At the end of the day Friday the Fox RIver was flowing at over 4100 cubic feet per second. For me that meant another weekend of finding a creek to fish. My daughter Nina was spending the weekend and she insists on doing some creek exploring every time she comes out.

At the end of the day Saturday I was in St.Charles. On the way home it poured, but as soon as we got on the West side of the Fox the rain pretty much died. I checked the radar when I got home and it showed that all the storms blew up pretty much right at the Fox and to the south. Which was good. The creek we wanted to fish was to the west and north. The rain should have no effect on it.

Or so I thought.

I got my daughter out of bed early. We were meeting a couple of guys on the creek at 8. Winds up only Matt was there. Apparently, later, we heard from Dan that he still can't tell AM from PM when it comes to setting alarm clocks. So he blew it.

This was a new stretch of creek, for me anyway, that we were going to be covering. When we got streamside, the river was the color of mud. Not too dense, but the clarity was much worse than I wanted it to be and much worse than it should have been for what little rain we got. We decided to go do the exploring anyway.

I wanted Nina and Matt to be first in a lot of spots so I would just send them through the woods and out into the creek. Neither one of them would be back here anytime soon and I could come back whenever I felt like it. So why not let them go first.



Nina was the first to pick up a dink smallie. We didn't know at the time that things weren't going to get much better. But we had a feeling it wasn't and we talked about that quite a bit as we kept sloshing through the mud stained water.



Half the time I go out fishing now I think I go just to see if I can bush whack my way through the thickest brush for the hell of it. While doing that I look around to see if there is anything interesting to photograph. Most of the time the pictures don't do justice to what I'm looking for.



So I settle on taking random shots and hoping for the best.



When I told Matt and Dan my daughter was coming with, I told them I didn't want to hear any whining if she out fished them. When I told Nina we were meeting up with Matt and Dan she said, great, they can make fun of me getting all tangled up in brush and the trees.

Instead Matt kindly spent a few minutes untangling Nina's line from his rod when she caught him instead.



I think the best fish of the day was a nice little white bass that surprised us all by even being around.



The closeness of creeks, how small they are and the things you have to go through to fish them, never cease to intrigue me.



For as small as creeks are, there are times when they seem to even dwarf a fisherman.



And there are time when two can share the area and never feel crowded.



About a half mile up the creek we saw a fisherman bobber fishing at the end of a pool. We decided we didn't care to find out who he was or where he came from and called it quits.

Since Matt had driven pretty far to get to this spot and still had some time left before he wanted to head home, I led him to a spot I like on Big Rock Creek. The clarity of Big Rock was far better then what we just left and I was wondering if we made a poor choice. But how was I to know that creeks so close together would behave so differently after a little rain.

I gave Matt some tips on how to negotiate the creek and left him on his own, but I'll let him tell that part of the story.

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