I had my own little experiment going. I wanted to determine when the smallmouth would make it up the creeks for their annual spawning run. I guess in a way I've been doing this little experiment for years, but for some reason this year I was taking a closer look at water levels, water temperatures, how the creek may have changed since last year and on and on. Some of this was not even a conscious thing. I had been going out almost every weekend since the end of March and just writing down some details of the trip. Patterns show up when that happens. Not sure what they mean or have any real meaning, but I'm enjoying the process, or lack of process.
This weekend all conditions were perfect for bringing smallies up the creeks. Extended periods of warm weather with warm evenings. Water levels that would allow them to get over and around any obstructions.
And then a few days before the weekend, it rained, a lot. Blew the river to over 6000 cubic feet a second, blew the creek levels up high and extremely muddy and generally made a royal mess of things. Even though water levels were dropping, on Saturday while out running around I stopped to look at Big and Little Rock Creeks to see if that was where I would be on Sunday.
I was surprised to see that the water clarity was damn near perfect. Around 18 inch visibility and a good color that showed the mud had settled down. It doesn't get any better than that for small creek fishing. When the creeks are crystal clear with unlimited visibility the fish are wary. When they are like this, you can practically walk right up on top of the fish.
The only problem with these two creeks was that it was estimated with this last rain their watersheds got over 3 inches of rain dumped into them. They were high to the point where even I wasn't stupid enough to attempt wading, and I can be pretty damn stupid about wading creeks. Unlike the river, very few of the creeks that feed into it have the USGS real-time gauges installed, so in order to determine if they are worth fishing requires a visual inspection. There was one creek that I have fished over 100 times that did have a gauge and when I got home I checked the water level.
It was high, but I had fished it when it was higher and did all right. The only thing you don't know at that point is water clarity. It's too far away for a casual drive, so I had to take my chances that the clarity would be identical to Big and Little Rock. On Sunday, on my way to the creek, as I was driving over it, a quick glance showed the clarity to be perfect. Now I hoped that nobody else has bothered coming here.
I was a little concerned when I pulled into the forest preserve to find all the parking lots full. But they didn't look like fishing cars, I can always tell. On the quarter mile hike to the creek 3 guys were walking back with a stringer full of nice sized channel cats. A quick broken english/spanish conversation and I learned they had been fishing at the mouth of the creek, using chicken livers, and no one else was around. I congratulated them on their impressive catch, turned down a cat for dinner and made a bee line for the creek. The path there was empty and I like disappearing into the creek with no one seeing me.
Ten feet down the path and I noticed I was the only one leaving footprints. No one had been here for quite some time. Through out my three quarter hike up the creek there were not only no other foot prints, but all signs of former well worn fishing paths had disappeared.
If you don't like hiking, if you don't like crashing through almost impenetrable brush, and when that fails, you don't like getting down on your hands and knees to crawl along animal trails to get under the impenetrable brush . . . then you won't like this at all. I wanted to hike in as far as I could while leaving myself plenty of time to get back to my car before they closed and locked the gates for the night. I was willing to do what ever I had to do to back to pools I hadn't fished in a few years.
It was worth every ounce of effort.
If you're using anything but a 1/16 ounce jig and small twister, if you insist on only casting up stream instead of turning around and casting down, if you skip pools with less than a foot of water in them, then you will catch a few fish. But you will miss catching the majority of them.
On this creek you have no choice but to wade up stream. As I came up to areas that I knew held fish, I would cast ahead of me, work it over slowly and I'd catch a fish. Then I would get above the fishy area, work it over slowly casting down stream and I would pick up a half dozen more. I figured out that if I had only cast up stream, like a lot of guys think they should fish a creek or river, I would have only caught 4 fish for the day.
Are you paying attention to that information. Do you get it.
It's kind of strange to say that the fishing wasn't hot and heavy when you catch 28 of them and miss another 14 in four hours. But it was more of a steady catching of fish. Make a few casts, catch a fish. Repeat that for 4 hours.
A few years ago I would go out at the end of April and already be tying into numbers of smallies with ones of considerable size. By that time too, not only would everything be turning green, but the forest floor would be covered with all types of early blooming flowers. Not this year. Though everything is an intense green, there were virtually no flowers around. Did come across this one bright green thing that was almost 3 feet tall. It seemed to overpower everything else around it.
In case you've never noticed, as lame as arms length pictures of fish are, I'm always showing you where I got the fish from. Been doing that for years and I'll bet nobody has been paying attention. That's why some guys take the backgrounds out of the pictures.
You won't learn exactly where I am fishing unless you are like me and have a very good visual memory for little details. But I am showing you what type of water I'm catching the fish from. You can see the current seams, the little pools, the bubble lines . . . all you have to do is pay attention. I learn a lot by not looking at the fish in pictures others take, but what might be in the background. A fallen tree perhaps, a gravel bar, a swirling eddy.
I mean, c'mon, it's a fish. I know what a fish looks like.
These next three shots are perfect examples of what I'm talking about. If you go through my old posts, you'll see I've been pretty much doing this all along.
For next weekend the river is still too high, the creeks are down lower and I'm sure they look just wonderful.
I have maybe one afternoon of fishing and three creeks I want to hit.
I have no idea how I'm going to pull that off.
