Rain totals worry this avid fisherman

Being old school, I tend to think more about weather than climate.

But that is changing as the weather increasingly configures itself in patterns that disturb my lifestyle.

I am talking about rain - too much, too often - which interferes with my fishing, when it does not, as it did this year, completely eliminate it.

From 1893 to 2006 Iowa recorded three years in which statewide average precipitation exceeded 40 inches. In the last 10 years, however, statewide average annual precipitation has topped 40 inches five times, and it has come close to that mark in two other years: 2016 with 38.96 inches and 2014 with 39.66 inches.

Cedar Rapids recorded 41.84 inches of precipitation this year, 25 percent more than its 'normal” amount of 33.41 inches and almost 3 inches more than the statewide average.

But that is nothing compared with the state's five wettest cities of 2016 - Osage, Charles City, New Hampton, Cresco and Decorah - all of which set new annual precipitation records, with Charles City topping out at 58.58 inches.

Those outrageously wet spots all lie generally upstream of Cedar Rapids, accounting in large measure for the city's second-highest flood crest in September.

Runoff from those northern Iowa deluges also coursed down the Wapsipinicon, chronically elevating it to levels too high for a wading angler like me.

Even in exceptionally wet years like 2008, 2010 and 2015 (with respective statewide precipitation totals of 43.79 inches, 45.1 inches and 43.28 inches), late summer-early autumn dry spells always opened lengthy windows of fishing opportunity.

But not this year. Every time the gauge at Independence showed the Wapsi falling tantalizingly close to fishable flows and levels, another heavy rain fell somewhere in its watershed.

Of course plentiful rain is not all bad. Up to a certain point, rain makes grain, and Iowa farmers harvested record corn and soybean crops this year. Rain also makes grass, which no doubt thrilled people who like to mow every four days, which is what I did with most of the free time I would have otherwise spent on the river.

Now, as I look forward to 2017, I do so with much more than the usual trepidation associated with a new year.

When I look at the trend lines of key climate variables assembled recently by Iowa State University climatologist Gene Takle - lines indicating steady and substantial increases in annual precipitation, extreme rainfall events and moisture in the air - I shudder and wonder: Will I ever again see all those big smallmouth bass I caught in 2015?

l Comments: (319) 934-3172; orlan.love@thegazette.com