Articles : Spillway Muskie Hunter

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Spillway Muskies:
A Literal Ton of Fun and Fish
By: Steven James Rusteberg

Many years ago I had called the Illinois Department of Resources concerned about something I had seen on a local reservoir. The find was astonishing to me. I remember the day well. The weather was cool and the smell of spring was in the air. White puffy clouds we numerous in the sky and a big rain had swelled the ground to the point it could not absorb any more moisture. The creeks were flowing like overfilled gutters, and new weed growth was just poking to the top of the water. Fishing was not particularly on fire that day and the high water had made visibility poor in the reservoir. I was unusually lazy in my pursuit, daydreaming of better days to come. Working harder for fewer fish in dirty water was just not appealing to me.

Little time had passed and I decided to put the boat back on its trailer. At this time frustration had set in, and going for a walk in the forest preserve around the reservoir seemed like a better more productive way to spend my day. I parked the car and boat near the park office and grabbed an ultra-light rod in a portable case, threw a handful of small plugs in my coat pocket, and proceeded to go on a hike down by the lakes spillway. If nothing else the walk would be a refreshing hike and I could possibly catch a small bass in the spillway creek.

As I approached the spillway the sound of rushing water became louder and the smell of the waters spray was heavy in the air. Water was racing over the edge of the man made waterfall and what I saw at the bottom of the flow was amazing to me. Muskies, lots of them! The sun was such that I could see the bottom of the spillway just beyond where the white water stopped. There were not just a couple of stranded, stray fish, but seventy five or more. I began trying to count them as they gently poked their heads upstream in the very small cement area. Muskies of every size, everywhere! Small ones under thirty inches and others stretching to beyond forty-five inches in length. I could not believe my eyes. Was I dreaming? Somebody, quick, pinch me.

I ran (not walked) back to the car and boat to fetch a larger rod and some muskie tackle (as if my ultra-light wasn’t enough), and grab a camera. Nobody was going to believe this! Out of breath I returned to the spillway where the holey grail of muskie fishing lie, and then it began to dawn on me. These fish were not stocked there, they were trapped. Was it sportsman like to angle for the fish? How and why are they down there? I regained my composure, calmed from my excitement, and began to catch one muskie right after the other. I ran them to the top of the spillway, measured and tagged the fish as I normally did and logged the muskie onto what became a slimy wet piece of paper. In all I had only caught seventeen fish that day, from twenty-eight inches to forty six inches. I had left more than twice as many just below the rushing water.

When I returned home I made a call to the Illinois Department of Natural Resources and reported the escarpment. Very little was done if anything about my find. I continued to return to the “holy grail” day after day until I had considerably thinned down the population and returned it to the lake. Yet another surprise was in the midst for me. I started catching tagged muskies. Yes, after I had put the muskie back in the lake, only days later they had swam over the spillway again. This just didn’t happen a couple of times, it happened constantly until water discontinued it’s decent over the spillway wall. Weeks had gone by and muskies continued to be trapped in the tail waters of the reservoir. Some the same fish over and over again.

Spring came and went that year and I had caught more muskies by mid-June than ever in my life. The heat of the summer dried the land, and evaporated the spillway creek to almost a trickle. I was still trying to catch the remaining fish to put back into the lake but my efforts became futile as water temperatures exceeded eighty-five degrees. A few fish in the creek had died for one reason or another. I believe it was because of the high water temperatures and lack of food. I had done my best by late June but most fish either continued down stream, or died in their struggle to stay alive. The sight that year reminded me of time laps film on PBS of the rain forest floods and long dry periods of the deserts. Torrents became a stream, streams became a creek, and creeks became life’s (including the muskies) death bed.

Later that year I had a chance to write an outdoor article about this once in a lifetime event. Little did I know that this was a regular happening every spring on all Illinois reservoirs.

For several years after this epiphany I watch and wrote about spillway escapement to no avail. I expected to see anglers flock to Illinois reservoirs to fish spillways. I expected the Department of Natural Resources to observe the situation, but nobody did. At first this puzzled me. Why aren’t the anglers standing to elbow to elbow in order to reap the benefits of easy trapped fish? Why was the Illinois Department of Natural Resources not responding to a crisis of near epidemic proportions? Why were anglers still putting boat and trailer into the lake? Fewer muskies are in there! Most will have to work much harder in the lake to get a legal catch. After a while I would just notify the Department of Natural Resources of major escapements, and forget about local anglers. Why did I want the fishing pressure below the spillway in a very small area anyway? Apparently you can lead a muskie fisherman to a lake but you can’t make them fish a spillway. Oh well more for me!

Years have gone by since my discovery and very few anglers have caught on. Unforchantly snaggers and illegal poachers have found spillway fishing in the spring very productive and efficient. Very rarely you will find Department of Natural Resource employees below spillways. It is also very rare they will catch perpetrators even when called and well informed of incident. The problem becomes the simple excuse of not enough patrol for numbers of lakes and reservoirs in Illinois. This is a problem with a lame excuse that frustrates me to this day. Many muskies die because of this excuse.

About six years ago Illinois (and its powers that be) became politically aware of the problem of spillway escarpment. Spillway barriers (or barrier netting) were applied to a few select bodies of water to prevent spillway escapement. The theory is keep the fish were they belong and out of harms way. When spillway barriers are installed they are a very efficient way of keeping fish in the lake and cutting down on poaching problems. On bodies of water without them muskies continue to swim over the spillways as if they were following the flow of a toilet bowl. Angler heavens, or a poacher dream, on many spillways in Illinois almost all muskies will meet their maker. Many of these trapped fish will die in hot, foodless water, or die to a poacher or predator looking for food.

You would think that when a muskie goes over a spillway it would continue on down stream with the flow. Some do, but most will point their nose in the direction form which they came and try to swim back into the reservoir. On most reservoirs their folly is their demise. In some of my own research I have found muskie sixty miles down river form the original spillway loss. However, most stay put, until high water returns again.

Angler and clubs such as Muskies Inc., in cooperation with the Illinois Department of Natural Resources have tried to help organize what is called “Spillway Rescues” in order to save as many fish as possible. In these rescues more than seventy muskies have been captured at one time, and returned to the reservoir. Muskie Rescuers line the spillway creeks with large muskie nets and push slowly upstream giving muskie no option but to rush the net and get trapped. They then take scale samples apply a (pit or floy) tag and return the fish to the lake or reservoir. Every year more and more fish are caught in this rescue shortly after spring floods.

Although I have not personally experienced the spillway phenomenon in other states, anglers have told me the problem is not limited to Illinois. Wisconsin anglers, Kentucky anglers and even Ohio anglers have called me to say they too have found their own “holy grails”. Some anglers whom I didn’t think would dream of shoreline spillway muskie fishing are now fishing without a boat and are now capturing more muskies than they ever did on the upper waterway. Many join in returning muskie into lakes and reservoirs across the Midwest.

Spillways continue to be one of the most effective ways to catch trapped muskies after spring rains many will remain in the trail waters even well into the summer. The issue becomes weather this is ethical or sportsman like. Until all of our reservoirs have spillway barriers and the escarpment problems ceases to exist I will keep returning the trapped fish to their point of origin. I would encourage other anglers to do the same. Save a muskie and catch a ton of fish in a Spillway.