University life took a schizophrenic turn or two in the past two weeks. First I was teaching two intermediate-advanced courses. Then I was teaching nothing. Then, on four days notice (literally) I found myself teaching our main introductory course, with no preparation and having never taught it before or developed any course materials. It makes a kind of sense in the medium and long run given the current administrative environment, but it’s going to be a wild, time-draining ride. So all of a sudden time on the water is precious again. James and I have had our three previous camping trips in a row cancelled due to weather and this weekend’s plans made four, with 100% thunderstorms and 1-2 inches of rain forecast Friday and Friday night at Little Paint Creek. Instead we headed out on Saturday to see what we could do at a rain-swollen Bear Creek.
It was very foggy in the morning but nice and cool. It was forecast to clear later on, with a high of 76. The sun showed itself briefly around midday, but it clouded over again for the afternoon.
The stream was running high and murky, as expected, but seemed reasonably fishable. At this point it has been two months since the last stocking, so our expectations were suitably muted. Stocking is supposed to resume unannounced in September.
We used our normal rods – James with his Nissin Fine Mode Kosansui 320 and me with my Rhodo. We used a range of flies this time, and caught fish on almost all of them, including black and olive woolly buggers, sometimes with added splitshot, a number 8 muddler minnow with splitshot, a beadhead light olive sparkle bugger, and a San Juan Worm weighted with splitshot. All the weight was to get the flies down to the bottom in the murk.
We had to work for every fish, but it was a pleasant day after two weeks away from a stream.
One of the first things we saw was what looked like an unusual rock where no rock had been before and which on closer examination turned out to be a massive turtle. There’s nothing for scale in the photograph, but the carapace was well over a foot long and snout to tail tip it was pushing two feet. We actually thought it was dead to begin with, though the photograph demonstrates it obviously wasn’t, as the carapace is still partially wet from immersion. When we returned in five minutes it was gone. I don’t know much about turtles, but the internet tells me it’s a common snapping turtle, confirmed by a herpetologist friend. You can actually hunt these on a regular fishing license in Iowa, though I prefer to sort of peer at them.
I hooked up with seven or eight trout and got most to the net, but only landed two.
Given the conditions, it’s hard to get much of a clue just how many trout are still in the stream. It was hit and miss on any fish at all.
James had a slow start, and I realize now I had the wrong line on his rod – it was too long and gave him fits with casting and snarls. I only noticed when I went to collapse it at the end of the day.
Squirmy wormies had worked wonders here before, and the cloudy water was made for them, but I didn’t have any. When we moved to the upstream stretch I decided to try a microchenille San Juan Worm, with a splitshot to get it down. A large rainbow hit the very first cast. I played it for ages and had it at the lip of the net when it slipped off. I doggedly stuck to the sjw for an hour after that, but the only other fish to show any interest in it was the above chub.
At what used to be the best upstream pool, now featuring a dead log, I landed the only other rainbow, on an olive sparkle bugger.
We did get upstream to the beaver dam, despite the somewhat deeper water. There at the end of the day we experienced our best hour of fishing, as the fish were clustered in what was now the fairly deep fast water at the head of the long dammed pool. James really came alive and caught six or seven fish.
The day ended in some frustration, as I caught a couple of rock bass in the middle of the pool, then hooked into a large rainbow on a black woolly bugger. For some reason I thought I could just lift it out with the line and didn’t get the net out. There was no obvious reason to think I could do this, it just popped into my head. I couldn’t lift it by the line; the hook promptly came free. Still, a fine day given the conditions. The final tally for James was six chub, two shiners, and a smallmouth. I caught seven rock bass, five chub, a shiner, and two rainbows. There wasn’t as much sustained action as usual and we’d covered all the water by about 5.30 pm. Next weekend is Labor Day and we hope yet again to finally get up to Little Paint Creek to camp and fish there and Hickory Creek.