With free time being limited, it's important to me to get out along a creek somewhere as much as possible this time of year. All of the trees are blooming and some of them flower first in beautiful shades of red/pink/purple. All of the wild flowers are creating carpets of colors beneath the thin canopy of leaves. This all goes away quickly as the leaves thicken and the light gets cut off to the forest floor. I've already noticed some varieties of wild flowers wilting and dying off. As much as I wanted to get to the water in the dimming light, I had to stop to take notice of the colors. I had to question in my head at least, why are there white blue bells.
The slight cloud cover and low sun was already making the light through the trees a little muted.
That was a good thing. The creek was now running crystal clear and because the night temps have gone back to normal, which is colder, the creek was running a little colder. No thermometer reading, I could tell by how it felt on my legs. Not only would the fish be more skittish because of the clear water, but probably more sluggish because of the colder water. Both proved to be true.
The last time I was here I came across a creek chub that was jumping onto a muddy embankment and just sitting there. It would go back into the water and make a running start to get further up onto the mud. I'm assuming it must be some kind of spawning ritual, or the fish is just stupid.
Most of the shores along this creek are straight drops of 3 or more feet. Now and then an easy access down to the water appears and on the muddy embankment are tracks, raccoon tracks. I'm assuming these shoreline forays are for the off chance of catching a creek chub in its spawning ritual. While silently wandering down the creek I caught something move out of the corner of my eye. It stopped and stood still keeping an eye on me the whole time, but not twitching a hair. I found myself saying out loud . . . you do know I can see you, don't you. Apparently not.
The colder water had no effect on the creek chubs. They attacked the lure on every cast. The biggest caught was a good 10 inches. I thought this was going to be one of those days where I would have to be happy catching nothing but creek chubs, since nothing else seemed to want to bite. The big male chubs had their spawning knobs on their heads and they were turning bright orange to attract the more plain females.
In a way I had wished I had brought my 3 weight fly rod. If creek chubs was all that was going to be caught, may as well have more fun catching them. Getting down to a big deep pool finally got me a smallie. It hit like I thought it would in this colder water. A slight thud on the lure and a slightly heavy pull on the line. Don't know what I use as a gauge as to when to set the hook, but if I get it wrong I miss the hook up. There's something in the feel, but I don't know how to explain it yet.
I like holding the smallies up and looking them in the eye. Most of them do the same back to you. Kind of eerie how they do that. No matter how you move them around, that eye follows you and it's looking you right back in the eye.
Now the smallies got progressively larger as they got hooked. Each one was just a slight thump and a weight on the line where a week and a half earlier they were hitting the lure with that distinct sharp smallie hit. I read about the red eye smallies a few years ago and why some have that bright red eye, but I forget the details. It gets even creepier when that red eye follows your gaze.
A sharp tap while bringing the lure over a wood pile got me my first rock bass of the year. Based on how it hit, I wondered if all the other hits I had been missing weren't creek chubs after all. And here's an oddity. I've caught rock bass in 4 different creeks that feed into the Fox. Some were caught within 100 yards of the mouth of the creek. On the Kankakee and DuPage rivers it seems at times that rock bass are a nuisance fish and impossible to keep them off your hook. On the Fox, I've never caught one. They may as well not exist.
I got to the area where I had caught an 18 inch smallie a week and a half earlier. My assumption was that there was no way I would catch it again. Good chance it was gone from this part of the creek altogether. By now I had switched to a realistic looking crayfish that I was slowly dragging through the depths of the pool. This got me another smallie in the 14 inch range and hung up on some of the branches and logs that litter the bottom of the pool so deep that they can't be seen. After dragging the lure over a what I assume is a log I got a hard thump, a hard pull and my lure thrown back in my face. That had some nice weight to it.
I wandered down stream knowing I blew my one chance at a bigger fish.
On the way back up I stopped at this pool again. Picked up another 14 inch smallie. While dragging the bottom I hooked the log. I was popping the lure on the log like a mad man. I didn't want to break it off. The light was getting too low for my old eyes and I knew I wouldn't be able to tie something new on. All this popping freed the lure. I could feel it come up quickly, then settle back to the bottom. As I lifted it again it got stock again and I pulled on it hard to pop it free. Then it pulled back hard and all hell broke loose.
The fish shot across the small pool heading for the undercut bank on the opposite side. I was able to stop it before it got there, my drag humming the whole time. It dove to try to go under a tangle of trees. I backed it out of there. It jumped trying to toss the lure free. Definitely a fish in the 18 inch class. I try not to wear them out and got it up next to me quickly and lipped it.
It sure looked like the same one I had caught not that long ago.
The usual arms length shot was disappointing like usual. So I tried a different angle. When a fish gets to a certain size, no picture seems to do it justice.
With that, I was done. For my short period of time on the water I was able to pick up 5 smallies, a rock bass and a handful of big creek chubs. My hands were cold and I could see my breath in the dying light down in the valley of the creek.
I think one of the reasons I come here is because it's so isolated. It's far enough from any major roads that you can't even hear them. The road that goes by this area sees maybe one car every five minutes, maybe longer. In the silence all that could be heard was the last of the song birds, whose songs always seem louder and more desperate at the end of the day. Off behind the woods was the occasional sound of a tractor, the farmers around here have been working into the last of the light turning over fields and planting this years seeds. When the tractor turned a certain way, it's sound would disappear completely, like the engine had been turned off only to come back a few minutes later as it must have turned around in the field.
I kept thinking about that 18 inch smallie. It had to be the same one.
At least it looks that way to me.