Mink Creek flows in a southeasterly direction and drains into the Volga River (where von Paulus and the Sixth Army came to grief all those decades ago). Its stockings are unannounced. There are two stocked sections, a short one upstream accessed from Dogwood Road and a longer one directly north of Wadena accessed from a small parking area off Bighorn Road. I fished the latter. The fishable stretch here is entirely on private property, with a public easement. It’s long been on my list, as it’s essentially the same distance away as Grannis and Bear. The marked waters are mostly upstream from the parking area, comprising the whole stream section between the bridge at Bighorn Road and an upstream bridge at State Road W51. There is a downstream marked stretch about two thirds this distance. Apparently the downstream stretch used to be longer, as in the late Jene Hughes’s “Iowa Trout Streams” book, the entire length of the stream downstream to Bear Road is shown as fishable, and he noted that if he were in the area for some time, he would make a project of fishing from Bear Road up to Bighorn Road. The DNR page for the stream lists all three species of trout.
I wasn’t sure whether there’d be a full day’s fishing, so I had it in the back of my mind to finish up at nearby Bear Creek if there was time. I found the Mink Creek parking area without any trouble.
It had a faded but flagged sign saying “Please Walk In Please.” I looked at this a bit quizzically. Were you supposed to drive in, read it, and drive back out again? It was only halfway through the day that I figured out what it meant. In the meantime, I parked my Jeep in the obvious place, but worried that I was being rude (I wasn’t).
The first view of the water wasn’t encouraging.
It was very turbid, similar to or even worse than my recent trip to Little Turkey River. Again, there hadn’t been any serious rain. Whether it’s agricultural runoff that does this I don’t know. And again, as in some other situations, the water cleared noticeably through the day and was much better by about 3 pm. I fished exclusively with my revivified Rhodo. I fished it zoomed back to shorter lengths more here than on any previous trip, due to the fierce tree canopy downstream and the choking vegetation both downstream and up. I used olive woolly buggers all day, except for a brief but fruitless flirtation with black ones. I dropped an olive one into the pool above and got no hint of a fish. This held true the entire day. The deep, slack, huge pools with little flow yielded at most some cyprinids. The trout were all near the moving water.
I was thinking that downstream was going to be the most interesting water, based on Jene Hughes’s comment above. This was “wrong.” It started well enough. Immediately downstream from the bridge, there was a lovely deep run with serious flow, leading to a long slow pool.
I can read water well enough now to have a pretty good idea that the seams on either side of the strong current were going to be worth prospecting. And yes, yes they were. The first two casts got follows from decent sized trout. Then I caught three brook trout on three consecutive casts.
So things kind of felt like they were looking up, and I set off downstream with a jump in my step. It didn’t last. It was a combination of deep, nearly still, and completely turbid pools, mostly unwadeable, steep banks that were challenging to climb, low tree cover everywhere, and absolutely choking tall, dense vegetation on the banks. It was hard to move, hard to find a casting position, and hard to find any decent looking water. When I did get in position on some good looking moving water with some depth, all I got were cyprinids. I didn’t see a hint of a trout after the first deep run. And it was exhausting trying to maneuver. I think I covered most of the DNR marked water, and I lasted until a bit past lunchtime. Then I gave up. Coming back was a lot easier, as I climbed up and bushwhacked out to the edge of a corn field, and there was a mowed track along its margin back to the bridge.
At this point I was thinking I’d give the upstream segment a fair look then likely have time to head to Bear for the evening. But it turned out better. Essentially, it looks as though the lower two thirds of the upstream segment is the stocking area. It has a stocking track, with mowed offshoots heading to many of the pools, and lots of paths beaten through the vegetation. A typical fishin’ hole situation, very like Little Turkey River. It’s not really my thing, but it’s how it’s set up. The upper third of the upstream segment has basically no access, similar to the segment downstream from the bridge. Oh well, you fish the water you have, not the water you wish you had.
The first thing I noticed was that most of the paths led to positions down from the head of the deep pools. I guess these are prime baitfishing positions, but once more, casting into the deep slack water in turbid conditions yielded nothing. As usual, the bait fishing spots were full of litter, discarded worm containers and beer cans. I didn’t have a plastic bag along or I would have cleared it. I’m sure not all bait anglers litter. But some of them sure do, because it’s like this everywhere they set up shop. Anyway, it was clear I needed to get into position in the inlets at the heads of the pools. But there was typically no access in the way of cleared lanes or paths. And while trees were less of a problem on this more open stretch of the stream, the density of the streamside vegetation was incredible. So I spent the afternoon thrashing through it, getting tangled, falling down slopes I couldn’t see, getting stung by nettles, etc. But it got me to some beauty casting positions above moving water at the heads of each pool. And I consistently caught fish.
So after several hours, I finally caught a fourth fish and it, too, was a brook trout. Brook trout are typically supposed to be 20% or less of the stocking, and this has been borne out everywhere I’ve caught them so far, so it was unusual to be catching them left and right. Maybe the rearing station needed to get rid of a bunch.
So it went like that. Half an hour cursing and thrashing and occasionally wading to get into position, half an hour of decent action. I also worked out what the sign meant. The stocking track was potentially driveable. So people had to be actually told not to drive up the stream. You just shake your head.
There had been a bunch of work done on the stocking section at some point. There was riprap (which made footing a relief when navigating the bank compared to elsewhere) and in a few spots sunken lunker structures.
Eventually the stocking track stopped, yet there was still a segment of marked waters as I hadn’t gotten near the W51 bridge. It was completely choked with vegetation but I wrenched my way through. There were few decent pools, but I only saw one trout above the end of the stocking track, which I failed to catch after multiple follows. One nice pool up near the bridge looked like a sure bet, but just yielded a handful of chub and shiner from the prime water. Eventually I got to the W51 bridge, packed up my Rhodo, and walked back along the highway. By the time I was back at the Jeep it was only 6 pm but I was wiped from all the bushwhacking in 88 degree weather, so decided to give Bear a miss. I would only have had about 90 minutes fishing, though it would have been in the prime pre-darkness period.
So I guess I can’t complain. I caught as many trout as I did at Hickory Creek. Yet I’m pining to go back to Hickory. Mink, not so much. Streams that are mostly just great big bait fishing holes linked together aren’t my scene. And away from this heavily tended segment (and in between the deep pools on it), Mink Creek was close to unfishable due to the streamside vegetation. I think it’s worth looking back in the fall once the vegetation dies down. The final tally was 9 brook trout, 3 rainbow trout, 9 common shiner, and 9 creek chub.
One thing that came out of the day: I’m finally confident in my self-tied woolly buggers. Most of the fish were caught on self-tied olives with grizzly hackles. It’s maybe not a towering achievement, being able to tie the very first fly they teach you in most books to a fishable standard, but I’ll take it. $2.50 a pop at the store adds up at the rate I lose them.