After three days of heavy fishing I felt old. And tired. This is alarming. I had also run out of slump busters. So on the fourth day, I relaxed and tied flies in the cabin all day. I recharged my batteries. Which turned out to be a good thing, because I was about to stumble onto something epic on Day Five.
So I don’t really know how to approach what happened on Day Five. Three people in the world, maybe, occasionally glance at this blog. So it’s not like I’m in danger of really spilling much. And if I’m not going to blog about my best fishing, why do I have a blog? But. But but but. Some things turn out special. And I’m selfish or prudent or take your pick enough to keep them somewhat to myself. I go on a lot about STSNBN. If you came in late, that stands for Stream That Shall Not Be Named. STSNBN isn’t really a great fishing destination. It’s hard to access and holds only very modest amounts of fingerling stocked browns. But it’s my favourite place in Iowa. It was the first place I went to after restarting fishing in 2015 that showed me that you could actually find beautiful, unpopulated little other worlds on Iowa trout streams. Stepping off the map onto STSNBN is like opening a psychic pressure valve. If you know anything at all about Iowa trout streams I’m sure you can figure out which one it is. But I’m just not going to name it.
So STSNBN is special, but not spectacular angling-wise. On Day Five, I found something…pretty amazing. I’m going to describe it, but there is no way on Earth I’m going to say where it is, even in general terms. I’ll say this much: I was directed to it by a tip. So one other person certainly is aware. It is not on the DNR trout map. And as far as I’m aware, it is legally accessible to the public. That’s all I can say. This first visit was good, but not great. But there is greatness on the hoof on this water. It holds big, big fish. And I haven’t seen another person on it, even once.
So, with that, I started out fishing nymphs. In contrast to the streams I’d fished for the past couple of days, the water here was running crystal clear. I caught a few rainbow on the nymphs, but soon switched to a black slump buster. I fished the Rhodo all day.
It became obvious things were for realsies when I caught a 14 inch rainbow in one lovely run, then lost a much larger one – 16 or 17 inches at a guess.
I went further upstream and it was like entering a private woodland cathedral. Some of the nicest water I’ve seen in Iowa, with a closed in high tree canopy.
I started catching browns. I didn’t catch all that many fish on this first day of discovery, but in one exquisite run I landed a decent brown, then hooked a behemoth. It was so large all I could do was run down the bank as it headed downstream. It didn’t break off, but shook the hook after about 30 seconds of panic. It was pushing 20 inches. Huge rainbows, huge browns.
I did all right, but I had the feeling that I’d only scratched the surface, and subsequent trips showed this to be true – I’d fished less than a quarter of what I’ve subsequently explored. The largest fish I landed was 14 inches, but I lost two much, much larger than that. It was an electric feeling: major trout water that has…I don’t quite know how to describe it…kind of fallen through the cracks.
My final totals were seven rainbows, four browns, two brookies, one smallmouth bass, 64 creek chub, and 15 common shiners. That ended the cabin days, and I drove home that evening.