A week after getting going again, we headed out on May 14th on what feels like it’s going to be an annual pilgrimage, to a state preserve with the last remaining pre-European old growth forest in Iowa. It’s a special place. Just not for the fishing. To even get to the possibility of trout you have to cross most of the preserve, walking along the stream. It’s not all that difficult, but it’s all on jagged dolomite gravel that hasn’t been weathered much, so it’s murder on the soles. What it lacks in angling thrills it makes up for in scenery and solitude (relatively speaking, but the wildness and difficulty of the terrain makes it pretty much as close as you’re going to get in Iowa).
The water level was considerably higher than our trip in 2016, but it was fishable and there were lots of eager chub.
Where the previous two times I’d visited the stream had held decent water upstream, then mostly disappeared in the middle stretch (presumably running mostly undergound), this year there was pretty decent water all the way down.
It was the first really hot fishing day of the year. Water is a funny thing. I always carry lots of it. Mostly I just end up with a sore back and we drink a fraction of what I have. This time we were gulping it all the way down.
Eventually we got to where the two upper branches run together. The DNR map marks this as the beginning of trout water on the main branch, but last year we definitely saw (but failed to catch) some browns upstream. We were very hot and parched by the time we got there, and it was later in the day that I planned. James looked wilted, so I parked him in shade with a water bottle at the confluence and headed downstream for a quick try for trout. I was hot and thirsty and pretty tired myself.
Well, it was pretty much a disappointment. On our 2016 trip we encountered and hooked definite largish browns, but failed to land any of them. I spooked a few things that I’m pretty sure were trout, but didn’t engage for sure with a single one. I got as far as the most beautiful downstream pool to find that it had been ruined, at least temporarily, by a huge tree that had fallen in and blocked it. Water levels were really high and the water seemed to be getting murkier through the day. I didn’t want to leave James by himself for too long, so I gave it a very hot and thirsty half hour, caught nothing, and bailed. We drank the remaining water when I got back to James, so the slog back across the preserve in the heat of the day was special. Thankfully, there’s a town just a few miles down the road from the parking lot, so we power gulped Gatorade.
This preserve and this tiny little stream are some of my favourite things in Iowa. It’s a lot of work for not much reward, but I aspire to catch some trout here and will return next spring. In the end on this trip I caught 63 creek chub and a shiner. James caught 21 creek chub. We each used a black woolly bugger all day.