Small Streams and Big Fish

Yesterdays post on sneaking into the steel mill brought to mind another story about my brother. He has always been an angler and his specialty is finding fish where no one else would dare to fish mostly because no one would ever believe that fish would be in some places. One such place was inside the gates of the steel mill.


There was a brook that ran through the mill property. It was a shallow brook, but there was one spot that had been dug out to be a little deeper and wider. They used the dredge spoils to back-fill around a large culvert pipe that they put in slightly up stream. The culvert supported a rail track.

When my brother discovered this dredged out area, the banks had been overgrown and the only access to fish this hole was from sitting atop the culvert pipe. The hole was maybe fifteen feet wide and thirty feet long and maybe six feet deep. The water was muddy and murky.

I remember the first time he took me there; I thought “What the hell is this?” We baited our hooks and I expected nothing, but within minutes the line was pealing from my reel. I worked and worked for nearly a half hour trying to reel the leviathan in. Finally I landed the largest carp I had ever seen. It must have been close to twenty pounds. This little hole was loaded with large carp.

We usually caught and released the fish, however we always brought some home when my father started his tomato garden every year. We would bury a carp under each plant and those tomato plants grew larger and greener than any other plants in town.

After fishing with my brother I look at every pool of water differently. I’ve seen small springs that widen to a small pool where I’ve caught legal size trout. There are so many fishing spots that are overlooked because they are small, but that is where one can find true adventure.