Few lakes in Northern Illinois provide more consistently excellent fishing than Shabbona Lake, known as one of the best crappie, walleye and muskellunge lakes in the state.
Spanning just 316 acres and with an average depth of about 15 feet, Shabbona Lake is dwarfed by many of Illinois’ large, sprawling reservoirs. But this diminutive DeKalb County impoundment is proof that you don’t always need big water to grow big fish.
Shabbona Lake is unique in that it was built specifically to be a fishing lake. Stump fields, sunken roadbeds and bridges, swaths of standing timber, and even old building foundations were left in place when the construction of a dam on Indian Creek created the reservoir in 1974.
Additional cribs, brush piles and rock piles have also been sunk in Shabbona Lake, all of which provide excellent fish habitat. In addition to the species mentioned above, the lake also supports ample bass, catfish and hybrid striper populations.
Surrounded by Shabbona Lake State Park—which is itself surrounded by miles of rural farmland—Shabbona Lake is also a short drive from Chicago. That makes this a very popular place to wet a line.
Walleye Fishing
There’s no question as to whether Shabbona Lake ranks among the best Illinois walleye fisheries. The lake produces 3-pound “eaters” aplenty, and it’s not out of the ordinary to catch fish close to 10 pounds.
DNR surveys have even turned up walleye that would easily be state records if someone landed them with hook and line. The problem anglers face isn’t with the fish themselves, which are both large and abundant, but with Shabbona Lake’s ample cover and forage.
Walleye here simply have so many places to hide and so much shad to eat, they don’t have to waste their time chasing down crankbaits. Live bait is the best way to consistently tempt walleye here, and presenting it close to cover as possible is essential.
Better still, try to pick out a piece of cover that other anglers miss. Visible cover like the rocks along the face of the dam get hit pretty hard. You can catch a few walleye here, but more and bigger fish lurk in harder-to-find spots.
A good map of the lake is your best friend. Deep timber areas, marked on many maps, are especially productive, along with humps, submerged roads, and creek channel-adjacent rock piles. You won’t find deep weed edges on maps, but they’re also worth fishing.
Slow presentations are essential, and jigs tipped with live minnows are often the best bait. Keep your offering near the bottom and as close to cover as you can get without snagging. A lively leech is also a great option in summer.
Another important consideration is time of day. Night fishing on Shabbona Lake is only an option if you’re camping at the state park and can only be done from the shore. But the hours right around sunset often produce some of the best walleye action.
Shabbona Lake Crappie Fishing
Shabbona Lake is one of the most consistently excellent crappie lakes in Northern Illinois. Crappies have an endless buffet of small shad to dine on and a range of deep and shallow cover that provides ideal year-round habitat.
Both white and black crappie are abundant, with black crappies being slightly more common in recent surveys. Both species exhibit an impressive growth rate in this lake, often reaching 9 inches in as little as two years.
Deep timber is usually the best place to start early in the year.
Ice anglers catch a lot of crappies from standing mid-lake timber in January and February, and this cover continues to be productive in early spring.
April tends to be the month when crappies in Shabbona Lake start to transition to shallower haunts, and 55 degrees is the magic number. Once the water temp reaches that level and stays there, look for crappies around shallow brush, stumps and cribs.
The shallow bite often lasts into June, and some of the crappie fishing hot spots are in the upper end of the lake. Bank fishers catch a lot of crappies from the two land piers north of the boat ramp, and some excellent cribs are sunk just off the state park campground.
Another key area is the electric motor-only zone at the upper end of the lake, which warms quickly and features a broad, shallow stump field with some great timber nearby.
Live minnows often work best early in the season, with a small shad or shiner on an Aberdeen hook being the go-to offering. Artificials like tiny tube jigs start to work better once the water warms and crappies begin to spawn.
Shabbona Lake Muskie
Often referred to as the fish of 10,000 casts, muskellunge are at the top of the food chain in Shabbona Lake. This lake is also known as one of the best muskie waters in Illinois, and has produced multiple former state records.
