A 4½-pound crappie or an 8½-pound bass?
Given the choice of which fish they could catch, anglers would likely hem and haw, dance and dodge, and then dilly-dally before answering with an indecisive, “both?”
Kinkaid Lake in deep southern Illinois could be the place to land both, if recent history is any indication.
We’ve reached the cusp of the 2024 waterfowl season, yet many hunters in Illinois are already focused two years down the road – and for good reason.
These hunters are curious: will Illinois re-shape itself to three waterfowl zones and offer a split duck season in 2026?
Ralph Loos: Illinois duck hunters await changes to season framework Read More »
While Illinois DNR did expand the length of the Restricted Archery Zone deer season this year, it did not add counties to the special zone it created back in 2018.
When the bow season opens Oct. 1, hunters in Champaign, Douglas, Macon, Moultrie, and Piatt counties will only be allowed to take antlered deer. Until now, the special season had that “buck-only”requirement until Oct. 15. It will stretch until Oct. 31 in 2024.
Number of counties in Illinois’ Restricted Archery Zone holds at five Read More »
Lake Springfield’s catfish continue to attract anglers, aided by the fact there are three species – channel catfish, flathead catfish, and blue catfish – doing quite well in a body of water that sits just a few miles south of the state capitol.
It’s been a gradual evolution for the 3,800-acre “bass lake.”
Still a bass lake, Lake Springfield in Sangamon County, Ill., shows catfish ‘evolution’ Read More »
We’ve been scooped by Illinois DNR’s new version of the Illinois Digest of Hunting and Trapping Regulations, which doesn’t bother me all that much, given that DNR’s top source for news is, well, DNR.
Like every other hunter in the state, I spend hours flipping through pages of the Digest – or clicking through pages of the Digest, as is more common in the world we now live in. Even simple things in the Digest entertain me, such as the section that shares definitions of common terms.
Illinois’ first cast at a virtual fishing tournament resulted in anglers catching 434 qualifying fish.
Hooking fishermen was a little bit tougher. Held March 30 through June 30, the Illinois Walleye Challenge attracted 31 anglers who logged a combined 864 hours of fishing across 43 bodies of water. Half the 297 trips taken in Illinois during the tournament resulted in “zero fish caught.”
Sam Militello had the largest catch, a 28.5-inch walleye.
Dove hunters in Illinois are shooting half as many birds as they did a decade ago. Does that mean there were more doves flying in 2014? Or were hunters better shooters 10 years ago?
It could be both. It could be neither. Regardless, a majority of the state’s hunters – no matter what they prefer to hunt – view the dove opener as a sign hunting is back.
Dove hunting season a symbolic opener in Illinois Read More »
No Illinois wildlife refuge was selected for a pilot program that will basically pay hunters who choose not to use lead ammunition on federal sites. And, in an unrelated move, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced it is planning to decrease the acreage open for hunting at a refuge in the state that is quite popular with hunters.
As expected, the USFWS in late July confirmed it is implementing a program at seven National Wildlife Refuges this fall “to test voluntary, incentive-based efforts to increase the use of lead-free ammunition by hunters on USFWS lands.”
When whispers of the program began to swirl last year, there was thought that the Crab Orchard National Wildlife Refuge might be part of the test.
Ralph Loos: Feds try encouraging non-lead hunting with economic incentives Read More »
It was only a matter of time before an 8-pound bass showed up at a tournament weigh-in at Newton Lake.
Three years ago, DNR’s annual report on the Jasper County water included a note that the top five bass brought to the scale in 2021 were “all over 7 1 ⁄4 pounds.” That was also true for tournaments held in 2023 – with one exception. The biggest bass came in at 8.3 pounds.
Expected 8-pound bass hit scales at Newton Lake in Jasper County, Ill. Read More »
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