So the existential crisis seems to have blown over pretty quickly. Word came down that both of my face to face classes this fall semester have been cancelled by the college due to low enrollment (don’t want to bore anyone, but the “run it like a business” governance mentality at many public universities doesn’t understand what goes on at a major research university beyond classroom teaching, and doesn’t understand why you’d need to run intermediate and advanced courses with fewer than 16 students). On the one hand, this is a stressor professionally, as we try to figure out how to maintain nationally prominent graduate programs when we aren’t allowed to actually teach graduate courses. On the other, the immediate answer for me personally is to double up the amount of teaching I do in large low level undergraduate courses in spring semester (teaching large classes is something I enjoy anyway) and, well, have the entire fall semester largely free of teaching responsibilities. Tough one. Yep. Darn. So I think it turns out that any crisis was more the start of semester looming than any loss of interest in fishing. Because the instant the looming ended I sprinted back out to a stream.
ANYHOW, I decided to continue exploring new water by targeting Mossy Glen State Preserve and Bixby State Preserve, which are near one another north of the town of Edgewood in southwestern Clayton County. Each has an entry on the DNR trout stream list. However, clicking through to the stream page for each, the map shows no fishable water. In addition, neither stream is shown on the interactive trout stream map. If you download the pdf map that covers both, however, there are stream segments indicated and both are listed as special regulation streams. This seems to be the only place this is indicated, and exactly what the special regulations are isn’t said (usually it means catch and release only, but sometimes there are lower size limits and artificial lures only). Both seemed to hold out the possibility of something off the beaten path and maybe the chance at something special. So I told myself that this was as much about exploring as fishing. As a backup if they both fell through, it wasn’t far over to the streams of Fayette County, and I figured I’d try Bear (that is, if Bear fell through I’d try Bear) having let two weeks pass since my last visit.
I tried Mossy Glen first. It’s a tiny preserve, but I love these little wooded valleys. They’re like stepping off into another world. Sometimes you get engine noises and the like to remind you it’s a bit of an illusion, but when you’re in them it really does feel like you’re off somewhere else, in deep woods. The DNR was full of ominous warnings about the quality of the road. I need to look into the history, if possible, of some of these places. Because this preserve seems to have been essentially abandoned. It’s clear that there once was an access road, and there once was a nice sign marking the preserve and some informational signs. Now the road is essentially gone – the start of it runs from someone’s farm yard and is unmarked, and it runs like a rutted track through the same person’s corn field. If you didn’t know it was a public road you’d have no idea. Once you pass an apiary in the corn field, the road stops being a road as it enters the woods. As advertised, you really need something with clearance to make it that far. I wouldn’t have taken my old Malibu down it, but the new Jeep was fine. At the edge of the woods, the road is completely overgrown, and you can see multiple large deadfalls blocking it. It hasn’t been maintained for many, many years, yet at some point it was clearly accessible and meant for public visitation. I have no idea if it’s budgets, changing priorities at the DNR, or a conscious decision to let it be as wild as possible. Anyway, after climbing over a bunch of huge dead trees I eventually found the above sign, so I knew I was in the right place.
I could hear a stream down in the valley to the east. There weren’t any trails or paths in evidence (fine with me), so I just plunged into the woods and headed down.
It’s August, and the water levels are down everywhere, so I was telling myself not to form too much of an impression of it – I was likely going to see these new streams at their low points. Even so, Mossy Glen Creek seems to be pushing it as a viable trout stream. It’s just tiny. Lovely, but tiny.
It reminded me most of the tributary at White Pine Hollow that’s marked as trout water, except even tinier. I saw one one inch minnow in all the water I looked at. It was generally only a few inches deep. I could see from moss growth that it often held much more water, but even so it’s hard to see how there could be much holding water.
