Any of you Illinois people ever shoot at Ted Shanks? They don't allow motors over 10H, but you wouldn't need it. You could do anything at the area entirely on the trolling motor. I put in another 12H day today, trying to collect fish of certain species and ages. We were using cast nets, seins and trammel nets, not bowfishing, but we got lots of fish that bowfishers would like to see. It was a neat place; I'd never been there before. We got several smallbowfin and one about 2.5 pounds, LOTS of nice carp, some bigheads around 25 pounds and had one big one bust through our net. We did not get any longnose gar, but we got some quite respectable spotted gar and some JUMBO shortnose. And a bunch of large gizzard shad, and several smallish grass carp and HUNDREDSof carp colored goldfish, mostly small. Also some decent buffalo and some silver carp. Also, in one spot in particular, we got a bunch of 11-inch and up black crappie! On top of all that, it was a beautiful day and a great break from being tied to the computer writing. Recently, I have not had time to partake in the field work. I don't have time now either, but I had a visiting scientist from China and I wanted to take him to the field. He was mightily impressed with the common carp population at Ted Shanks. I was too, a little, but not as much as Dr. Tong. China does not have many resources like this - all their freshwater fisheries are overfished, including common carp.

Wow sounds like a great thing to Show Dr. Tong. Glad to hear you got to sneak out too.

Duane, what's the water clarity like?

Nice having so many species in one spot.
It would belike pot luck fishing.

Thanks for the heads-up.

Well, the river has been in there recently, with the high water from the hurricane leftovers. So sections close to the river were pretty muddy. Up higher, the shallow wetlands were very clear. But I did not see many really large fish in them. I bet there were some, and you could wade them if there are, but other than bowfin I couldn't say for sure that there were many fish you'd want to shoot in the higher (all of Ted Shanks is on the bottom, so none of it is very high) wetlands. You could see clouds of gizzard shad, likeenormous slow amoebas, under the water. Also schools of goldfish, but they were pretty small for shooting. I think there would be some big fish, but not sure. We got all our bigger fish in Horseshoe Lake, which is labeled on the Conservation area map. I think you'd get some big fish in threemile ditch, too. Parts of these were muddy when we were there, and other parts greenish, but probably acceptable clarity. You'd do better to wait until the mud from the river drops out.

My guys were over at Ted Shanks again last week. The water was ripping out of the Salt, so much they could not launch the little boat they brought with them on the Salt River to get out to the Missouri. I think they must have been releasing from Mark Twain, because nothing else was flowing like that.

Anyway, they got some really big bigheads out of Horseshoe lake on the Conservation Area there. One was well over 40 pounds, I forget the exact weight. Lot of other large bigheads too.

I was not there, and I did not ask about water clarity.