jifigz wrote:
I found about 2 hours of time Monday morning to explore Kettle Creek a bit. I fished from 7-9 am and only caught one wild brown trout about 5 inches long. I walked the trail up on the right side (going upstream) in the park and began fishing towards the end of that trail by the maintenance building for Ole Bull State Park. In the very first pool I had two encounters with what looked like stocked rainbows. I could see them chase and what looked like try to attack my streamers but I didn't hook up either time. On the very next riffle and pocket right above there I landed a beautiful little wild brown. I thought I was going to be in for some good fishing considering how my first 10 minutes started out and then...nothing. I worked upstream quite a ways and every nice piece of pocket water that should have held a fish had nothing. I didn't even see any kinds of fish or spook anything. It was as if the stream was lifeless. I did get to observe a very nice buck that obviously did not know I was there. I also got to witness an osprey carry away a nice sized brown down near the park on my walk back.
I can't believe my lack of success here though. My overall impression of Kettle was very "meh." The riffles were all really, really shallow. The pools were wide, shallow, and kind of featureless, and when I found excellent pocket water and actual nice logjam pools with deep water and current and undercut features I found no fish. I'm sure it was just a bad day and this stream has to be famous for a reason but given how low and clear the water was I should have been able to see fish spook from places they should have been. Oh well, I'll go back in the future and explore more as an actual fishing trip.
