Demise of a creek

[Al Agnew]

I'll start by giving a little history.  There's a creek that's not far from my house; in fact, it's about the closest creek with smallmouth in it to my house.  When we moved to Ste. Genevieve County, I looked on all the maps I had and saw this creek that I was unfamiliar with.  I drove to the two main bridges on it and looked it over.  Small.  But maybe it had some fish.  I went to check it out with my brother in law from the upper bridge.  We waded downstream, but soon found that one of the landowners had bulldozed out a long section of the creek.  Shallow water.  Bedrock in places.  But in the few spots where we found a bit of depth, we did catch some smallmouth.  Still, I didn't think it was worth fishing.

That was perhaps 30 years ago.  About 20 years ago, I spent a couple of days fishing it from the lower bridge, both upstream and downstream.  I caught a few small fish, nothing of any size, and was not impressed with the habitat.  Downstream was a little better, and one of the times, in early summer, I even caught a couple of young of the year walleye, so apparently the walleye come up into the lower end of the creek, where it meets another creek of similar size, from the Mississippi.  I floated the combined creek down to the Mississippi once, catching quite a few spotted bass, but few smallies.

Now fast forward to about 15 years ago.  I had an afternoon free and decided to try the creek again, going upstream from the lower bridge.  The habitat had gotten somewhat better.  It's still a small creek, with riffles that you can just about jump across in the low water of mid-summer, and the pools are mostly shallow, averaging only a foot or two deep, and with only a few spots reaching five feet or so.  But...I discovered the creek was chock full of smallmouth.  And some of them were amazingly big.  In the next few years, I fished the creek from both bridges, both upstream and downstream, and the fishing was almost phenomenal.  I was catching 20 fish per mile of creek, and 17-18 inchers were common.  I even caught a couple that were legitimate 20 inchers.  

I kept quiet about the creek.  I told almost nobody.  I only took my brother to it, nobody else.  And for a few years, the fishing remained terrific.  I could depend upon catching a bunch of fish with some really nice ones every time.  I didn't pound it; I fished each section only once or twice per summer.  Then, some doofus who had relatives who lived on the creek starting bragging about all the big smallmouth he was catching--on an internet message board.  The next time I fished the creek, I noticed signs of other anglers.  And unfortunately, signs of them keeping and cleaning smallmouth.  In the next couple of years the fishing went downhill.  It never got bad; I could still depend upon catching quite a few fish, though not the numbers I had previously.  But those 18 inch plus smallies were pretty much gone.

Then came the big flood last spring.  I went to the creek once a month or two after the flood, wading downstream from the upper bridge.  What you have to understand is that this creek has shallow gravel and rock beds over solid bedrock.  Remember that first time, when somebody had bulldozed the creek?  They had spread the gravel around and made everything shallow, and scraped some of it out of the creek, exposing the bedrock.  In the years since that time, the creek had gotten back to a somewhat more natural appearance.  The bars are finer gravel intermixed with bigger rocks, 6 inch to 24 inch cobbles and scattered bigger boulders.  In the heyday, the pools were mostly bedrock bottomed, but the rock bars formed little dams backing up the pools and making them deep enough to hold fish, and the scattered bigger boulders in the creek provided hiding places in the usually very clear water.  

But the flood had simply blown everything out.  Those little dams were gone, the rocks scattered and pushed far up the banks, the gravel blown out into the bottoms and far downstream.  The bedrock was scoured, the boulders were moved around.  I didn't even fish very long.  I didn't go back last summer.

Today I went to the lower bridge to wade upstream.  The lower section has more gravel and longer pools--or at least it did have longer pools.  But now, the pools were filled in with finer gravel, some of them completely gone.  The habitat, never really good, had gone way downhill.  I caught one lone smallmouth, a 14 incher, two little largemouth, and two spotted bass/smallmouth hybrids, also small.  Then I went up to the upper bridge.  There was a 10 inch smallie in the first little pool.  But the next pool, one that had always produced a fish or two, was nearly gone, the couple of big boulders that had furnished cover had disappeared, and I caught nothing.  The next pool, always one of the best for big fish, was completely gone.  The pool on the bend, a bluff pool, was still there and really wasn't much different.  I ALWAYS caught fish from it.  Nothing.  Next pool, another bluff pool, was also intact.  Nothing.  And from there on down as far as I cared to wade, there were no more good pools, just gravel and rock bars on the sides and shallow, bedrock bottom runs.  It seems the big flood had finished the creek.

Maybe in a few years it will come back.  I'll keep checking it once a year to see.  But I returned home saddened.  It was never a stream that could handle fishing pressure, it was never a stream with really good habitat, yet there for a while it showed how good these small streams can be once the habitat improves just a bit, and the bass are protected by being ignored.  Small creeks are fragile, susceptible to all kinds of abuses, from bulldozing to otters to poor land use practices in the watershed to anglers pounding them.  But sometimes you find a real gem.  And sometimes the gem disappears.

[jdmidwest]

I have watched a large part of a river near me go the same way.  That bedrock does not go away, but the gravel and other stuff can go in one rise.

Interesting to see how this one plays out, hopefully we all live to see it get back to fishable again.

[Mark]

Good story Al, and sad.

[MoCarp]

sad...

[oneshot]

Is this Public Property or Yours?

If it is yours just Post it. If it isn't why worry?

oneshot

[Al Agnew]

Not ours, not public.  Private landowners have always been okay with people fishing it, mainly because not many people did and those that did, like me, were very careful and considerate.  Just sad to see what was once amazingly good fishing for the size of the creek go downhill to almost nothing.

[oneshot]

I know of a place next to public land. It was private, the guy didn't care if you camped on him, next to his cabin, it was real grassy.

It didn't take long before people took out all the grass, took the Cabin down a piece at a time for Firewood. Then they tore up the river bank driving up and down it.

Went by there one morning after a Kegger it looked like snow from a distance all the plastic Ice bags.

oneshot

[ozark trout fisher]

Always sad to see that happen. Now that I am away from the Ozarks, whenever I come back to visit one of my favorite creeks there is always that fear in the back of the mind that it won't be anything like how I left it. That can be heartbreaking, and with the flooding we've seen lately an occurrence one will need to get used to.