A one-day trip is not the right way to see this beautiful river. However, you have to take what you can get – especially in October. It is pretty rare for the Illinois to have consistent flows this time of year, however this October has been different. In fact, the river spiked the previous week up and over 3,000 cfs. With the early saturation, it just took a little bit of rain to get it spiking again in time for the weekend.

Mike, Skip, and I pushed off from Miami Bar at 9:15 a.m. We made it to Pine Flat by 10:45 and from there we picked up the pace. After a very brief stop at South Bend (reached at 12:45) for a bite to eat we headed down to Green Wall. After taking a quick look it seemed that the bottom hole wasn’t much of a feature and also had a line to the right. Skip and I were sharing a boat and he rowed me through. I had never been a passenger through Green Wall before, it is almost more exciting than being on the sticks!

Both Skip and Mike had clean lines and we pushed our way down to Oak Flat, arriving at 4:00 p.m.

1,200 cfs is a little low to be doing this in one day. We definitely were pushing the entire 32 miles and keeping an eye on our watch. I’ve done four other one day trips, all of them over 1,600 I think, and during those trips it never felt like we were pressed for time.