A trip to Crooked Creek ~ August 12, 1993

David Heiller

My son Noah and I took on Crooked Creek last Saturday, and a trout fisherman might say we came out the worse for it. I would disagree.

We parked the car on a bridge off the main road. The bridge is a slab of concrete 30 feet long, with no sides. You wouldn’t want to drive off it. But it doesn’t wash away in the spring.

We had no idea how to fish Crooked Creek. This would be no Hollywood scene of a man in a vest and hat, bull-whipping 50 feet of line over his head. We were armed with three night crawlers and one worm from my mom’s compost pile, and two old rods and reels that we had scrounged from her basement.

We snuck up to a big cottonwood tree and dropped our lines in. The creek formed a pool around its roots, maybe six feet deep. We didn’t get a bite. The creek looked mighty inviting as it sliced through the trees toward us, cool and clean and wholesome on a hot August afternoon. So we walked down the road about half a mile, until a path cut through the grass toward the creek.

We followed it until we came to Crooked Creek. It was only 20 feet wide, and didn’t look like it could hold any trout. But you never know when you go fishing. That’s one reason it’s so fun.

I put the can of worms and tackle box in a mesh bag, and tied it to my belt. Then I walked to the center of the creek in my tennis shoes and shorts. The water came up to my knees. It was like turning on an air conditioner in a hot car. You couldn’t imagine a more perfect feeling.

I cast my worm downstream about 15 feet. That’s how far the line would reach. But it was far enough. On the first cast, I pulled in a 10-inch brown trout. That’s not big in anybody’s eyes except a 10-year-old’s and his father’s. It came in fighting awkwardly, because it had over-run the worm and hooked itself in the belly. It must have been pretty hungry to do that, I told Noah, and that made us even more excited. We let it go.

Noah with his grandma and sister in Brownsville.

Noah followed me in. He kept his shoes on too, and his sweat pants. He walked by my side, casting downstream. Pretty soon he caught a six-inch rainbow. It swallowed the hook, so we thought maybe Grandma’s cat would eat it, and threw it in the mesh bag.

The first few of my casts ended up in branches overhead. At places the trees formed a wide canopy over the creek. Some debris clung to branches five feet above the water, marking the crest of the spring floods.

I wondered how trout fisherman could play out all that line without a big mess. But I soon got the hang of avoiding the branches. It just takes practice, I thought to myself.

Noah asked me if there were any snapping turtles in Crooked Creek, and I answered yes. I had seen some here the size of hubcaps in my youth. Noah froze in place. He has a vivid im­agination, and was seeing the worst. I moved on and reassured him that they wouldn’t approach a human. He moved a few steps. I caught another fish, and told him that they don’t like fast water anyway. He soon caught up with me.

Noah and his Dad: a special bond

We walked side by side, talking about where to cast, where the fish would be hiding. An old bridge had washed out in the midst of some rapids. That looked promising, we decided. We cast below it and each caught a couple.

It was fun, walking down the middle of Crooked Creek. We talked about a lot of things. The water seemed to draw us out and make us happy and excited. Every bend held a new view of the creek, a new possibility for five pound rainbows and 20 pound snapping turtles.

It was finally suppertime. You don’t want to be late when Grandma makes supper. We left the creek and trudged through tall weeds back to the road and the car. We drove past Crooked Creek cemetery. All my relatives there must have been envious. How many of them had trout fished with their kids, or with their parents, on a hot summer afternoon in Crooked Creek?

The past 90 minutes of fishing would be hard to beat, I thought. Not by fishing standards. We didn’t get any keepers, and we lost twice as many as we caught.

Some fisherman might say we came out the worse for it. A true fisherman would recognize that we caught something more valuable than fish.

The cat didn’t want Noah’s trout. It ended up in the compost pile, where it will help make worms for future trips to Crooked Creek.