The Clear Creek rockbass honey hole

After several bouts of my recent surly attitude boiling over, my wife suggested that I take some time to myself Saturday morning to relax and stop acting like a douche.  That sounded like sage advice, so I hopped in my SUV early and headed to the Cedar Bluffs Nature Preserve for a short hike to the southern portion of Clear Creek.

I had recently taken my two older kids to this trail, though they ruined my afternoon by whining about how they wanted to go to the Cedars Preserve instead.  How was I supposed to know that two different hiking trails existed in nearly the same place with nearly the same name?  What, this one doesn't have a waterfall, so now you hate your life?  How would you and your crap attitude like to walk home?

Anyway, I thought it was great.  The first half of the trail runs right along Clear Creek, and I could see fish swimming everywhere.  What more could you want!?!

Now, I don't have anything against catch-and-release fishing.  I think it's great for certain fisheries and certain species.  I generally practice it myself.  That said, I've been enjoying all of my fish meals from the water donkey wipers that I've been catching, so it's a good thing I researched Clear Creek before fishing there.  It turns out that a few decades ago, a Bloomington Westinghouse plant dumped a ton of PCBs into the creek, essentially making all of the lifeforms that live there poisonous.  You can catch the fish, but you really shouldn't eat them...

You know what though?  That took the pressure off.  I could fish and just have fun instead of trying to catch a meal.

I started out by tossing around a worm and bobber, and almost instantly, I started getting bites.  This little guy is the first thing I reeled in:

He's not a water donkey by any stretch of the imagination, but a fish is a fish!  I decided to see if anything else was lurking in his neighborhood and ended up landing the biggest fish of the day next:

A nice little chunky bass.  He hit hard and was fun to catch on an ultralight rod.

At this point, I made a mistake (first time for everything, right?).  Instead of continuing to fish where I was getting bites, I decided to head downstream to fish a dead fall in the water:

The water was super-shallow, and although I saw a few small sunfish, I couldn't hook up with anything other than sticks and weeds.  At that point, I decided to cut my losses and move further downstream.  I followed the trail a short way to another spot where a dead fall had caught a bunch of brush and detritus.  There was slack water, a bit of current nearby, a bunch of large rocks, and what looked like some deeper water further out in the creek.  In other words, it looked fishy.

I tied on a white spinner bait that I got from Walmart and caught what turned out to be the first of many rockbass:

You've gotta love their huge red eyes and the way they fight like they're pissed off rugby players. 

Anyway, my spinner got stuck on something, and one of the hooks on the treble snapped off (thanks for the garbage lure Wally World).  So, I decided to go back to the worm and bobber.  Now, I saw lots of other fish, but every one that I hooked up with was a rambunctious rockbass:

Some were little guys; some were on the bigger side.  None were monsters, but they were all fun to catch.  By this point though, it was just about 9 AM, and my domestic duties were calling.  I packed up my tackle, hiked back to my vehicle, and headed to the grocery store.  You better believe I'll go back to the rockbass honey hole to catch another mess of goggle eyes though!