There were a couple of pools that could be viable with more flow. The above had some nice deep water with undercut hiding spots around the base of the big dolostone block. But there was no flow past most of it, and I couldn’t see any fish of any kind at all anywhere in the pool. I might come back and have a look next spring, just out of interest. It was very pleasant, but there just wasn’t anything to fish. I had lunch in a nice spot, then beat it back up and out.
So, 0 for 1. I headed over to Bixby. I tried first from the north, but the road was closed, so I had to circle around and come up from the south. First impressions were of another really breathtaking little hidden gem – the road as it went down closed in with dolostone cliffs along the side, and there was a little gorge with an empty streambed running along it. Then I came to an awesome gate, lacking an actual gate.
Again, I have to see if I can check the history, but it looks like it might once have been a state park. It isn’t completely neglected like Mossy Glen, but it’s full of relics of past glories. When I got down to the stream, there were a couple of kids working for the DNR doing mowing and maintenance. It was small, but enchanting. There’s a little parking lot and a mowed area with a CCC picnic shelter (almost identical to the one at STSNBN), some picnic tables, and a fire pit.
Like an idiot, I didn’t look up any information on the preserve before visiting. Hence I missed the fact that it’s of extreme ecological importance, with a rare, localized algific talus slope ecosystem, including an ice cave you can visit (the entrance, anyway). There were paths going places that I didn’t explore – I’ll definitely be back. There was a beautiful big pool with a huge dolostone boulder right beside the picnic area (I had the camera on the wrong setting, so the photos of it didn’t come out – this is a major annoyance on the new Olympus TG-4; the selector wheel is constantly turning away from Auto just through regular handling). The stream itself was a trickle, but the pool was nice enough for me to gear up.
So I got one of those little rewards that accrue, the longer you fish. I cast a self tied olive woolly bugger, put it right where I intended, in front of a very deep undercut below the boulder. Two seconds into the retrieve of the first cast, a big brown slid out and nailed the fly.
It was a relatively extended fight – in my resumed experience, nothing fights as forcefully as a decent sized wild brown. Rainbows thrash about more, but browns do these really powerful runs. But I got it landed. Okay, so things were looking up.
I spooked a smaller trout in the tail of the pool, caught a big creek chub, and moved off downstream. The stream was really, really tiny between pools, in places only a couple of feet across. Immediately downstream was another cliffy pool where the stream ran into the valley side. It wasn’t very deep, but I spooked a small trout (sigh) and caught another decent chub.
Another short distance downstream brought me to a beauty pool, again with a huge dolostone boulder. This pool was very deep, and there were lots of fish holding in it. I hooked a large trout, but it escaped pretty quickly. Soon I caught a small fish. I was thinking shiner, maybe small chub. I was shocked as I lifted it out to see it was a trout.
Not just a trout, but a juvenile rainbow. Huh. According to what little information the DNR had posted, only browns were mentioned. And the rainbow was way below stocking size. It appears the DNR must be fingerling stocking them. I kept fishing and caught a few more. It’s the first time since I resumed fishing that the small fish niche on a stream has included small trout. (Though I don’t understand why I’ve never caught or seen small browns at STSNBN.)
I was still just down from the picnic area and I heard a group of people arrive. I didn’t know if they were fishing or what, but I set off downstream to give them some room if they were. The stream picked up some little tributaries and grew in size, but there were no more pools for a good way. Where there was holding water, there were little rainbows, though.
It was a lot of fun while it lasted, carefully fishing a tiny stream for little pockets of holding water, and getting rewarded with little trout in almost all the obvious places (though I failed to catch many of them). Soon, though, the aquatic vegetation started to really increase. Before too long, the surface of the stream was completely covered by some little floating plant with tiny green leaves and white, daisy-like flowers. I’m, uh, not a botanist, but I’ve been trying to identify it.
It might be duckweed, with the white flowers associated with other plants growing amongst it. I really want to get up to speed on all of the natural history of the streams, but right now I don’t have much of a clue. As the plants closed in, I was still seeing fish, but once the surface was covered over casts into the murk yielded nothing.
