halcyon

Halcyon is a small stream, a short cast across mostly, a long cast across at it's widest. About three quarters of a mile before it hits the main river it hooks sharply and runs alongside the river separated by about a hundred and fifty to two hundred yards before hooking again and joining the river. I think halcyon used to run straight into the river instead of hooking into a lengthy detour because if you continue straight from the hook to the river the ground is a low swampy mucky mess creating what is essentially a large island surrounded by river, small stream, and swamp. Here on the island gigantic sycamores approaching record size grow. I almost always encounter deer or wild turkey, and at one time or another I've seen everything from eagles, raccoons, coyotes and foxes to box turtles and skinks. In late spring and early summer huge stick nests high in the giant trees echo with the cries of a great blue heron rookery. These huge pterodactyl looking birds gliding in out of the treetops always give the island a "land that time forgot" feel to me. Like all quiet places it's very noisy because you actually register in your brain the sounds you hear instead of not even hearing them like you do in the rest of your life.
As you kayak down the river a large rock marks the landing. Cylinder shaped and waist high I've given it the unglorious label of the "garbage can". But beaching the yak on the tiny gravel bar in front of the garbage can always feels like coming home. I will pull the yak up the bank and back out of sight into the paw paw and spicebush. I then shoulder the pack and strike out across the island to camp. Straight across the island from the garbage can is a beautiful little clearing carpeted in grasses, moss, and ferns atop a high bank overlooking the creek. Sitting on a fallen log in camp you can look down a hundred yards of creek. Rare is the breakfast eaten here that isn't accompanied by wildlife watching. Shoved under the fallen log is a grate I salvaged from an old grill at home and a folded up tarp. The grate is propped up on some rocks carried up from the creek. Dug out of the pack and on another large flat rock is placed a small backpacker style stove, a pot, a tin cup, a bowl and a spork. The kitchen is now complete.
A rope is strung from the base of a small tree to as high up another tree as I can reach. The tarp is thrown across this and is stretched tightly in a diamond shape. Two corners stretched along the rope with prusik knots and the other corners tied out to stakes. Under the tarp goes a ground cloth and a sleeping bag. The pack is then hung from a cut off limb on another tree and camp is complete. I then usually spend a few minutes gathering firewood so I wont have to waste those precious minutes right before dark that are better spent fishing.
If it is still early in the day this is the time I'll usually shoulder the day pack holding tackle, water bottle and snacks and start hiking up Halcyon. I will cross the stream at the first riffle and follow the stream along the other bank to avoid the swampy ground mentioned earlier. Once the stream leaves the flat river bottom I veer away fifty or sixty yards till I hit the remains of an old roadbed melting back into the woods. All that is left now is a flat bench carved into the hillside above the creek. After about a ten or fifteen minute walk the old road angles down the hillside to cross the stream at the site of a long forgotten mill dam. Once you hike more than a half mile from the river I've never caught a smallmouth longer than around a foot longer. Except for here that is. Sometime in the distant past what I think might be the remains of the old mill were pushed into the stream and right up against the dam. I guess this was done to keep the dam from being undercut over time and washed out. This creates smallie habitat like no other. Well, no I take that back. On the Great Miami there used to be a small dam that had the exact same conditions. This was unfortunately bulldozed level by some government agency three or four years ago so I know it can exist in other places. In fact when researching my book on the Little Miami River I learned there was at one time or another fifty mills on the mainstem of the river and another three hundred on the tribs! All that on one fair to middling sized river system, so my secret smallmouth habitat surely exists elsewhere. But here, here is special. It would be probably waist deep if all the rubble wasn't here. But instead six or ten inches under the water in most places lies the rubble, big chunks of broken concrete. And then between the chunks are huge cracks ranging from a few inches to maybe a foot across but seem reach all the way to the actual stream bed. So hiding down in the cracks are smallmouth growing big and fat on abundant food rushing over them while they lay there out of the current hidden. I sometimes catch some so conditioned to their specific hide that they are almost completely black in color while a fish ten feet away will be normally colored. The drill is you climb on top of the rubble, wading slower than you have ever waded in your life so you don't step in one of those leg breaking cracks. Instead of the normal eight pound test you would use on a creek this size you put on the extra spool that is filled with twelve pound line and you lower a grub into each crack. The strikes are sudden and with just a couple feet of line out past the rod tip violent. It's like no fishing I've ever seen and turns everything I've always known about small stream fishing on it's head.