I’ve had it in mind to try out the cabins at Backbone State Park. They’re remarkably cheap – $50 a night for a modern two room cabin. In season, you have to book them for a full week at a time and they tend to be booked absolutely solid. Off season you can book a minimum two night stay. It’s university spring break week (which coincides with the local school systems’ spring breaks). At the last minute I checked availability. They were almost booked solid, but I got one for Sunday and Monday nights, so James and I set off to check it out. Verdict: awesome location, clean, nice, and much closer to a whole lot of streams than my house. There’s a good chance I’ll be back several times before they get booked solid from Memorial Day on. We settled in, went for a walk along the lake, and I cooked a dinner of bacon-wrapped tenderloins, baked russets, and sliced butter-sautéed portobellos.
On the Monday, after a breakfast of smoked salmon eggs benedict we headed for one of the small number of protected streams in Iowa, a catch and release only stream with self-sustaining wild brown trout. I tried to fish this stream last summer. Jene Hughes warned in his book that it was largely impossible due to the weed and brush growth. Pshaw, I figured, I’m manly enough for some weeds. Well, no. I could hear a stream, but literally could not see one. The weeds were dense and head high. I could barely push through them, and couldn’t in a lot of places. I got two sightings of the water and saw a small, high, and off colour stream, and gave up. It was different now.
Now that we could actually see it, it turned out to be a lovely stream with tons of excellent water. There’s only about a mile of fishable water on a small parcel of state land, bounded by a (rare, in my experience) “End of State Land” sign upstream and some aggressive and plain fencing by a farmer downstream. According to the Hughes book, there used to be an easement downstream, but there isn’t any more (confirmed by the DNR maps). I started out fishing my Suntech GM 39 with nymphs, but the stream felt a bit intimate for that and I switched to the Rhodo. I’d predicted that black woolly buggers would carry the day, as that was what had success last spring and early summer with the stream-raised browns at STSNBN, and indeed that’s what every fish ended up being caught on. James fished his Nissin Fine Mode 320 as usual.
Well, wild browns are hard work, at least in my experience. Just as at STSNBN, you get usually one chance, two at the outside. I engaged with more than a dozen fish that I didn’t hook, or hooked only very briefly. But we did all right.
It was my first time out with my new wader gaiters, purchased from TenkaraBum. Really liked them. They not only made thrashing through brush less worrisome, but they actually kept my legs warmer and the lower legs of the waders largely dry.
James had a bit of a grind with the dead streamside vegetation and overhanging trees, working his way from one snag to the next. Late on I’d stopped fishing due to a frustrating number of fly losses of my own (and a worrying amount of fatigue). James kept on trucking as we headed downstream from the starting point. We didn’t make it to the lower end of the fishable water, but he got on the board with a lovely big brown at a nice downstream pool.
I thought these were my first truly wild browns (STSNBN I don’t think has natural reproduction, but is fingerling-stocked). But then I remembered I’ve caught tiny browns at both Little Paint Creek and Richmond Springs. It’s sort of strange that they are both heavily pressured and constantly stocked park streams, but they both feature natural reproduction of browns. It was likely James’s first wild brown, but there are both stocked and stream-born browns in Hickory Creek, so it’s impossible to say with absolute certainty. I ended up with four landed and 12-15 flirted with but not hooked.
We stayed in the cabin Monday night (bacon cheeseburgers for tea), then checked out on a very rainy Tuesday morning (bacon, eggs over easy, more sautéed portobellos and English Heinz baked beans on toast for breakfast). We first went to Mink Creek. I’d caught a dozen trout on my only visit last summer, but it hadn’t really rubbed me the right way. This visit didn’t improve matters. Somebody had relieved themselves on the ground right directly in front of the stream sign in the small parking area, leaving the pile with some soiled paper towels proudly on display. Perfect. The bait fishing pools had cigarette butts and beer cans, just like last time. The stream was swollen with the rain and we didn’t see a fish. Not going to be hurrying back.
That got us to around noon, so we got back in the Jeep and headed to our home water.
The fish were few as we await the resumption of stocking next month, but we pried a few rainbows out of nooks and crannies.
James got on the board in the same pool he caught his first ever trout in. Shortly afterward he lost a second at the lip of the net.
The first upstream stocking pool and environs yielded nothing for the first time in months – couldn’t see any fish holding anywhere, seems to be completely fished out. We had a few decent looks around our favourite pool, still with the huge submerged tree along its length. The stream had a decent amount of water in it, so the riffle above it yielded a couple of hookups, both of which got off after a few seconds. I caught a chub in the pool proper, then a small rainbow in the tail. James caught his fish on an olive and grizzly woolly bugger. I was mostly using my Suntech GM 39 and caught all three of my fish on a Hare and Copper.
The day ended trying to cross to have a look at the big top pool when I stumbled and managed to fall in. I put my hands out to break my fall and went in to the shoulders on both sides, drenching me under my rain top. Thunderstorms were closing in (we drove through them on the way home) and we were basically out of likely water anyway, so we called it and slogged back to the Jeep in the rain. James caught one rainbow; I caught three and a shiner and a chub.
All told, an excellent getaway. I just wish I’d figured the cabin thing out earlier and booked one for the whole week. We tentatively planned to do a second trip, camping this time, in the later part of the week, but the weather’s looking pretty unfriendly, with lows below freezing and highs in the 40s, so we’ll keep our powder dry. Tentatively the following weekend will be the next trip, with two nights of camping. I plan to fish a *lot* through April and early May, getting the itineraries lined up and tying flies in anticipation.