It was clear that matters weren’t going to improve downstream. I don’t know what causes this. First guess would be an excess of nutrients in the stream, but I’m not exactly an expert. I turned it around. On the way back I stopped again at the deep pool and caught one more small rainbow.
So Bixby state preserve turned out to be a minor gem. The segment of fishable stream is very short, but it was pure joy while it lasted. I had a look upstream – just a trickle with no hint of any pools. I’ll check back in on it under different water conditions. It’s an interesting place for many reasons, but not really a destination angling stream, there’s just not enough of it. But an absolute find.
I used my Rhodo exclusively, mostly at its full zoom. I caught the brown and most of the rainbows on a grizzly hackled olive woolly bugger. On the way back through I tried nymphing in the deep pool and hooked but failed to land fish on both a copper john and a gold ribbed hare’s ear. I caught the final small rainbow on a black number 12 self tied woolly bugger.
At this point it was only a little past four in the afternoon, so I decided to head over to Fayette County Bear to finish out with some evening fishing for rainbows. I was interested to see how they were holding up, now over five weeks since stocking had ceased. There was nobody in the parking lot, so I geared up and headed down, getting on the water a little bit past five.
Again, I used the Rhodo, and a combination of my last store-bought number 12 olive woolly bugger (with olive hackle) and my somewhat larger self tied ones with grizzly hackle.
It would have been worth it just to be there, I think. Bear Creek valley just glows in the evening, and there was a fresh riot of flowers getting tended by butterflies. The weather had been partially sunny and 80, but thunder was scheduled for the evening, so it was starting to close in.
The water was very low and I saw lots of very fresh footprints from earlier in the day. I was definitely fishing water that had been heavily fished just a few hours earlier. Still, there were quite a few trout in evidence. Clearly many fewer than earlier, but enough that you could spend a decent day fishing.
I only had about three hours, so I worked through the lower pools, catching only one but seeing many more and playing cat and mouse with a few. Upstream, it felt like there were maybe 40% of the number of fish, but there were still plenty. Our beauty inaccessible pool where we’d caught tons now had a downed tree trunk in it. I’m getting used to how quickly things change on streams. This was a bit of a drag, though. I didn’t catch anything from it, and we’ve typically gotten four or five. At the last good pool upstream there were five trout holding and after a lot of casting and a few profane interactions with the tree canopy I finally caught one.
It was getting into twilight, but I really wanted to take a look upstream. I’d thought the fishable water ends at the huge upstream stocking pool, but the DNR map actually shows a further stretch I hadn’t previously visited. I got up above the big pool, and immediately found another beaver dam.
Casting into the lower part of it yielded a couple of rock bass. I had it in mind that it might block the stocker trout from getting upstream. But there were still fresh footprints in the mud. I moved up to the head of the deep dammed pool. Casting there got an immediate follow from a rainbow. I got follows from several different fish, but few strikes. This had to have been at least partially because they’d already been fished during the day. Eventually I caught one.
It was rapidly getting dark and I didn’t want to have to cross the really deep water back to the path in the dark. Still, I hurried upstream to take a look. Shallow, nothing immediately in sight. The fishing is holding up so well that I’m going to try to come back soon on a weekday and spend the entire day. If I can, I’ll finish exploring upstream then. I stopped at the beaver dam and tried a few more casts in the deepening gloom, and caught a final trout.
I beat a retreat after that, savouring the failing light as I went down the valley, not savouring quite as much the near pitch blackness when I went into the woods to climb out of the valley.
The thunderstorms arrived shortly after I got going, and I drove home in pounding rain and spectacular lightning. In all, it was a pretty wonderful day. The fish totals were one brown, five small rainbow, four creek chub, and one shiner at Bear (Bixby/Clayton), four rainbow, two shiner, one chub, two smallmouth, three rock bass, and two green sunfish at Bear (Fayette). And it’s the first time in my life I’ve ever fished two Bear Creeks in one day.