Illinois fishing is a downstate story: Rend Lake's crappie flats, Shelbyville's walleye-and-muskie program and Carlyle's wind-blown white bass, plus two wild cards: Lake Michigan's salmon lakefront in Chicago and the Mississippi's backwaters running the state's whole western border.
Reports current for Friday, October 23
Every one of the 13 Illinois waters we cover has a live read this morning. They are all sitting in the middle of the scale today. Water runs 55 F to 74 F. Pressure is holding steady on most of them, so the day comes down to water temperature and wind.
Best right now: Carlyle Lake 3/5, Cedar Lake 3/5, Clinton Lake 3/5
Live verdicts from this morning's reports.
A 1971 Corps lake on the Big Muddy, which IDNR rates excellent for channel catfish and good for crappie, white bass and flathead catfish.
The walleye-and-muskie surprise in the corn belt.
Illinois' biggest lake: sailboat wind, white bass waves and a sauger tailwater.
Illinois' water playground with a fishing spine: 15 connected lakes of muskie weeds, walleye holes and the Midwest's busiest summer boat traffic.
Chicago's Lake Michigan front: 22 miles of shoreline and nine harbors where the Park District lists salmon, trout, perch and bass.
Shabbona Lake: a 318.8-acre DeKalb County fishing lake that the Illinois General Assembly named the Muskie Capitol of Illinois in 2011.
Chicagoland's smallmouth spine: a dam-to-dam river reborn, where bronze thrives between bike paths and the walleye ride the tailraces.
Cedar Lake: Carbondale's 1,750-acre water-supply reservoir with a 10-hp limit, a bass slot and one of Illinois' few striped bass fisheries.
Fox Lake in the Fox Chain O'Lakes, glacial water where IDNR rates crappie, channel catfish and muskie highly and stocks millions of walleye.
Clinton Lake: a 4,895-acre power-station reservoir in DeWitt County with stocked walleye and hybrid striped bass under lake-specific limits.
Springfield’s city lake: catfish, bluegill and largemouth in a 3,866-acre reservoir run by the city utility at the edge of the Illinois capital.
A 2,750-acre lake near Murphysboro that IDNR calls one of Illinois's premier muskie lakes, with strong largemouth numbers and big crappie.
Northeastern Illinois' Kankakee: smallmouth under a protected slot from Kankakee Dam to Wilmington, and 11 miles of state park.
Species activity across the state's covered waters. Peak of the year: March.
1 = slow, 5 = peak. Current month highlighted.
Seasonal surface curve for this state's dominant water type (estimated).
| Water | Type | County | Live gauge | Peak month |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rend Lake fishing report | Reservoir | Franklin | USGS | Mar |
| Lake Shelbyville fishing report | Reservoir | Moultrie | USGS | Apr |
| Carlyle Lake fishing report | Reservoir | Clinton | USGS | Apr |
| Fox Chain O’Lakes fishing report | Lake | Lake | modeled | Apr |
| Lake Michigan (Chicago) fishing report | Lake | Cook | modeled | Dec |
| Shabbona Lake fishing report | Reservoir | DeKalb | modeled | May |
| Fox River fishing report | River | Kane | USGS | May |
| Cedar Lake fishing report | Reservoir | Jackson | modeled | Mar |
| Fox Lake fishing report | Lake | Lake | USGS | Apr |
| Clinton Lake fishing report | Reservoir | DeWitt | modeled | Mar |
| Lake Springfield fishing report | Reservoir | Sangamon | USGS | Mar |
| Kinkaid Lake fishing report | Reservoir | Jackson | modeled | Mar |
| Kankakee River fishing report | River | Kankakee | USGS | May |
The Corps reservoirs (Rend, Shelbyville, Carlyle) anchor the south and center: fertile, shallow, crappie-and-white-bass water with real walleye and muskie programs layered in. Chicago's lakefront offers world-class coho and king fishing plus smallmouth around every harbor rockpile: an urban fishery hiding in plain sight. And the big rivers (Mississippi, Illinois, Ohio) carry catfish, sauger and a barge-country angling culture all their own.
April-May: crappie fill the reservoir flats and the lakefront coho run peaks. Summer: white bass under birds, channel cats everywhere, harbor smallmouth at dawn. Fall: Shelbyville muskies feed up and river sauger stack below every dam. Winter: ice in the north when it cooperates, tailwater sauger in the south always.
Genuinely: stocked salmon and trout cruise the harbors spring and fall, smallmouth live on every breakwall, and perch runs draw crowds. A city license and a lake-view skyline: nowhere else fishes quite like it.