Climb Out & Scream (Pt. 2)

 An unnatural waterway meets the Rock River in Colona, Illinois, just a short distance above it's confluence with the mighty Mississippi. That waterway winds eastward to the Illinois River near the just east of of Bureau Junction, population 282, and just north of Hennepin populations 741. The latter is the town that now gives the canal it's name. Formerly known as the Illinois and Mississippi canal, the Hennepin Canal and its pools and locks sit a relic of an era when boats were a vital part of commerce in inland America. It's history is a little different than some of it's nearby contemporaries, because it was in essence already obsolete by the time the first boat made transit through it in 1907. Despite some architectural significance, including being the first canal built with concrete and no stone facings, it never got the opportunity to fulfill its roll as fully intended. After more than half a century of desire for the canal, construction began in 1892, and while it was being built work was underway to make locks on the Illinois River suitable for larger vessels. With it's narrower lock chambers the Hennepin settled into life as passage for recreational vessels rather than as an artery of commerce. 

Tiskilwa, Illinois is the embodiment of small town middle America and sits near the eastern end of the canal, near Lock #10. The canal does a sort of zig-zag North of town. In 2023, the population was 728. At it's peak there weren't many more than a thousand residents, living centered around an iconic main drag in the village center. Prior to European settlement a Potawatomi village was on this site. White man filtered in and settled along the Galena Trail, a stagecoach route that takes it's name from a lead ore mineral that occurs in deposits scattered around the Driftless Region. Galena looks the part, lead grey in color and heavy, sometimes forming beautiful crystals often cubic in habit. In fact, I have specimens with galena and fluorite from Illinois in my personal collection. Lead ore in hydrothermal replacement deposits in the limestone and agriculture on the fertile flood plains drew people to Illinois and through the spot where Tiskilwa stands now. In History of Bureau County, Illinois, published in 1885, Henry C. Bradsby notes the town's official inception out of two settlements, Indiantown and Windsor, which were consolidated and took the current name in 1840: "Tiskihca. — Names of Indiantown and Windsor changed to Tiskilwa, law, February 3, 1840, 107; town incorporated". Today, there is no sense of sprawl, suburbia, or anything else of that sort in Tiskilwa, as is consuming the soul of small towns in other parts of the country. Old homes line the street grid, along with some small businesses and a museum along the town's Main Street. The railroad completed in the middle of the 19th century arcs through town, still active. Up away from the river courses the land is flat and dominated by farms. Miles upon miles of farms. Endless farms. Save for some narrow strips between fields, there are few trees breaking up the view. This was likely part of the more than half of Illinois that wasn't forested anyway, but it must look very different now. Close to town, Rocky Run and its tributaries have carved their way down into the plain. There, trees are still very much present, and evidently have long been, as Bradsby also notes: "About Tiskilwa and on the Illinois River there is considerable rich bottom lands, covered with fine heavy timber". Where trees have persisted, so have periodical cicadas. That's what brought me to Tiskilwa, a town that is not in any way on the map for fly anglers.

Lightning strikes the flat farmlands, east of Tiskilwa a ways.

To be fair, Tiskilwa just happened to be the spot that caught my attention first as Emily and I worked eastward through Illinois. I'd pinned sites all the way into the Chicago suburb of Joliet, but when once again I cracked the window a ways outside of Tiskilwa and heard that familiar buzz, that evil grin crept across my face. The bugs had brought me somewhere new yet again, somewhere I'd never have had reason to go otherwise, somewhere with history, ecology, and culture I'd not have learned otherwise. sometimes a bug isn't just a bug. 

As I walked along the Hennepin Canal under the blazing sun, it's water flowed very sluggishly but clear, with vegetation and aquatic life all over. It's remarkable how life takes hold. In one lock I observed some gar and channel catfish milling around, as well as a few bigmouth buffalo scraping algae from the canal walls. All of these fish seemed rather averse to my presence and completely disinterested in cicadas, so I didn't linger with them long. I was a bit more interested in seeing a natural water body anyway. 

My first look at the creek I'd spent time viewing through the magic of the internet and satellite imagery came after skirting around a deep slough in grass that wasn't much shorter than I. Unlike the area I'd fished in Missouri, this was a classic freestone river with runs, riffles and pools. It had gradient and chunky limestone. It looked delightfully inviting and delicious. But did it have cicada eating fish? I stayed low and slow, eyeing the greyish green stained water for signs of life- a shadow, a waving fin, a rise form. It didn't take long. From deeper, darker water emerged the hulking form of a grass carp. It sidled up into the shallows over light colored bottom, then rose to a cicada drifting by. Slowly and carefully, I made my approach. The fish held it's ground, unaware of my presence. I'd love to say it was difficult, and maybe if I'd not done this quite a few times in the prior days it would have been, but I splatted that bug down and the grasser came to it without hesitation. The fight was on. In a log filled bend pool, I battled a freshwater giant about three feet long with a graphite stick and a glorified hand line. Much like Missouri, Illinois took me by surprise with just astoundingly good and enjoyable fishing. 

I enjoy fishing just about anywhere, especially where other people aren't. I've plied the famous trout rivers in Montana, squeaked snook out of the mangroves in the Everglades, and swung up landlocked salmon in the north Maine Woods. I've battled surf on famous spots of the striper coast and waded up legendary limestone spring creeks. None of that was any better than the fishing I had in Illinois. I don't give a damn what anyone says, this was my jam. 

 

I wonder what it was like in the area where Tiskilwa stands today when what are now known as Northern Illinois brood and Great Southern Brood last emerged in tandem, in 1803. There were probably still a fair few bison working the land in Illinois then. The indigenous peoples were still the dominant cultural presence. Illinois wasn't even Illinois yet. There was no railroad, no canal. The flora would have been distinctly different from what I saw. Even the river's very course may have been displaced. There were certainly no grass carp there. How many cicadas were there? Many millions more? What fish were eating them? How did the indigenous people respond to the insects abrupt emergence?

Fly fishing is largely a silly, useless hobby until we take note of everything else going on around us while doing it. The longer I stay with it, the more clear that is to me. It would be almost wholly un-stimulating to me now were I not using it as an avenue through which to explore the sciences and history. I'd give up fishing for fishing's sake before I gave up the places it takes me both mentally and physically. Fishing doesn't matter to me as an individual anymore, not the way it did. Pursuing a bug and an invasive fish eating it took me to a tiny town in the middle of Illinois. It made me want to learn about that place and it's history. So much so that months later I was combing through a book published in 1885. I grazed information about malacologist named Charles Torrey Simpson who was supposedly born in Tiskilwa and published dozens of pieces of scientific literature, including "The pearly fresh-water mussels of the United States; their habits, enemies, and diseases, with suggestions for their protection" in the Bulletin of the US Fish Commission. I learned that to pay for the operations of the Hennepin Canal, ice blocks cut from it during the winter were sold. This reminded me of ice ponds here at home in New England, and how different our lives and the land are now from just a handful of generations ago. This is all far more interesting and important than catching a fish, in my humble opinion. That's just trivial. Not the fish- the fish is just as interesting and important -but catching it? Sometimes I do think about quitting that part. 

It sure is fun though. 

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