Friday after work I was able to make it out to Little Rock Creek. As I stood on the shore about 4 feet above the water I noticed that carp and suckers were moving around a bit still on their spawning ritual. Not a good sign when wanting smallies. Was only able to land one of those, but the creek chubs and a hand full of rock bass kept things interesting. The wind was brutal that day and even down in the creek valley there were times I wondered why I was even trying to fish.
Sunday morning I found myself able to go out, but the over night rains were pretty heavy. I checked all the river gauges around 6:30 AM and they all shot straight up over night. It screwed up my initial exploring plans so I headed to Mill Creek instead. The level was good, but the clarity was less than a foot. Not the way I like it. I had to hang the jig and twister in the current to let the smallies find it. Landed 3 and missed 2 more that way, but it was far too much effort.
You can tell how muddy the water got from the rain.
On the way back to the car I took my time and found things to photograph.
The wild strawberries are just now starting to get their bright yellow flowers. The berries themselves are small and a little bitter, but I don't mind things that way.
This is some kind of tree in the pine/cypress family. It looked like it had some kind of odd fruit growing on it. I can't recall ever seeing it this way. I had passed this tree many times over the years.
When you get close to it, it looks almost like coagulated sap. I had to fight the urge to touch it. If it was some kind of pine tar and I got it on my hands, it would have been easier to cut my hands off at that point than try to get that stuff off. I'll have to look this stuff up.
This tree has a longer story attached to it that starts in back in September 2009. I met the guy in his 70's that goes around planting these. Not sure that's legal, but he didn't seem to care. One of these days I'll finish the story. It involves a retired golf course designer, a creek I like to fish, almost getting nailed in the head with a golf ball, a great fishing hole under a bridge on this golf course and the reason the hole is there.
When I cracked "I always wondered what kind of idiot would put a golf course around a perfectly good creek," he cracked back "now you know."
but it looks like cedar rust gall to me. Now is the beginning of all kinds of crap involving the forest...EAB flight season, bag worm , tent caterpillar and a bunch of maladies waiting to reek havoc!! I was able to get out in downtown Batavia this eveing and caught 2 small smallies in an hour. It was good to get out , and I was fishing in the middle of the river,with the river ripping around me. I checked the gauge,when I got home and see the current is at 1640cfs , If you are new to wading, I would tread lightly, in this area, the channel moves out of the middle and runs a bit to the shoreline, which is a bit hard to read if you haven't seen it in low water. Take care , Kevin