# My God, it's full of...



## B.Jarvinen (Jul 12, 2014)

Bass? Damn.

I have always wanted to drive out to this spot on the map that showed a small lake and the word "Dam". Below that is a long-ish river, not part of one of the "systems" in the U.P., just a river that has 3 different Trout type sections along it's run to the Big Lake, and is Type 1 right up to that dam.

And the little lake held back by that Dam gets a plant of Rainbows. So my odds on Trout should be purdy good, right?

Just above the dam is a DNR launch. I parked there and threw some hardware in the little lake for a while. Nada. Oh well, Rainbows run deep, and hmmm, maybe there are a few more acres to this little lake than I was thinking.

I walked over to the dam. Next worry - it released surface water via drop-down tube. I should have figured this, really, but had hopes it somehow released cold water from the bottom of the lake. But I have had a great time fishing Trout on these types of outlets right below other lakes in da U.P.

I beat my way through the woods and approached, from below, the wonderful looking little pool where the water came out of the tubes. A picture perfect black water pool in a rocky system amongst tall timber - no flat water Alder canyon here. Delightful. I had a fish on within 2 seconds of the spinner hitting that pool. 

But Lord have Mercy, it sure was not a 5 Pound Bass and nowhere close to being as big as a baby. Just a little one pound bass at best. And the whole fish was straight-up warm to the touch, like something that just came off the hot tray in the buffet line - no way a Trout could handle this water. Not all that surprising given the heat wave that has bubbled up all the way to the top of our country the last several days.

The next cast caught a twin of the first fish, and so did the third. The fourth landed a 1/2 pound bass. For some dumb reason, I decided to try the next pool down. I caught a small Bluegill. Then another little Bass. I moved downstream once more. And caught a Crappie. All this out of the most beautiful looking Trout Creek one ever did see. It was kind of fun basically getting a fish on every time I threw the spinner in the water, but one of the little Bass took too long to unhook as they sure liked to completely inhale that spinner, far deeper than Trout do. The little Bass was floating upside down some, struggling to right the ship - future Turtle, Mink, or Eagle food. I decided to quit torturing the little fish and went back to the truck.

The experience was a carbon copy of the day before, when I had stopped at a Flowage outlet right on a State Highway that I have always wanted to just fish, even though I knew that Flowage was so huge the water couldn't possibly support a Trout after 16 hours of June sunshine on it. But it is darn fun to fish where restricted water is released by a man-made structure. Because the fish knows that is as reliable place to find a quick meal as the Mickey D's at the next exit on the freeway is for us dumb humans.

The Flowage outlet was just as strong of a fishing experience in a certain way - landing a fish on almost every go, though I was throwing a worm in there. For a while at least. I started with a decent Perch, before a fun run of small Bluegills and an occasional Chub. But action, action, action is better than just hoping, hoping, hoping for a bite. A couple more guys pulled in the parking lot and joined me. They added a 3# Bass and a small Bullhead to the roster in that churning water.

But then the bite turned off somewhat, on the worms. I thought the Bluegills would be fun with a little spinner ... instead my drag on the Ultra-Light went on a run! Northerns. Caught 2 in just 10 minutes, kind of fun on 4# test, but not the fish I wanted to catch. It was way too hot to wear a hardhat and saw chaps anyway. I headed downstream to check out some more spots on the map; but of course the map is ever silent on what kind of fish are held in that thin blue line on the map.

The County Road ended at a now closed bridge. Underneath that bridge would be shaded, and the wide shallow flow over the U.P. sheet rock would be constricted into some deeper water. But no evidence of fish could be found underneath on any kind of offering. I moved back upstream to a short trail to a named waterfall - always fun to fish the base of a waterfall. But this was more of a long series of small waterfalls, and the trail in to see them didn't quite reach the end, and there was no beautiful pool at the end, where I could stand in the air conditioning of the waterfall spray and fish a nice deep pool. The "waterfall" just finally petered out into more of that 6" of water flowing over an ever widening sheet of rock, and I couldn't even reach that to hit the corners without some heavy bush-whacking. So much for the Flowage River.

So today, the Day of the Little Bass, I put on my thinking cap. There were Trout in that river coming out of the Dam - it is even one of the new 10 BKT limit streams. Where were they? The map showed a pair of little creeks coming in, almost at the same point, one from each bank. That should allow the little river to "pick up enough groundwater" to hold Trout.

I headed to the road crossing just below the 2 little Creeks. I did not expect good fishing at the crossing, but I had to know where did the Trout start?

