Kayaking the Kaskaskia River Illinois
This put in spot for the Kaskaskia River is right next to Baldwin Lake in Randoph County. I had set out on this trip not only to get some miles in, but also to get some fishing in as well. The river has been channelized (I believe they did that in 1969) so there is the main channel, and a ton of old river channel going in all directions. My friend Ray and I had made an attempt in the winter to access the river at this point, but this area was frozen over at the time, so I was grateful to finally have a chance to paddle this spot.
The main channel has a ton of ski boat/ pleasure boat traffic on the weekends. I was able to navigate through this with the kayak. It was fortunate that the put in area of the river is a no wake area. I paddled across the main channel and followed the original channel until the end of it. The place is TEEMING with asian carp. If you watch the Youtube video below, watch very carefully when the jon boat goes by.....you can see a couple of them jumping out of the water on the back end of the boat. I had one jump out right by the kayak (I was throwing a rat-l-trap lure real fast in hopes of snagging one of them- I scared one right by the yak)
This is an interesting river....I would say that the attributes are more like the Mississippi River than a small stream (same kind of river fare in regards to the fishing).
This would be a river I would like to continue to explore. I think we could do some major miles on this going into the fall and winter.
Paddle ON!
Mike
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