp up that far though.  On my first cast, I caught a nice sucker that caused the carp to scatter.  Too bad, I really wanted to catch a carp on my medium action hand-me-down rod with four pound test.  I caught one other sucker before heading home.

I did some research, there are a lot of different species of suckers in the Genus (Moxostoma) that includes redhorse.  It's hard to tell some of them apart without actually opening them up.  I'm kind of curious how many species there actually are in the Menomonee.  It's obvious that I caught several different species.