Wet waded through a lot of Tyler Creek in Elgin Monday and Tuesday nights. Caught a ton of gills, greenies, chubs and some small bass. Wondering about something, though, since I know very little about this stuff.

The smallmouth I caught were almost all tiny. 4-6 inches. Palm of the hand type fish. I caught a decent amount of them, though. Do smallmouth swim up these creeks to spawn and then head back to the river, or are these just fish who live and die in these creeks and never achieve larger size? If creeks are their spawning grounds, it serves as a good explanation of why I didn't run into any moms or dads, just the kids. Where I was fishing is only a mile or two from the river, so is this just where the little fish grow up and then they migrate to the river once they outgrow these little pools?

Again, I know nothing about this stuff. Haven't even googled it. This is just the stuff I got to think about while walking through the creek, unburdened by anyone or anything else.

http://bloginternetz.wordpress.com/2012 ... er-part-2/

That's a really good question- I'm curious too!

The more I learn about trout the more their spawning habits appear similar to me, although I might be totally wrong. From what I've read, trout live in the big water but come up streams to spawn... Some of those trout stay there in the streams, some go out into the bigger water. Maybe it's a similar thing with smallies..?

It is. Smallmouth (like most sunfish) require water that is slow moving. They will swim up these feeder creeks to spawn and then will return to the main water source (Fox River). The fry can and usually stays in the smaller body of water until they can handle the currents and the food sources.
Did you notice a lot of plankton and small minnows in Tyler Creek? They will start off eating plankton then move to the small minnows. Once they are big enough to track down crawfish and such, they move to the main water source.

There were definitely some smaller baitfish. Whether or not they were minnows or darters or something else I couldn't tell you. Also, if any of those smallmouth head back upstream soon, there is a crawfish smorgasbord awaiting them. They were all over.