Misguided Fishing Rend Lake

Rend Lake is a large reservoir in southern Illinois. Don had been reading that it was the place to fish for crappies. Since the lake was over 20,000 acres, we decided to hire a guide for the first of two days fishing.

Don contacted the guide service and we had an appointment with Matt. Matt’s guide service advertises that he knows all the “hotspots” in southern Illinois for crappies and bass. He charges $350.00 a day for two people for ten hours of fishing. I asked Don if he had told Matt about our curse, but Don hadn’t.

Matt certainly knew a lot of spots. Rend Lake is very shallow, with many coves under two feet deep. The main lake areas are rarely over ten feet. Matt took us to places where crappies would love to hide. There are foundations from farm buildings flooded when the lake was formed. There were no fish biting at any of them.

While we were fishing we saw another guide who had a client. It turns out the client was a writer for “Mid-West Outdoors”. They were fishing for catfish.

We fished all day without a bite. Finally as we approached the last hour of scheduled fishing, Matt decided to take us to another lake. This lake was the original reservoir for a local town. It may have been Benton.

After casting around the small lake for most of the hour, Don finally caught a small largemouth bass.  Matt charged us the full $350.00. We even each gave him a $20.00 guilt tip.

We had a reservation at the Rend Lake Resort. We ate dinner there, and met the writer we had seen on the lake. He wasn’t having any luck either. I didn’t realize Don and I could expand our curse to others.

The next day we traveled out in my boat. We fished the coves. We fished the old foundations Matt had shown us. We tried every lure we had. Not one bite. We packed up and came home.

Rend Lake advertises itself as one of 7 wonders of Illinois. The other 6 must be former governors, as in “I wonder when the guy gets out of jail?”

We haven’t been back.