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Have you ever been driving down the highway and seen a marsh next to the road and wondered what it was like and what fish it contained? If you have those thoughts we have similar traits.
Labor day I decided to finally answer the questions in my mind that have been plaguing me for years. We were out by flashlight Sunday night scouting our location for the following day. In hindsight it wasn't the best idea to be walking up and down the shoulder of an off ramp of I95 in the dark but we had to make a final plan for fishing the following day.
We got our intel in the dark and we met up on the off ramp shoulder in the morning.
The night before we found a washout on the side of the road that provided us a route from the off ramp to a near by creek along the road. With my kayak over my shoulder with my gear stuffed inside I hopped over the guard rail and shuffled down the washout.
Once at the bottom of the hill we were greeted with a break in the reeds and a make shift trail. Unfortunately one in our group has not made the transition to a minimalist kayak and two piece rods. I was helping him carry his kayak through this section and two of his rod tips got snagged in these reeds since the trail was skinnier then his yak. His rods snapped off at the third guide from the tip. Luckily my other buddy had a pack rod stashed under his seat for the unfortunate soul to use. Our tally is now up to 5 broken rods between the three of us in the past two months.
Once we finally got in the water we were greeted with a marshy creek. There was a lot of seaweed there and lily pad fields but there was still paddleable water upstream for about 1/2 a mile. Due to all the plant growth this creek water has been filtered and it was remarkably clear considering it was only two days after a significant rain.
I know pictures don't due justice to what you can see with your eye with polarized glasses but this clam shell is 3-4 foot underwater.
As we paddled upstream we had our reservations about catching fish here as the current was pretty swift from the rain that ended a two days prior. We paddled up stream as far as we could fishing along the way and we only had one strike. This is about as far south as we got. We will be back in the spring once the weed growth has died and there will probably be close to 75 acres of water to fish that we couldn't get to due to it being choked out with weeds currently.
We paddled back and we were about to call it a day at this place and mark it off of the list and move on. We decided since we were here to do a little exploring in the North bound direction and see how far we could go. This required us to go through several culverts under roads and entrance/exit raamps. Some of these were pretty significant as the roads were 6 lanes wide. The decision to explore actually paid off for us pretty well.
We started getting excited as we started spotting bass in the clear water in the sections between the roads. Once we started fishing these sections we finally started catching fish. None of them were huge but we went from nothing to one of us pulling in a fish every 10 minutes or so.
The biggest bass of the day only hit the scales at 3#.
The biggest fish of the day was a carp that thought he was a bass and inhaled a Rattle Trap. This will only be the third time in my life we have picked up a carp on a lure. He wasn't snagged as he had the rear hook inside his mouth.
I'm happy that both of the largest fish landed that day were caught by the guy that busted his rods before he made it to the water. Our adventure contiued until we finally got to a dark tunnel that we thought was just long. We donned headlamps only to find it was a dead end and the water went under ground.
In hindsight we were lucky the tide was coming in and actually flowing against us through that last tunnel. If the tide was going out and combined with the natural flow of the creek there might have been enough suction to pull a kayak down the drain under the road.
I would guess we covered a mile or so of creek/swamp and we will be back again for another metro fishing trip in the future. As urban as this area is it can't really be fished from shore and I doubt it see's any fishing pressure.
Labor day I decided to finally answer the questions in my mind that have been plaguing me for years. We were out by flashlight Sunday night scouting our location for the following day. In hindsight it wasn't the best idea to be walking up and down the shoulder of an off ramp of I95 in the dark but we had to make a final plan for fishing the following day.
We got our intel in the dark and we met up on the off ramp shoulder in the morning.
The night before we found a washout on the side of the road that provided us a route from the off ramp to a near by creek along the road. With my kayak over my shoulder with my gear stuffed inside I hopped over the guard rail and shuffled down the washout.
Once at the bottom of the hill we were greeted with a break in the reeds and a make shift trail. Unfortunately one in our group has not made the transition to a minimalist kayak and two piece rods. I was helping him carry his kayak through this section and two of his rod tips got snagged in these reeds since the trail was skinnier then his yak. His rods snapped off at the third guide from the tip. Luckily my other buddy had a pack rod stashed under his seat for the unfortunate soul to use. Our tally is now up to 5 broken rods between the three of us in the past two months.
Once we finally got in the water we were greeted with a marshy creek. There was a lot of seaweed there and lily pad fields but there was still paddleable water upstream for about 1/2 a mile. Due to all the plant growth this creek water has been filtered and it was remarkably clear considering it was only two days after a significant rain.
I know pictures don't due justice to what you can see with your eye with polarized glasses but this clam shell is 3-4 foot underwater.
As we paddled upstream we had our reservations about catching fish here as the current was pretty swift from the rain that ended a two days prior. We paddled up stream as far as we could fishing along the way and we only had one strike. This is about as far south as we got. We will be back in the spring once the weed growth has died and there will probably be close to 75 acres of water to fish that we couldn't get to due to it being choked out with weeds currently.
We paddled back and we were about to call it a day at this place and mark it off of the list and move on. We decided since we were here to do a little exploring in the North bound direction and see how far we could go. This required us to go through several culverts under roads and entrance/exit raamps. Some of these were pretty significant as the roads were 6 lanes wide. The decision to explore actually paid off for us pretty well.
We started getting excited as we started spotting bass in the clear water in the sections between the roads. Once we started fishing these sections we finally started catching fish. None of them were huge but we went from nothing to one of us pulling in a fish every 10 minutes or so.
The biggest bass of the day only hit the scales at 3#.
The biggest fish of the day was a carp that thought he was a bass and inhaled a Rattle Trap. This will only be the third time in my life we have picked up a carp on a lure. He wasn't snagged as he had the rear hook inside his mouth.
I'm happy that both of the largest fish landed that day were caught by the guy that busted his rods before he made it to the water. Our adventure contiued until we finally got to a dark tunnel that we thought was just long. We donned headlamps only to find it was a dead end and the water went under ground.
In hindsight we were lucky the tide was coming in and actually flowing against us through that last tunnel. If the tide was going out and combined with the natural flow of the creek there might have been enough suction to pull a kayak down the drain under the road.
I would guess we covered a mile or so of creek/swamp and we will be back again for another metro fishing trip in the future. As urban as this area is it can't really be fished from shore and I doubt it see's any fishing pressure.