116 3rd St SE
Cedar Rapids, Iowa 52401
Fishing for drop-offs
Wild Side column: Even in dry weather, rivers moving, creating nice spots
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Even in these dry, dusty days when few can remember the last time it rained, the slow-moving rivers keep performing one of their principal functions — the transport of sediment.
During higher, swifter flows, much of the sediment suspends in the water and moves at the same pace as the stream. As we’ve seen in the wake of Hurricane Helene, high swift rivers can transport cars, houses and hillsides.
Here and now, when even a ground squirrel crossing a gravel road can raise puffs of dust, sediment transport is limited to base load — the rolling or sliding of grains of sand along the beds of streams.
Though not observable in real time, this process gradually reveals itself in the downstream expansion of sandbars.
While sand creeps downstream, displacing at a glacial pace much of the water in my favorite fishing holes, I’m targeting their downstream edges, which happen to be gamefish magnets.
These midstream sandbar drop-offs, which can fall almost vertically from mere inches above to several feet below, provide deep, dark lairs for bass, walleye and northern pike to lurk and ambush unsuspecting prey that drifts over the top.
The vertical sand wall also provides a barrier to escape for minnows and other prey that stray into the kill zone.
In recent weeks I’ve identified several sandbar drop-offs, which I visit on a rotating basis.
So far I’ve caught many nice fish while avoiding the pitfalls posed by the freshly deposited unstable sand on their leading edges, at which, when the edge crumbles, a careless wading angler can suddenly become a swimmer.
On Tuesday, the day after the maple trees started getting pretty and the very day all the Asian beetles in southern Buchanan County fled harvested soybean fields for the sunny comfort of the south side of my house, I found a new (to me) drop-off, where I compiled one of my better stat lines — 7-5-2-0, seven bites, five walleyes, two bass and zero screwups.
With a limit of walleyes on the stringer in less than 30 minutes, I felt pretty sure I could keep fishing and catch and release several more just for the fun of it.
I also felt sure that sometime in the near future I would like to catch and eat more walleyes, which prompted the question: Why would I want to teach them to avoid my lures?
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