116 3rd St SE
Cedar Rapids, Iowa 52401
Casting made fun — and easy
Wild Side column: When strikes come often, it’s a good day
When you split your summer free time between fishing and gardening, rain can be a paradox.
You want it, but you don’t want it.
The plants you’ve been assiduously hand watering through an exceptionally dry May and June would welcome a wetness more widespread than the dribs you’ve been applying to their roots. You too would welcome a few days off from the daily ritual that has convinced your plants it rains a little every evening around supper time.
The yang to that yin, of course, is rain raises and muddies the rivers you like to fish — a truism freshly impressed upon me when on July 1 the weather pattern changed with a 2.7-inch cloudburst. By midmonth subsequent rains had increased July precipitation to 4.2 inches — well more than my cumulative total for May and June.
With garden watering on hold, I had more time for fishing but nowhere to fish, the rain having raised and dirtied area streams.
To the rescue came my friend Mike Jacobs of Monticello, who with his encyclopedic knowledge of Iowa smallmouth waters had, through river gauge research and eyeball observations, identified a hospitable stream.
As expected on one of Mike’s secret streams, Mike, Ray Thys of Marion and I did not see anyone else during a recent float.
The bass were in an indifferent mood. They lacked their characteristic aggression but could be coaxed to bite a temptingly close lure.
In covering less than 2 miles of river in seven hours, we presented a lot of temptingly close lures and caught a combined total of 80 bass. Every time I looked up from my fishing, Ray or Mike was either fighting a fish or landing and releasing one.
The bite remained steady even during the middle of the day when the overhead sun usually drives the fish into hiding.
Until Sunday, I thought the Canada wildfires were good for but a single thing — pretty orange suns and moons. But the smokescreen they provided, while not blotting out the sun, softened its harsh edges enough to give the fish a false sense of security.
While we targeted and caught mostly smallmouth bass in the swifter, rockier stream segments, we were pleased to find that areas of marginal smallmouth habitat were liberally populated with their easily tempted largemouth cousins.
Through sluggish, weedy pools and water adjacent to mud banks — stretches of the river we would typically paddle through without fishing — the active largemouth inspired us to keep our lines in the water.
Casting is fun and easy when you always feel, as we did on July 16, that your next one will be rewarded with a strike.
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