Between the 3 creeks I picked up 34 smallies, 3 crappie, a green sunfish, foul hooked a couple of quillback carp suckers and lots and lots of creek chubs and shiners.
Saturday found me on creek number one about 4 or 5 miles inland from the Fox. To get to the water you have to park on the side of the road and hike in through the woods, pretty much making your own trail.
This time of year, before the leaves are completely out on the trees, the sun can get down to the forest floor. This causes an explosion of color from early blooming wild flowers. I have no clue what most of them are and don't care to learn. Unlike most humans it seems, I don't need to name and categorize everything. They are just a wide variety of beautiful wild flowers. Good enough for me.
I was damn near certain I wasn't going to catch anything, or at least smallies, and that's what happened. What I didn't expect was to catch an endless stream of big creek chubs and shiners. I'm calling them shiners till I can identify them better, but that's what they looked like. It was unusual to catch so many over 6 inches long. I wish I had brought along a bucket to fill with these things. I would have brought them over to nearby Big Rock Quarry Lake.
Instead I covered a chunk of the creek and wandered through the woods. The creek had been scoured by the flooding in March much like its big sister namesake. It wasn't the shores that took the beating this time, but all of the huge log jams and huge logs that I caught fish around last year were completely gone. I'm talking logs up to 4 foot in diameter just gone. When and if floods like this occur again, I'm going to go sit near one of these creeks just to hear the noise of all this flowing water, rock and wood.
Other than a couple of old deer stands, there was no sign of anyone having been to this area.
Considering what it takes to get to this creek, I don't think many will ever bother trying. No parking lot, no paths, not much of anything but woods and a creek. No place to put a lawn chair and string lines into the water. I think it will stay pretty natural for quite some time.
By around 5 pm on Saturday I hit creek number two that has an adjacent pond and is about a mile and a half up from the Fox. Picked up 2 smallies right away out of the creek and the pond gave up a couple of largemouth, so I thought things were going to be good.
That was pretty much it. I even tried fishing for creek chubs and never got a hit. These two creeks are connected and I find it odd that the chubs were everywhere on one and the other produced none. I know later in the year they are here, but just not now. I guess when creek chubs and shiners come to a fork in the creek, they go to the left.
Over the last 12 years I've noticed that what goes up the creeks and when can really vary. In the first creek, I've never seen a carp or sucker. In the second creek, just two weeks ago I was standing on the bridge watching waves of carp and suckers zig zag up the creek. Today they were gone, didn't see a single one. In the last creek that I fished on Sunday, it's usually full of carp, suckers and quillbacks. I saw a few of those, but not many. The usual hordes of those species didn't seem to happen this year. Unless it happened so quick I missed it. Instead the smallies were much further upstream than I remember. But I'll have to go check my archives to make sure.
Maybe I'm just getting old and don't remember things well anymore.
When all is said and done, it's all temperature driven and I did notice that the creek with the chubs was 57 degrees and the one with the smallies was 62.
I hiked almost a mile downstream just to see what changes the flood had done. I already documented that in an earlier story. New gravel bars and washed out banks were all over the place. Whole trees, root balls and all were in the middle of the creek or shoved tight against the shore line. Even the wooded flood plain, which is pretty big, now had dry gravel bars in the middle of it. Apparently it was high enough to create new paths through the woods. I greatly appreciated that act of nature, made my hiking much easier than in years past.
While wandering back and forth through the flood plain I would stop and just sit for a bit. The whole thing was covered in a shimmering blue from all the flowers.
This went on for as far as you could see through the woods. Now and then the sun would come out from behind passing clouds and make its way through the half bare trees. The forest floor would light up in bright streaks of yellow, blue and green. I love the intensity of light and color that comes with the clear skies this time of year.
It really was a surprise to see how much got moved around. Along with the gravel bars and big trees, the waters had dug up and pushed around bits and pieces of civilization.
This area had once been privately owned, but the owners had the foresight to protect and preserve this beautiful stretch of creek.
