Either the smallmouth bass are done spawning or at least the early spawners are done. At my feet, wavering in the gentle current along the shore, were hundreds of smallmouth bass fry. This would explain why in spite of fishing three sections of Big Rock and one of Little Rock Creek I had only caught 13 smallies. It can get that way after the spawn.
The original plan was to fish the section of Big Rock Creek where it flows on the north side of Plano. I was going to hike up to the knee dam, cross the creek and hike another half mile or more up the creek. Something I had been wanting to do for years. What I didn't count on was that Plano had a hell of a lot more common sense when it came to dams, unlike the town of Yorkville where I live. I can't remember when I was here last year, but between then and now they had ramped the area below the dam with large rock in order to make fish passage easier.
That is a great thing to see when so many other towns up and down the Fox have their heads up their asses when it comes to dam removals or modifications.
The problem was that all this rock made it next to impossible to get across here. Normally an easy thing to do. Getting level spots to plant my feet was difficult and the spaces between the rocks dropped a good two feet at times. I'm pretty good at this stuff, but not that good.
I was able to get across by walking through the waist deep pool at the bottom of the rock ramp. Second problem was that the brush and trees were virtually impenetrable. I got about 50 feet getting hung up on thorns and crawling on my hands and knees when I just gave up. I decided to just fish my way back down to my car.
Problem number three was that the floods of March had changed this stretch as dramatically as it had changed other sections of the creek. I immediately ran into trees laying across the whole creek.
Of course this always work to the benefit of fishing. New cover creates new opportunities to fish around. As I wandered down stream all of the trees I relied on in the past were gone. New ones had taken new places, but this also changed the dynamic of the creek. The creek bed changed and new holes had formed. Old holes had filled in. This made my usual saunter much more of a challenge.
Of course I had to fish around each new challenge and each one produced a fish.
Some of them got pretty difficult to get around. I couldn't wade past them because of the new holes that had formed. I couldn't go around them on shore because the floods had pushed even more debris there and I just didn't feel like crawling through the woods anymore. So I would jump up on the logs and hope I was sure footed enough to not wind up in the new holes.
But of course I had to fish them as I went.
Further down the creek was more like it has always been. But then this stretch is more rock. Boulder sized at times, which means it was likely they had been there for a few thousand years. I'm sure they had seen their fair share of floods. And of course they always hold fish.
I made it back to the car quicker than I thought I would. This stretch had produced 8 smallies and a number of missed hits. I wish I had tried a little harder to get further up stream. Maybe next time.
I went to another stretch that has never really turned on this year. It produced nothing in over a half mile of wading. The flood plain in this stretch is big and a couple of weeks ago the whole floor was filled with blue flowers. All those flowers were gone now and few pink and white ones had taken their place.
I know, or knew the name of them, but I'm drawing a blank. When they fill the woods with a beautifully sweet scent, the name of them just doesn't seem that important.
With the water levels down many of the pools had become larger. I had expected to really tie into the smallies here. But it never happened.
So I moved to the last stretch. I hadn't planned on stopping here. On the way out the lot had about a half dozen cars sitting in it. This area gets pounded by fishermen, but luckily they are either all trying to catch the one muskie hanging out here, or they are sitting on the shore with lines criss crossing the creek. In other words, they have no clue how to fish.
Now they were all gone and it was barely 6 o'clock. I decided to wander up Little Rock to areas I hadn't been to in years. This too had changed from the floods and there were fewer pools. They had filled in a little and were now barely a foot deep and the flow was too fast to hold anything. What pools didn't get filled in produced 4 more smallies.
I came to one stretch of shore that runs along a farm. Obviously they were doing some rehab work to their house. A pile of drywall was all the way down to creek level. They were dumping it down the bank of the creek.
It hasn't rained in over 5 days, so this dumped drywall is new. Drywall soaks up water fast, expands and falls apart. This showed no sign of that happening. This is far enough out of sight that I'm sure they thought no one would ever see this. I guess they thought wrong. This kind of treatment of our resources disgusts me. The attitude that goes with it, that there will be no repurcussions, disgusts me even more.
This week I'm going to find out who in Kendall County I can report this too. Send them the picture I took and make sure they look into it. Hopefully they'll fine him and make him clean it up. The bigger the fine the better.
He deserves whatever he gets.
