Finally, a day on the river

What was hoped to be a classic Rock River catfish, fishing guide Denny Halgren reels in a tree limb that snagged his line on the river outside of Dixon. Halgren tried his luck for the first time since the fish kill swept through the area two weeks ago coming up with just a few small catfish. (Alex T. Paschal/apaschal@svnmail ())

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The fishing rod doubled over on itself in a perfect arc as Denny Halgren braced the end of the pole against his hip. Halgren, a nationally known, professional Rock River fishing guide, methodically worked a rhythm into the taught line: give, pull, give, pull.

The 62-year-old has spent his life fishing this river. He, and many like him who earn their livings on the Rock, isn’t sure how he’s going to make it through the upcoming year.

Monday was the first time Halgren took his custom-made boat back on the water, near Page Park, after a devastating fish kill swept through the river last month.

He had the river largely to himself; Halgren threaded the boat into pools and shallows, alongside uprooted trees and eddies, where he has consistently landed the giant catfish for which the Rock is known.

Still, in 4 hours, his rods had only shivered, briefly, against the tug of a few small fish.

“This is what it’s about,” Halgren said as he reeled in the day’s only significant catch. “This is how you fish catfish.”

Give, pull, give, pull. The line shortened, and finally the dark mass at the end of it broke the surface of the water.

It was a jagged tree limb.

THE FISH KILL STRUCK during what should have been prime catfish season. Officials from the state Department of Natural Resources conservatively estimate that 72,000 fish died, at least half of which were cats and others.

Halgren had taken out only one paying customer before the kill hit. Now, with big cats either dead or not biting on his lines, he’s canceled his tours until the beginning of August.

He doesn’t think he’ll to be able to guide for the better part of a year, though.

“To be fair to customers, you have to know that you have that availability to say, ‘Yep, man, I can put you on a big fish,’” he said. “I don’t have a clue; I don’t know how many fish are left.”

Halgren isn’t alone in his worries.

Joe Dyer, owner of TJ’s Bait and Tackle in Sterling and also a fishing guide, has worked the river for 45 years.

Dyer was back out on the river for the first time Thursday. Unlike Halgren, he used live bait, and he fished farther down river, near Como.

“I wouldn’t say the fishing’s great, or real good, but it’s fair,” Dyer said. “I’ve got an 8-pound [channel catfish] right now in my hands.”

Dyer didn’t have much competition, though. Business at the bait shop has been “really slow” since the kill, he said. He and his buddy, who Dyer said wasn’t catching anything, were the only ones on the river Thursday.

Part of Halgren’s and others’ frustration stems from what they say is a lack of interest from officials, and from a growing sense that a definitive cause never may be named.

Representatives from the Environmental Protection Agency – and just about anyone else you ask – have said they suspect a train derailment in Rockford, which dumped thousands of gallons of ethanol into the river, caused the kill.

The EPA, the DNR, U.S. Fish and Wildlife and a plethora of other experts were called in to investigate the derailment and the die-off. Most of their efforts, though, were focused on the site of the crash, and on potential hazards to the public.

It didn’t help that water samples taken from the Rock 2 days after the spill came back clean: There was no ethanol in the water. Officials were quick to point out, though, that the ethanol simply may have been diluted and washed down river by then.

WITHOUT ASSIGNING BLAME, the DNR last week restocked the Rock. Not with catfish, though.

Officials put about 50,000 smallmouth bass and walleyes into the river, and said more restocking was planned.

When questioned, though, DNR spokeswoman Stacey Solano said no restocking dates had been set.

“We have several hatcheries in the state that have different species,” Solano said. “If we have extra [fish] that are native to the Rock River, we will make the Rock a priority as far as restocking those species. But we are not going to spend any additional money right now to restock that.”

A lawsuit the state attorney general filed against Chicago, Central & Pacific Railroad, the subsidiary of Canadian National Railroad, alleges environmental violations but makes no mention of the fish kill.

DNR and Fish and Wildlife officials have, on their own, collected a handful of fish carcasses. No one asked for autopsies, but they decided to do some anyway.

Preliminary dissection showed shrunken tissue, particularly around the gills, DNR biologist Wayne Herndon said. It was caused “by contact with some substance,” he said, but “the jury’s still out” on what that substance might have been.

Fish and Wildlife officials expect dissection and lab results back on their fish within a week or so, biologist Mike Coffey said. He’s not optimistic, though.

“They’re going to be too far decayed,” Coffey said. “And many of the types of chemicals that could be in the river this time of year, or from the trail derailment, are very short-lived.”

When fish absorb chemicals like ethanol, their bodies quickly break down the chemicals to natural components like carbon and hydrogen, he said.

“They won’t even show up [in an autopsy],” Coffey said. “What we call ephemeral causes, that’s something that works against us. You just don’t have anything to look at, to demonstrate what caused it.”

It’s not unusual, in cases like this, to never identify a cause, Coffey said.

“Hopefully, we can just generate enough what we call ‘lines of evidence’ to point us to what might have caused it,” he said.

Fish autopsies are far from a priority even for Fish and Wildlife, though.

“Our interest has been the federally listed and state listed endangered mussels,” Coffey said. “We’ve been focusing on looking at the clam-type organism that lives on the river bottom.”