OK, just quickie here. I headed up to Desert Creek, about 20 minutes from my home, with lunch in hand to see if it was in fishing shape. Answer: Yes! The creek is still a little murky, but totally fishable. I ate lunch at a nice shady spot where I noticed that a small dam (see previous dam rant here) had caused a large section of bank to be washed away. The creek found the path of least resistance and carved itself a new place to flow. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the worst situation I saw.
The small rock dam and to the right of it the new channel and the washed out bank, which my truck is sitting on. Glad I stopped when I did!
I fished the spot with a indicator rig and had a small trout try to eat my indicator. Ha ha, very funny. I switched to a dry and, of course, got nothing. I drove up the canyon, having eaten lunch and smoked a cigar, fishing all the likely looking water. Same outcome. No fish, but a few refusals from mostly smallish wild trout.
As I walked up stream from my truck, the stream, or rather some of it, was flowing over a meadow to my right instead of my left. That can’t be good, I thought. I followed it to its source. Another small rock dam had backed up a section of creek and caused to to overflow it’s bank. Neat! I moved a few rocks to get more water flowing where it should be flowing and then proceeded to fish up stream. This is the good part. I caught a nice, wild 12 inch brown (the net proves it too!) on the nymph I had switched back to. Not the biggest fish I have seen in Desert Creek, but still a respectable fish from such a small stream.
The rock dam (bottom right) and the broken bank (upper left). Grrrrrr.
5+7=12. Nice wild brown and the interior of my new net.
Anyway, I went back to the dam and did a little more work and tried to dam up the broken bank area. I probably succeeded in cutting the rogue flow by half or more. I had no tools, so I did the best I could. Before, there was no way a fish could have traveled upstream and the pool behind the dam was 3 or 4 times the width of the creek. Of course, there was another dam behind that one and I performed a little surgery on that one too. I didn’t remove them, just created a few paths for water to flow more naturally and fish to travel. Please, don’t build these things!!! They may create a nice pool now, but soon they silt in, widen the stream bed and maybe worse, like I found today. Don’t f’n do it!
A pretty shot of the canyon. Always want a happy ending.
OK, that’s that for today, but I have another post on tap for tomorrow. Stay tuned.
Filed under: Conservation, On the Water Tagged: | brown trout, dams, Desert Creek, indicator rig, nymph
[...] camp and I am playing bachelor. I figured I would take advantage and go fishing, which I did. Twice actually. I originally planned to on an all day outing, but it didn’t turn out that way. I got up [...]
Just spent last weekend fishing at Desert Creek (Aug. 20-22) with a similar report… a little murky but some nice fish caught driftin a black ant through pools and along undercut banks.
Sweet, thanks for the report.