I did not spend nearly as much time on these waters in 2025 as I have during most of the past dozen years. There are several reasons for the drop in time investment and most of those details will be detailed in the rest of this post.

April 19 – Top Bass at 4-14 (20.5″) on a Chatterbait

Knox County, IL Public Strip Mines III
(6 visits, 6 lakes – 4/13 through 9/21)
112 bass
16.25 hours
6.89 bass/hour
Top Bass: 4-14 Chatterbait on 4/19
Top 5 Weight: 15-10 (4-14,3-13,2-12,2-3,2-0)

Overview
There are plenty of bites to be had on this collection of waters, but return on investment in terms of quality bites makes for some tough decisions. I record every catch and get a weight on each bass that I classify as a “keeper” (12” or better and all released). The overall keeper rate on the six lakes that I visited was a paltry 21% (24 keepers out of 112 total bass). This rate was heavily skewed by one lake which only produced 3 keepers out of 83 bass. However, those three keepers combined to tip the scales at just shy of ten pounds (4-14,3-13,1-3). This lake is easy to reach and easy to fish so it is tough to pass up on a hike. Just for comparison, keeper rates for all the locations in 2025 shook out as below.
Hennepin Canal = 76% (50 of 66 bass at 12” or better)
Strip Pits II = 72% (39 of 54)
Lake Storey = 63% (54 of 86)
Strip Pits I = 63% (26 of 41)
Strip Pits III = 21% (24 of 112)

Lures
A wide variety of lures were productive as the seasons progressed and conditions changed. I leaned heavily on grubs/Ned rigs and lipless cranks in April before shifting to the Whopper Plopper, frog and plastic worms as the bass became more active and the water got weedier. A chatterbait fooled my largest bass at 4-14 which equaled my Top Bass of the Year (tied with a Lake Storey catch). In addition, I landed a few on a buzzbait and a swimbait. Every lake on the site has its own “personality” and years of experience combined with continued experimentation keep on putting plenty of bass in the logbook.

Videos
For today’s post I am including a pair of rare August catches as I don’t get out on these waters much in the heat of summer. The long hikes, chest high weeds and hot weather make for an exhausting day, so I generally invest my time elsewhere. In addition, I’ve posted the footage of my three largest 2025 catches from these waters in previous submissions, so I like to provide some fresh clips.

The clip below features a bass landed on a topwater frog in a narrow finger of a strip pit. The finger represents a scaled down version of the prototype strip mine layout. A V-shaped cut that features steep banks on each side. By design, I am fishing on the less steep side, but it still consists of a roughly seven-foot drop from my flat perch atop the ridge down to the water. I always fish my frogs on braided line for no stretch hooksets along with the increased strength to drag the bass out if they get buried in the aquatic vegetation. An added braid bonus on this catch is the ability to lift the bass up the incline without fear of the line breaking.

Today’s second clip also features a frog bass in a similar setup with the added challenge of a twelve-foot drop to the water. It was caught on the same day as the fish in the previous clip and it was the bite I needed to push me to a double-digit Top 5 for the day of 10-9. I had a hard stop to my outing (was heading to my folks to watch the Cubs) and this bass came with about twenty minutes to spare. As I had met my Top 5 goal and had run out of water on this lake, I opted to make the catch my final cast and headed for my truck.

2026 Outlook
These walk-in fishing holes require considerable effort and are easiest to fish in April and early May before the terrestrial weeds get out of control. And that’s likely when I will spend my time chasing these bass in 2026. I have a handful of “milestones” within reach that provide incentive to make the hikes. Two lakes are just shy of 200 total bass (one sits at 189, the other at 188). Another pair are close to the century mark (96 bass and 88 bass). In addition, I have a lake that needs a couple quality bites to reach a double-digit Top 5 (current weight is 7-14) and there are at least four lakes that I have not spent a great deal of time fishing. Too many lakes, so time will tell.

May 16- Top Bass Runner-Up at 3-13 (20″) on a Whopper Plopper

There will come a day when I elect to leave some of the harder to reach fishing holes behind. Let’s just say that I am neither as young as I used to be nor in as good physical shape as needed for some of these treks. With that said, I am not ready to bid farewell quite yet. Well, at least until I find myself a couple of miles from the truck, hot, tired, and stuck knowing that I walked in so I must walk out. At such times, I find an REO Speedwagon line running through my brain saying, “I do believe that I’ve had enough.” (Time for Me to Fly – 1978) But then I find myself pecking away on a keyboard all these months later and think that it wasn’t all that bad. We’ll see how long that feeling lasts in 2026. Talk to you later. Troy

The Hennepin Canal features a lot of water, making it tough to decide where to invest my time when able to make some casts. My obsession with stats plays a significant role in such decisions and in 2025 I leaned heavily on hitting some numerical milestones. I managed to boost my Top 5 weight on two areas into double figures and landed Bass #100 on another stretch but overall, The Canal bass played hard to get both in terms of quality and quantity.

June 7, 2025 – Hennepin Canal 2025 Top Bass at 3-4 (19″) on a Senko wacky rig (Bass #100 on this stretch)

Hennepin Canal – Henry County, Bureau County, IL
(20 visits, 14 pools – 3/14 through 10/27)
66 bass
54.25 hours (0.50 to 4.25-hour trips)
1.22 bass/hour
Top Bass: 3-4 Senko on June 7
Top 5 Weight: 13-7 (3-4,2-12,2-11,2-6,2-6)

Overview
I have divided The Canal into twenty-six sections as it runs from the Rock River at Colona to the Feeder Junction just northwest of Sheffield. Currently, I have achieved a ten-pound Top 5 in sixteen of those sections. All told, I visited six spots that lacked a double-digit Top 5 in 2025 but could only get the bites that I was seeking on two of the pools. When visiting areas that already had an established ten-pound Top 5, I did manage to find a few quality bites to give three of the spots a boost.