I had always noticed broken plates, pottery, pots and pans and chunks of old cars strewn through this area. Now there was more dug up by the floods and littering the new gravel bars for well over a half mile.
It also looks like one day the person that owns this land came out to start a project, gave up and walked away. Parts of the project are still laying around as if waiting for them to return. A tool that was placed intentionally sat on top of the overturned cart as if waiting to be picked up again at any moment. The roll of barbed wire was within arms reach, everything was ready to go only no one ever came back.
I took my eyes off the ground and out of the wood long enough to see the bald eagle floating over the creek directly over my head. One of these days I'll find its nest. I'm certain it rebuilt one after the first one collapsed not too far down stream.
Besides getting late and not wanting to be stuck out here in the dark, I had to stop my downstream adventure when I came to where most of the trees and debris had stopped. Getting around this piled high stuff looked pretty damn hard. And since it also stuck out into the creek creating some pretty swift current that flowed through and under the trees, getting around it in the water looked pretty damn dangerous. Sometimes I know when to call it quits. To the right you could see where the creek used to go. It almost looks like a road. The water had been diverted to the left and the old creek bed was now overgrown with tall lush green grasses. This would have to be another days adventure.
As I was driving away from the creek, I got no further than 100 yards when I pulled over to the side of the road to take a look at a couple of deer that were standing in a driveway. They obviously were interested in taking a look at me and we sat there checking each other out. Then I realized that there were more in the woods and counted a total of 6 of them, all just standing there staring at me. Of course I couldn't get to my camera, that's the way these things always happen, so I just hung out watching them till another passing car spooked them back into the woods.
I wasn't quite sure how Sunday was going to go. My dad wanted work done around his house after we got done with Mother's Day brunch. His wobbly legs no longer let him do these things so I get to do all the ladder work. But it was Mothers Day (like that's any different than any other day, said my dad) and her word is law that day. She wanted everyone to go home so she can relax and take a nap. So after getting my mom one martini too many, a guarantee of a good nap, I headed west and decided as I drove where I would wind up.
I wound up where I went the previous weekend. I was out to fish this time, not explore. I had forgot to bring the camera anyway, so I was less side tracked to find the best pictures.
I hiked further up the creek than I had in years, but only half of what I wanted to do. When your catching fish from one spot, it's hard to move to the next just for the hell of it. Before I knew it, the sun was getting low behind a hill. I toyed with the idea of high tailing it all the way up the creek, but decided against it. I don't mind stumbling through the dark, I didn't want to be locked into the forest preserve after sunset.
This time I stuck with a 1/16th ounce jig with a #4 hook and a 2.5 inch pearl bass assassin. I wanted the option to catch as many different species as possible and staying light and small is the only way to do it. Fishing down stream again proved to be the way to catch numbers. Up stream casting is basically a waste of casting, unless you're out there to practice.
This time the numbers of smallies and crappie had moved from one pool up stream over 100 yards to the next. I missed two of the biggest fish of the day when I had them explode at my feet trying to get to my lure. I make it a habit of keeping the lure in the water right up to the very end. Smallies seem to enjoy chasing things down. At this last pool I kept eye balling the creek going further up. There was also a path that cut through the woods that would get me there faster.
Next time I give myself an extra hour.
As of Tuesday the 12th, they are calling for one to two inches of rain over the next 36 hours. The Fox is flowing at 3950 cfs and that much rain will probably kick it back up to 5000. The creeks that feed the Fox are all in perfect condition, so that much rain will also make a mess of them.
That's all right. I have a busy weekend ahead of me anyway and getting out fishing is not on the list. Unless of course my daughter insists on taking her pond fishing.
There are two more creeks I would like to hit in the next few weeks just to see what's happening, Waubonsie and Hollenback. Waubonsie is the easy one. Hollenback is an adventure of sorts, at least a half mile just to get to a fishable stretch. We shall see.
And so you know, they are Little Rock Creek, Big Rock Creek and Mill Creek in that order.