River Advice

[Red Childress]

I suspect the river will be way too high and muddy to do much of anything down that way. I cancelled my first musky trip in 15 years today due to high/muddy water and will cancel tomorrow's too....... Sunday and Monday is still iffy, just waiting to see what the ACE will do regarding outflow rates and mother nature is still threatening rain over the next few days.

If you can find a semi-clean creek mouth, try fishing it and even a considerable distance up the creek if the current is not too strong. Otherwise, maybe try the tails of the islands (or any other slack water areas with weeds) with some double 10's or 13's that have the thickest dressing you can find. I have had good luck fishing dirty water but when the river has just recently become muddy and the dirt is suspended throughout the entire water column, I have not done so well.

I read a research paper a few years ago stating the reason many fish do not feed much when the "mud is fresh" is that their gills get irritated from the abrasive particles passing through while breathing so they really become dormant until the thicker suspended dirt calms down.

Give it a shot, you never know what might happen. The conditions might even be better down that way considering Venango/Mercer/Crawford counties were not under a severe thunderstorm warning last nite.

Good luck!