I didn't have the Day Off energy to bushwack in to the Alder flat and get away from it all, (in fact I have been struggling mightily with forcing myself to fish easy places only, so a Day Off is actually some rest from very strenuous work right now - not good to have an overloaded work schedule, not good at all) and decided to just fish from the bridge. I threw in a worm. Tap-tap-tap on the first go. But no hook-up. I retreated to the other side of the bridge and fished downstream. Everybody fishes downstream and cleans out the hole below the bridge. Above the bridge is a better chance.

I could not detect a fish under the bridge, or below the bridge. Just the one spot in the upstream. I had to find out what kind of fish it was. 2 partial days of fishing in Trout paradise, and I had yet to see an actual Trout. This morning I hit a Big Lake harbor - the harbor where this very river from the little Dam completed it's journey, amongst actual boats, and maybe some Harbor-loving Brown Trout, and History, and tourists, and trails, and ... not a nibble on anything amongst all the post-big-rain Chocolate Milk now filling the harbor.

What was that fish tapping at my worm? I could not hook it. Probably a little Chub. I was feeding it nicely - 3 worms down now. I gave it a break and tried a half-hearted whack-a-bush up into the Alders. Nowhere to get a line in the water very well from the Alder jungle. 

I returned to the bridge, and plopped the worm into the same magic spot. Brookies hold their spot in the stream and eat everything that comes by. Worm #4 was the charm - hooked, with no escape, even with the chancy haul ten feet in the air up to the bridge.

Brook Trout! 7"! Legal! But I am hardly going to keep a single Brookie, thought it was the happiest fish of the weekend. I was just happy I had finally read the map correctly. Lake outlet? Wait for more ground-water, most of the time. The North-East Lower Peninsula Trout people know this well.

Just down the road was a crossing over a Creek that eventually joined the little River. Brookie knowledge in hand, I couldn't wait to try it. A double box culvert! Black Pool! Rocks, timber! Hooray!

In went the worm. Out came a Perch. And a Chub. And another little Perch. And another Chub. I didn't bother letting down the thermometer.

So it goes sometimes in Lake/Swamp country. This Creek didn't come from a Lake, as far as I could tell, but the road eventually drove along it, beyond this crossing. This revealed the problem - a riparian flat so wide open, not a twig of shade on it. Not technically a lake, but 20, maybe 30 feet, or more, of flat black water in the middle of the weeds. Hot.

We often kid on here that if water flows in the U.P., there are Trout in it. I often hear people say the non-Type water still holds Trout. I eye those on the maps all the time, myself.

The only way to find out, is to put a line in the water...


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## B.Jarvinen (Jul 12, 2014)

I couldn't resist, and I tortured the fish (a fish) some more today.

On the way out of a new jobsite, I had to cross over a Branch that feeds the big Flowage. But I would be above the Flowage....the Branch is said to hold some Brook Trout...there were a few small tribs above me, and the lakes this Branch sourced out of weren't particularly big, though it is hard to tell how interconnected with other local lakes they might be.

I stopped at a Canoe Landing and threw in my thermometer. On Saturday I thought I was having trouble with it at the Flowage outlet; it read 90 when I put it in the water and 82 when I took it out. I thought maybe I didn't wait long enough. 82 degree water in a river? I'm a little new to playing with my fancy new Fishing Thermometer I picked up at Jay's.

So I figured I would go ahead and fish a little bit while I waited for the thermometer to acclimate. Just above the put-in the water got deep. I threw in a worm. Tap-tap-tap, couldn't see the fish, worm gone. Those Brookies and taking a worm off a hook - how do they do it?

Threw in another worm. Same result, but I got a glimpse at the fish I was feeding. It was a whole bunch of fish - little fish - a school of minnows. They could bite pieces of the worm and the #8 hook was probably as big as their whole head, and #8 hooks are so small Wally World doesn't even sell them cuz real men fish for big fish with big fish hooks, everybody knows that.

I re-grouped with a #4 Panther Martin. No way they could get their lips on that treble. And what was in that deepish water where I couldn't see bottom? But those little minnows would chase and nip at that thing like crazy. Cannibal minnows? Don't they know a spinner is supposed to look like a minnow?

There was nothing but minnows in that deep water. But I put my Trout brain in gear, and walked through some brush a few feet. The deep spot was created by a 90º bend. Above the bend was a big wide expanse of open water - hot - uggh. But all that water was coming straight at me and then exiting the corner with only 1/3 the channel width it had on it's way into the bend. A lot of water. A hole.

And leaning over that hole was a classic White Cedar tree coming out horizontal from the bank, still alive, with half it's branches in the water. Perfect cover for a Trout. I didn't want to read the bad news on the thermometer, I wanted to find out what lived under that Cedar tree.

I flipped in a few times, a difficult little cast from under a branch and over a log, yaddayaddayadda. I was too lazy to put on my hip boots. I continued to draw a school of minnows to the spinner on every retrieve. I started to figure there was nothing else in the river, cuz the minnows weren't afraid of nuttin', it seemed.

