[Bassstalker2000]

Anybody out there ever fish the Buffalo Creek Reservoir. It's part of the Lake County Forest Preserve up around Lake Cook Road and Arlington Heights Road. I was up there today checking it out without any luck. I was sort of out of my element fishing from shore without my depthfinder and on a body of water with no good contour maps.

 

[Luckydog]

I fished the reservoir several times two years ago and did not have a lot of luck. Minnows were useless but I did catch a 5 lb. carp using a crawler on the bottom. I also had several "misses" using a hula popper. I'm guessing they were bass that missed the popper.

 

[piker12]

seen 2 pike caught there, all i've caught are 2 bluegills w/ corn, bullheads with crawlers 3 feet under a bobber, and a few nice carp by chumming with corn.

 

[gsprophecy]

Re: Buffalo Creek Reservoir - fishing w/o maps and electroni

Fishing isn't too exciting here, as is most places south of Wisconsin this year. I've heard catching being minimal here from others for a few years. I've yet to catch anything worth bragging about here as well. I know there are great size carp at the water dump, and tons of blue gill. I've caught a few large mouth in the lake, but not too big. I heard of pike but have yet to see any. It's gotten so hot this year too that I highly doubt any survived. It's not too deep here.
Finally, DO NOT EAT any fish here. The water is polluted. I see people taking the fish home to eat. Sad.

 

[buildinon]

Re: Buffalo Creek Reservoir - fishing w/o maps and electroni

Don't know about the water being polluted as I live 3/4 of a mile from there and walk my dogs there almost daily. I also fish there from time to time. It is a rather tough body of water, but you can catch some decent pike out of there. I have on lures on live bait as well. You will run into the typical 12-16" LMB's in there but I have only seen just a few over that size. As mentioned by others there is some HUGE carp in there and I have seen some big kitty's come from there as well. But I have never heard of it being poluted and I am sure if it was that the Water Reclamatation Distcrict who owns it and the village of BG or the LCFPD would close it asap as people fish there.

 

[primalzer]

Sorry for bringing up old posts, but just thought I'd share some recent experience.

Fishing was quite exciting down in the spillway in the 2013 season. Seemed like whenever I was down there, I was catching multiple 15+" largemouth. I actually pulled a striped bass out of there as well, which boggled my mind. I'll have to dig out the picture, it's somewhere. I've caught a couple small crappies on small rapala cranks, but mainly stuck to texas rigged (minus bullet weight) plastic worms casted parallel to shore. I would not recommend casting and retrieving a worm or lure on the bottom, endless amounts of concrete structure to get stuck on. I've lost countless lures in it.

I haven't even bothered continuing in 2014. I was out a dozen times or so, early in the season, and there was absolutely nothing. The fish I did catch were small <10" and they were in very few and far between. Given the harsh winter and the low depth, I'm thinking many of the larger fish died off. May have to stay away for the next couple of years until the population can regrow.