You might not need 10,000 casts to catch a muskellunge here, but plan on putting in some solid time on the water. Any day that ends with a muskie in the boat is a good day.
Muskies in the 30- to 36-inch range are relatively common in Shabbona Lake, but true giants—monsters that push 50 inches—are much harder to come by. There are opportunities to catch them here from spring through fall, with heavy line and sturdy tackle being prerequisites.
A few good places to start include East Bay, which has a broad flat that muskies often use as a feeding ground, and the flooded timber near the edge of the electric motor-only zone at the lake’s long, narrow upper end.
Deep weed edges, drop-offs, cribs, foundations, and areas of rock and timber throughout Shabbona Lake can also produce muskellunge. These fish are solitary hunters that often use cover to ambush their prey.
Muskies feed on everything from bluegill to juvenile bass, but shad are the main forage. Rather than looking for muskellunge, looking for schools of shad using your electronics is often a better approach.
Veteran muskie anglers often favor crankbaits and jerkbaits in cooler waters, with spinners and bucktails working better in summer.
Adding a white curlytail grub to a bucktail or spinner is a popular local tactic, and combinations of orange and black are some of the most productive color patterns.
Shabbona Lake Bass Fishing
Although Shabbona Lake isn’t generally considered a trophy bass lake, it supports an ample largemouth bass population. The DNR periodically stocks largemouths as advanced fingerlings, but the population is largely self-sustaining.
Largemouth bass weighing 2 to 3 pounds are quite common, and catching one in the 5-pound class is not unusual. Bass fishing is often best from April through June, but summer and fall can also be excellent.
This lake has so much great largemouth cover that you can really choose the style of fishing you prefer, and there’s a good chance it will work. Working a jig and trailer combo through timber areas is a tried-and-true tactic on Shabbona Lake.
The narrow upper arm of the lake, where the electric motor-only zone is located, is the first area to warm up in springtime and usually one of the first places where the bass fishing turns on. Canvasback Cove and the North Bay are also great spring spots.
As the lake warms up and weed beds start to flourish, any of the lake’s shallow bays can produce. East Bay is a prime spot.
Try a shad-imitating soft jerkbait like a Zoom Fluke.
Emergent vegetation becomes more common in summer, and working a topwater around lily pads can produce major blowups in the evening hours. Largemouth bass often spend their days in thick, shady weed cover this time of year, and plastic worms are some of the best lures for getting to them.
Deeper cribs and timber can also be excellent from summer into fall. Try a crankbait around deeper structure this time of year, but keep an eye on shallow areas as the lake cools back off and bass return to some of their spring hangouts.
Catfish Fishing
Shabbona Lake provides such good fishing for such a wide variety of fish species that it’s easy to forget about the humble catfish. But channel catfish are tremendously abundant in the lake thanks to a combination of natural reproduction and annual stocking.
That includes a decent number of hefty channel cats over 10 pounds, though smaller fish weighing 2 or 3 pounds are vastly more common.
Catfish are also quite easy to catch here. Known for being omnivorous feeders, catfish readily bite on an assortment of smelly natural baits. Nightcrawlers and shrimp are effective, as are cut shad. Chicken livers are arguably the most popular bait among local anglers.
The spring and summer months offer the best catfish angling, especially for shore-bound anglers. Bank anglers catch lots of cats along Shabbona Lake State Park’s several earthen piers.
Weed lines are great areas to target, as catfish often use the weeds as cover and prowl along their edges right around dawn and dusk. Many of the lake’s cribs and other deeper cover are also excellent, including the submerged building foundations near the lake’s southwest corner.
But the most reliable productive cover for catfish in Shabbona Lake is standing timber. Channel cats relate to it throughout the year, and the deep mid-lake area of timber can produce at virtually any time.