I scooched up a little, let the tip of my shoe start to get wet, for a better cast, presenting the spinner in the channel just above the tip of the Cedar tree.

I had managed to spot the spinner into the Neutral Zone, between the happy school of minnows and The Lair.

AHHH-OOOH-GA, AHHH-OOOH-GA, RED ALERT! RED ALERT!

Target Fish sighted, Captain!

Enemy Type! Pike Family!

Yardstick Class!!!

The big long fish (I was several miles downstream from a bunch of lakes where they hold a Musky Tournament in the fall) just casually let itself drift down a little from under the Cedar and into the current and watched my spinner go by and flicked it's head and inhaled it.

It all happened in slow motion, it seemed like. But really it all happened so fast, by the time I could get my drag turned down enough to slow the line screaming off the reel, the big long fish had gone straight back under the Cedar tree and tried to throw the spinner with a surface thrash on the other side.

And then began one of the weirder fish fights I have ever had. Here I was hooked into a fish as big as my leg, on a 5' rod with an ice fishing reel on it. It should have ended quickly, but on it's super quick way back to The Lair, I think the fish had wrapped the monofilament around something.

I couldn't really do anything. It was more like having a hopeless snag, really. I could bring in line but it would slip back out almost as fast. When I had the line taut, I could tell something was moving on the other end. But it wasn't going anywhere either. If I let the line go slack, nothing happened.

Irresistible Force had met Immovable Object. Except I think the big fish was actually both halves of that conundrum equation, and I just happened to have a knot tied into the middle of it all.

I waited some for the fish to tire, perhaps. I could see nothing under that Cedar tree. I would pull the line taut, I would let it slack some and wait, and I would try to reel again. But there was no letting the fish run a little and then lowering the rod tip and bringing in some line, no fish fighting tactic was possible at all.

Finally I knew I had to just tighten the drag one fateful turn at a time, until a resolution came. SNAP!

Hopefully, the broken line allowed the fish to pull the wrap out from it's end, or would eventually, some time before the hook rusted, as they say they do (this must take a really really long time, one would think), or the poor member of the Esocidae family now chained to it's lair like a maltreated Dog finally starves to death.

Sorry, Mr. Fish, really. I feel bad about this one. I am giving up on this warm water (78, read the thermometer upon retrieve) crap fishing with my Ultra-Light gear. Those minnows better not cross the Neutral Zone though, is all I can say. There is probably one pissed off big fish tied into it's Lair now.


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## Gordon Casey (Jun 13, 2017)

B.Jarvinen said:


> Bass? Damn.
> 
> I have always wanted to drive out to this spot on the map that showed a small lake and the word "Dam". Below that is a long-ish river, not part of one of the "systems" in the U.P., just a river that has 3 different Trout type sections along it's run to the Big Lake, and is Type 1 right up to that dam.
> 
> ...


I think we have Hemingway 2.0. Keep it up---wonderful stories.


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## toto (Feb 16, 2000)

Some of the best writing I've read on here, ever. Thanks for sharing.


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## zzcop302 (Jun 29, 2013)

Gordon Casey said:


> I think we have Hemingway 2.0. Keep it up---wonderful stories.


I agree !
I was going to make a similar comment but yours nails it.


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## arbutus (May 20, 2014)

Thanks for sharing!


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## fishmark (Jan 1, 2010)

Great post and story. Thanks. Made my no fishing, yard working Sunday feel better. I was fishing right along with you.


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## Martin Looker (Jul 16, 2015)

No more of these stories. I have too much work to do and not enough time


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## B.Jarvinen (Jul 12, 2014)

Work...Is For People Who Don't Fish

I don't actually get to fish all that much, just an occasional hour after work. But my new jobsite seems to be overlooking a 10 BKT stream valley. Hmmmm.


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## zzcop302 (Jun 29, 2013)

B.Jarvinen said:


> Work...Is For People Who Don't Fish
> 
> I don't actually get to fish all that much, just an occasional hour after work. But my new jobsite seems to be overlooking a 10 BKT stream valley. Hmmmm.


Hope you give us a new report!


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## ongo (Oct 1, 2017)

B.Jarvinen said:


> I couldn't resist, and I tortured the fish (a fish) some more today.
> 
> On the way out of a new jobsite, I had to cross over a Branch that feeds the big Flowage. But I would be above the Flowage....the Branch is said to hold some Brook Trout...there were a few small tribs above me, and the lakes this Branch sourced out of weren't particularly big, though it is hard to tell how interconnected with other local lakes they might be.
> 
> ...



Nice read Brian!


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