‘Bobber Anne’ recalls her experience of fishing downtown Chicago.

Launching Pat’s G3 multi-species boat with its 200-horse Yamaha at the Richard J. Daley Boat Launch, we slid gracefully into the clear waters of the Chicago River on a beautiful sunny morning. We wouldn’t encounter any other boat anglers all day; just the occasional bank angler.

Pat had invited Dan and me during the O’Hare Sports Show in January. “Come on down for a couple days,” he had said, “and fi lm the great fishing we have in downtown Chicago. Panfish are our specialty, but the river has almost all of freshwater species the state of Illinois possesses. It offers up some great bass of both kinds, crappies, walleyes, pike, catfish, and white bass.”

I wound up amazed at how we could catch so many fish among monstrous skyscrapers, sightseeing boats, water taxis, barges, overhead trains, cars, and hordes of pedestrians.     For this part of Fishing the U.S. Metro Cities DVD we’re producing, I took camera duty while Dan and Pat fi shed. However, I did get my licks in as you’ll see on the DVD, by catching the first fish and a couple of fat 6- to 7-inch bluegills. Fish Number 1 was a hard-fighting drum of about 8 pounds. That surprised both of the guys. As we motored north into the middle of downtown Chicago, the constant clamor and bustle of the morning kept my camera busy taping the unique sights for the introduction of Metro Fishing. We stopped a half block from Trump Tower of Chicago and anchored off a stack of ancient pilings left from the days when barges brought goods into the city’s center.

I’d heard before that the Merchandise Mart of Chicago had been constructed of wave-washed granite stones collected off the shores of St. Ignace Island in northern Lake Superior. These long-lasting log pilings left behind to rot and sprout vegetation on their surface structures might be some of the very logs that carried the granite rock to the city all those years ago.

“Guys, I’ve found that white twister tails like your 1/32 ounce Jiglet will take all the fish available here,” Pat advised as he dropped a white 1/16 oz. twist-tail jig down the side of one of the pilings. Instantly it was struck and he brought the first panfish aboard. That didn’t take long! Dan brought up the next which appeared to be the first one’s twin. Both would have been keepers but we preferred to release them all. Action continued until the guys had caught and released about 20 bluegills. Then Pat boated a nice 13-inch crappie from the current side of the outer piling. It was from Dan’s end of the boat and when Pat hooked into another one of similar size, we surmised the crappies were 6 feet or more off the pilings in deeper water. Dan had now switched to a 1/64 oz. white Freshwater Shrimp one of our most trustworthy lures.

To learn more about fishing the Chicago River, look for ‘Bobber’ Anne’s full article in the September Issue of MidWest Outdoors magazine, available the first full week of September and can be found on the newsstand or by subscribing on our website.