Cloud Creek, pt. 1

Sunday I made some good progress in my grading, so I made an evening run to a small stream on Detroit's exurban fringe that the state generously stocks with brown trout each year. As it doesn't need additional attention, I won't mention its common name. Its waters are possibly the murkiest of any trout stream I've ever seen, so I'll call it Cloud Creek.

You may have already suspected it isn't a hidden gem. At some point in its history, Cloud Creek was dredged, straightened, and lined with levees for "flood control" purposes. Accordingly, when it does flood, it becomes a raging trough, scouring the stream's margins of vegetation, and making them all the more susceptible to erosion when the next flood rolls through. Hence some of the cloudiness. More of it comes from new housing development in the area that pushes more dirt into its feeder streams. The creek is a pain in the ass to wade. When the surrounding land was farm country, all the farmers must have dumped stones from their fields into the stream. Wading there, you stumble across irregular, jumbled rocks, covered with slime. That is, when you're not crossing a muck bed that swallows you to your knees. Walking the banks is not much easier, as the dense undergrowth consists of pretty much everything with thorns.

But there are trout there. There are healthy hatches of caddis and mayflies, too, which indicate relatively clean water. Some of those thorny limbs on the bank are wild roses that bloom in June. I see wood ducks nesting in dead trees, as well as herons, deer, and muskrats. As few fishermen wander much past the bridge crossings, those creatures are just about the only company I have when I fish there.

Trout fishermen sometimes look down on stocked fish. I'll admit I'd rather fish for wild, naturally reared trout. Stocked fish, the conventional wisdom goes, are stupid fish that will fall for anything you throw in front of them. There's some truth to that, although stockers that make it through their first year in the stream will be as canny as any native.

I keep coming back to Cloud Creek partly because its cookie-cutter, 8-inch, soft bodied stockers don't seem to play by the rules. There are times when they are easy to catch, but other times when they should be but aren't. Last night was an instance of the latter. I'll tell the story tomorrow when I'm finished with grading, but in the meantime, I'll give you the moral, which may be of use if you're heading out to a stream today: fishing isn't a battle of wits with individual creatures; it's an attempt to comprehend a kind of collective wisdom. So proceed accordingly. Let your senses take in as much detail as they can stand; store and sort the perceptions you accumulate on the water and the conclusions they permit. Scrutinize and revise these conclusions with each outing. Plenty of times, you won't need to look far into this reserve of knowledge. But the day will come when you'll be glad you can.