Lures
The Canal is a shallow waterway with abundant aquatic vegetation. These features make for ample opportunity to employ a topwater approach once the water warms. Forty-eight of my bass were landed between May 3 and July 19 and twenty-nine of those fish came on either frogs or buzzbaits. Rather than getting too deep into the variables that influenced my lure choices, here is a breakdown of the numbers.
Frogs – 18 bass
Buzzbaits – 13 bass
Spinnerbaits – 13 bass
Chatterbaits – 11 bass
Lipless Crankbaits – 5 bass
Plastic Worms – 5 bass
Swim Jig – 1 bass

Videos
For The Hennepin Canal videos, I chose a pair of bass that pushed me over the ten-pound Top 5 mark on two different pools. For the first clip below, my starting weight sat at 9-3 and this bass tipped the scales at 2-6 to give me the boost that I was seeking. One item to note in this clip is the delayed hookset. When fishing a topwater lure, you don’t want to set the hook based on the visual and auditory aspects of the strike. Instead, you want to make sure that you feel the fish to ensure that it has a good bite on lure. Otherwise, you run the risk of yanking the lure away prematurely. It takes some steady nerves and some practice to delay the hookset as the natural reaction to an exciting topwater strike is to immediately set the hook. In this case, there is quite a lengthy pause (perhaps too long) but all that matters is that the bass made it to the boat.

For the next clip, I was on a stretch with a Top 5 Weight of 9-6 to start my day. I had missed a good fish on a frog early that may have done the trick before landing a 2-0, also on a frog, that pushed me up to 9-9. This meant that I needed a 2-3 to reach the ten-pond mark. The frog came through again with a 2-12 to achieve my goal and along with being the Top Bass on the pool.

2026 Outlook
June 5, 2026, will mark the five-year anniversary of my first bass on The Canal. Since that day, I have landed 912 bass so one goal for 2026 is log Canal Bass #1000. In addition, I have ten stretches that still fall shy of a ten-pound Top 5. Two of these areas, I have never fished and the remaining spots have established weights ranging from 1-3 to 8-14. I have my work cut out for me to achieve my goals and the dilemma of too many fishing holes and not enough free time.

The 2025 time and results (66 bass in 54.25 hours) were a far cry from the totals of the previous year (270 bass in 136.00 hours) as the focus was shifted away from The Canal in favor of other bodies of water. Even so, I feel that the bass outsmarted me on that old waterway. Perhaps I will get my “revenge” in 2026. In the meantime, we move on to the results from Lake Storey for the next post in the Locations series. Talk to you later. Troy

For a more granular look at the 2025 stats, I have elected to expand the scope of the Knox Couty public strip pits by dividing them into three geographical locations. First is an area where I fished two of several bodies of water offered. The spots produced forty-one bass, and the numbers will increase for each location in the remaining posts to follow.

Knox County, IL Public Strip Mines I
(4 visits, 2 lakes – 5/25 through 7/23)
41 bass
13.25 hours (2.00 to 6.25 hour trips)
3.09 bass/hour
Top Bass: 3-6 Frog on 7/23
Top 5 Weight: 14-7 (3-6,3-1,3-1,2-11,2-4)

Overview
These two bodies of water allow me to drag in an eight-foot johnboat and have produced well over the years. One of the lakes lends itself to better quality bites while the other trends towards a numbers lake. In 2025, I spent more time on the quality lake (9.75 hours versus 3.50 hours).

Lures
During the timeframe that I fished these waters, the weed growth was abundant, particularly on the shallower, quality fish lake. As a result, topwater lures dominated the haul in landing 30 of the 41 bass (24 on a frog, 5 on a buzzbait, and 1 on a propbait). The remaining eleven bass were fooled on plastic worms (10 on a shaky head and 1 on a wacky rigged Senko). Six of the worm bass came from the deeper, numbers lake and five from the other body of water.

Video
The clip below is the Top Bass Runner-Up from this area as the Top Bass was previously submitted for the “12 Days of Lures” series as it represented the Top Frog Bass of 2025. For this catch, I had previously been working a buzzbait over an expansive submerged weed bed when I saw/heard a fish break the surface near a weed edge within casting distance. Such an observance always warrants a cast as I describe this as a bass “giving itself away.” The behavior typically reveals a “hot” fish, one that is feeding and susceptible to a striking a lure cast in proximity. I rapidly reeled in my buzzbait, picked up my frog rod, and fired away to the surface weeds near where I had observed the splash. Right on cue, as my frog buzzed off the weed tops into open water the bass blasted it and hooked up.

2026 Outlook
The larger, deeper lake lacks enough quality bites to have a ten-pound all-time Top 5 (currently sits at 7-7) so that is a goal. It did receive a boost with a 2-2 in 2025, which stands as the largest bass that I have landed on that body of water. In addition, there are a pair of lakes in the area that I have only fished sparingly but both take some work to access. I would like to visit them again in the future, but terrain, weather, and energy are factors that can be a challenge. When it comes right down to it though, it is hard to stay away from the quality lake in the area (all-time Top 5 of 17-6 and 19-10 when combined with my brother, Brent). This one’s up in the air for 2026 so I guess that I’ll see what my gut tells me when I get there.

Next up is another batch of strip pits so stay tuned and talk to you later. Troy