Iowa experienced a wet, cold spring in 2017 and water levels were mostly very high. We didn’t make it out for a month after spring break, largely because the weather just didn’t cooperate on the weekends we were able to go. We finally just said heck with it and went camping on April 21, but just going and willing it to work didn’t actually change the conditions. On the Friday evening home waters were blown out so we headed to Grannis, which never really gets too high. It was fishable, but there were lots of other vehicles coming and going. We beat it down to the really nice pool at the end of the mown paths. I caught a rainbow and we played with a couple of other small trout. We fished as much as we could back upstream, had a few more follows and one hookup, but no more trout landed. James caught a creek chub. We camped at Six Pines at Backbone. When we made the circuit to choose a spot my heart sank when one of the big middle areas had a YOUTH GROUP reservation. We chose a spot near the entrance, as far away as possible. A convoy of Boy Scouts turned up, their leaders white dudes with wrap around shades. Aw man, I thought. But they weren’t the worst of it. A whole pile of yahoos moved in three sites down, big ass trailers, 12 person walk in tents, coolers, multiple vehicles. The boy scouts made a decent racket, but shut off like a light at 10 pm. The yahoos seemed like it might be all right, but what had happened is all of them except the kids and their minders had left. I guess they went to the bar, because they arrived back around midnight and starting partying. This is why I just can’t hack public campgrounds. They can be very nice when you have decent people. But it just takes one site full of jerks and you spend a night in high blood pressure hell. It’s like staying at a Super 8 motel without walls. So I’m pretty sure that’s the last time I’ll chance it. We broke camp in the morning and tried STSNBN. It was blown out, so badly it was dodgy to cross. I caught a chub in the starting pool, but there was no point. We went home.
A couple of weeks later the weather had finally settled down and it seemed like we were ready to get started for real after a really frustrating spring. We headed out to STSNBN on May 07th, and normal service was finally resumed.
STSNBN returned to its normal miserly form, and I caught the standard three browns, but together we caught over a hundred fish of various kinds.
It was nippy early on, but sunny all day, and it warmed up nicely by late morning.
We did our usual amble down to bottom pool and back, kind of working the kinks out and getting back into it. We both fished with black woolly buggers, as I hadn’t managed to tie any more slump busters. James caught 33 creek chub. I managed 73 creek chub, 8 common shiners, three brown trout, three smallmouth bass, and one hornyhead chub.