In outline:
Skipped the Fox River. Tired of fishing high stained water.
Got out by 7 in the morning to Big Rock Creek and it immediately started raining, then raining harder.
The creek was a little high and stained, but that would normally be a good thing. This year the only creek that really turned on with smallies was Mill Creek. The rest have been eerily empty. Might have something to do with the flood levels we had in September last year, and January and March of this year. But who really knows.
Decided to bush whack through some of the thickest stuff I've gone through in awhile. Seemed appropriate at the time.
Did manage losing one big fish, caught a largemouth and a rock bass.
Decided to just go sight seeing instead since the fishing sucked.
Bob Long and I have talked about this in the past. There's something to be said for standing in a creek during a steady downpour. Concentrates everything down to what is happening directly around you. Including anything that might be going on in your head.
Was going to fish longer, but I got to a spot where I normally wade across the creek only to find that the floods had scoured a deep channel through what was usually knee deep water. I was in almost up to my armpits when I gave up. Walking around it on the shore was completely out of the question.
So I called it quits and hacked my way through the grasses that towered over my head.
Heading back across the suspension bridge, I met a turtle even grumpier and more pissed off than I was.
I messed with him a bit to try to cheer him up, but I had forgot how long their necks were and how fast they can get them extended out of their shell.
I then considered him a candidate for some turtle soup. I've been wanting to get a snapper to try that for a few years.
I considered whacking it on the head with a branch, but the idea of standing on this bridge beating a turtle to death with a big stick just didn't seem right.
I considered carrying it the quarter mile back to the car where I had a knife and I could slit it's throat. But the prospect of carrying a 10 to 15 pound pissed off snapping turtle by the tail for a quarter of a mile didn't seem worth it. I remembered the long fast moving head and neck and the fact that it would be just about at crotch level for the whole walk.
Definitely didn't seem worth it.
So I gave it a reprieve and left it to its long walk across the bridge.
Next time I grab the branch and carry a knife.
By the time I got back to the car it was still dark and gloomy and raining buckets.
But I felt oddly better.