Listen to the commentary
Real Audio | MP3 download
On the first Saturday of this month I floated a
stretch of Salt Fork River in Vermilion County, something I’ve been meaning to
do all summer. I went with my friend Rick Larimore, and our original plan was
to float separately, me in my kayak and him in his canoe. I was intent on
fishing, though, and Rick said he wasn’t, so he invited me to ride along in his
boat and let him do all the paddling. Fortunately, he also grabbed a fishing
rod at the last moment, “just in case.”
By August, the Salt Fork typically runs low and
clear, which favors anglers looking for smallmouth bass. The bigger fish become
concentrated in deep pools, and it’s easy to distinguish those pools from the
long, flat stretches, something that’s trickier when the water is murky early
in the season.
We came into the first deep pool by way of a
narrow, fast riffle only 20 minutes after getting on the water. I was fishing
with a weighted fly that I just let drift in front of the canoe. As it hit the
end of the riffle my line tightened and I set the hook. The fish I had on,
which I landed minutes later, was as big as any bass I’ve ever caught on a fly
rod.
If you’re an angler yourself (or you’re familiar
with the species) you know my friend needed no further prompting to put down
his paddle and pick up his fishing rod. I won’t bore you with the details, but
we caught more than a dozen bass between us that day. We fared better in some
stretches of river than we did in others, but we caught fish in just about
every spot that looked good.
I was especially glad to have a good day fishing
the Salt Fork. It has been some time since I did, and I had begun to wonder
whether rivers otters, which now thrive both there and in the Middle Fork, hadn’t greatly reduced the bass population.
River otters have done phenomenally well in the
state since the Illinois Department of Natural Resources reintroduced them in
the mid 1990s and I am glad for every opportunity to see them in the wild. I’ll
be even gladder now, knowing any lack of success I experience fishing can’t be
pinned on them.
Of course there’s more to paddling on a river than
just fishing.
The birding on this trip was remarkable. An osprey
cruised over us before we even came to a stop at the bridge where we put in. Kingfishers,
spotted sandpipers and great blue herons took off downstream to escape us as we
drifted toward them, sometimes seeming annoyed that we kept coming after them.
At one point a bald eagle circled overhead, just above the tops of the tallest
riverside trees, then landed looking down on us from an ancient cottonwood.
I write about my enjoyment of the natural world to
encourage other people to take advantage of the treasures we have access to in
central Illinois. In doing so, I think it’s also important to call attention to
why we have that access. The Salt Fork River—and rivers like it across the
country—were once treated by industry as sewers and rendered unfit for use by
wildlife or people. But during the course of my lifetime they’ve come back,
thanks in large part to the federal Clean Water Act that forced polluters to
take responsibility for their waste.