One noteworthy pattern to watch for here is the relationship between catfish and hybrid striped bass. The latter species often feeds on shad at the surface, and catfish will wait below the feeding frenzy to pick off the scraps.
Other Fish Species
Several additional gamefish are available in Shabbona Lake, making this a truly excellent multispecies lake. There’s a good chance you’ll also find one of these other species at the end of your line:
Hybrid Striped Bass
The Illinois DNR has been stocking hybrid striped bass, also known as wipers, in Shabbona Lake annually for quite some time. These fish are mostly open water-dwellers and grow fat on the lake’s abundant gizzard shad.
Typical hybrid stripers in Shabbona Lake measure 22 to 26 inches and weigh around 5 pounds. Late summer into fall is a popular time to target them, and they frequently bust shad at the surface this time of year. Rapala Shad Raps and Zara Spooks are popular lures.
Another unexpected technique often tempts hybrid stripers here: fishing chicken livers on the bottom. This method often lands a few wipers into the hands of local catfish anglers, and it works well on spring and summer evenings.
Smallmouth Bass
Shabbona Lake does support a modest population of smallmouth bass, though largemouths vastly outnumber them. Overall, smallmouths here are few and far between, and individuals larger than 16 inches are rare.
Still, catching a smallmouth is always a welcome surprise for bass anglers, and smallies are most often caught in the lower half of Shabbona Lake. This area is generally deeper, clearer and rockier.
Riprap banks are good areas to find smallmouth bass in spring and fall, and deeper structures like old building foundations, roadbeds and rocky areas just off the creek channel are good summer spots.
Try a crawfish-imitating jig or a finesse worm on a drop-shot rig.
Bluegill
Bluegill in Shabbona Lake are noted for both their size and abundance.
A large portion of the bluegill population measures 6 to 8 inches, and occasional fish get even bigger. They’re commonly caught around docks and weed beds.
Early summer, when bluegill spawn on the lake’s shallow flats, is a great time to target some of the largest bluegill in Shabbona Lake. Bedding bluegill readily nab small jigs and worms that fall into their beds.
Shabbona Lake is a popular ice-fishing lake as well, and bluegill are the most commonly caught species through the ice.
Fishing the cribs, brush piles and standing timber from the hard deck often yields a mixed bag of bluegill and crappie, and tiny jigs tipped with maggots are the go-to bait.
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Planning Your Trip
Shabbona Lake is a true four-season fishing lake, though spring and fall offer arguably the best fishing opportunities. The lake’s proximity to Chicago makes it a popular spot on summer weekends.
Boats with unlimited horsepower are allowed on Shabbona Lake, but a lake-wide no-wake zone ensures that speed boat traffic never becomes too excessive. The nearby village of Shabbona offers a handful of dining options and a bait and tackle shop.
Getting to Shabbona Lake
Shabbona Lake is just over an hour west of Chicago via I-88 and US-30. The main entrance to Shabbona Lake State Park is at the north end of the lake, just south of the village of Shabbona on Park Road.
Bank & Boat Access
Shabbona Lake State Park provides the sole access to Shabbona Lake, encompassing the entire shoreline and offering several excellent access points. The park includes a tent and RV campground and a boat launch site with multiple ramps, ample parking, and an adjoining fishing pier.
Nearly the entire shoreline of Shabbona Lake is accessible for bank fishing. The easiest access is on the west side of the lake, where walking paths connect several earthen land piers and sections of riprap shoreline.
Boat rentals, docking, and a well-stocked bait and tackle shop are at Boondock Supply, a private concession within the park. Rentals range from kayaks and paddle boats to Lund fishing boats and pontoon boats.
Know Before You Go
Because the lake is entirely surrounded by Shabbona Lake State Park, state park rules and hours apply. Shabbona Lake is open daily from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. from April 1 to October 1, with varying hours throughout the rest of the year.
All boats must be off the water half an hour before closing time each night, but anyone camping at the park may fish from shore all night long. Swimming and wading in the lake are not permitted.