Inside Angles: Digressions on Small-Stream Catfish and Boatless Fishing

The stream sections I remember, having walked them, and fished them for decades, stretch beyond reality into imagination. Sometimes, thinking about where channel catfish hold so predictably in these waters, I dream of trips to rivers in parts of the country I may never visit.

One recurring curiosity has been about fishing the Little Missouri River in western North Dakota, this because I have long been interested in the history of the Plains Indians—so I wonder about them fishing the river as they camped in those years when they freely roamed the area.

There’s little record that I can find of such fishing, but I get there by leap of fact and faith: We are told about General Crook and Lieutenant Colonel Custer as they pursued the Lakota and other allied Indian factions in the period before and, in Crook’s case, after Custer’s demise at the Little Horn River in late June 1876.

By the time of Custer’s defeat, Crook and his command in pursuit of the Indians from the south, up into Montana, had already been kicked in the pants and pushed back into camp in Wyoming on the Goose creeks, at the base of the Big Horn Mountains, at a point where Sheridan sets today. The men fished the creeks by various means, including hook and line—but more often probably the way the Indians fished, by herding fish with their horses, into the shallows where “fishermen” waited. Thousands of fish were caught during the weeks Crook was in camp.

I suspect the fish were cutthroat trout. The Little Horn (perhaps more commonly known as the Little Big Horn), which runs into the Big Horn, which runs into the lower Yellowstone, has channel catfish as well as trout. Custer’s men didn’t fish but surely the Indians sometimes did—so it’s no stretch to imagine them fishing the Little Missouri, which also was part of their domain.

The Little Missouri by late summer is so shallow that it’s difficult to float by canoe. That’s true of many small streams in North America in a typical July and August. I know something of the Little Missouri at a distance from photos of it set in the surrounding terrain, so it’s easy to imagine the riffles, the holes, the runs where the fish would hold.

I could catch a mess of catfish for an evening meal on overnight encampment on a bank of that river. I know because I’ve not been anywhere in North America where small-stream fishing isn’t the same type of small-stream fishing that I grew up with in Iowa in the 1950s and ‘60s.

The small river I fish most often now in Minnesota is so secluded in some sections that it wouldn’t surprise me if a pterodactyl flew overhead. The catfish hold in the same places the catfish did when I last fished a small section of the upper Des Moines River in Iowa before my old buddy Toad Smith died. And those fish held in the same places the fish did in my boyhood streams, Otter Creek, the Little Rock River, the Big Rock River, and the Big Sioux far upriver just south of Sioux Falls. The salient point is that small rivers course through North America so that almost all of you are within easy driving distance of this fishing—or some sort of small stream or river fishing, whether for smallmouths, trout, carp, or suckers.

The fishing is laid back to the max. That day on the Des Moines, now many decades removed, Toad’s using 10-pound line on a spinning reel on a 6-foot medium-light rod to flip a grasshopper and a classic red-and-white round bobber into likely spots. The hook’s an Aberdeen, a #4 for big hoppers, held down by a lead shot 6 inches above the bait, which is riding about 1.5 feet below the bobber. I’m using an ancient 9-foot fiberglass fly rod with an old fly reel, the same terminal rigging minus the float.

There isn’t room on most small streams for two anglers to fish the same areas at the same time, so one tactic was for Toad to use his float rigging to make a couple quick drifts through an area to extract the willing and waiting biters, then for me to follow with a more precise dippy-dabble presentation of a grasshopper into nooks and crannies where less-aggressive fish might hold.

Or something like that. Sometimes we just hopscotch each other as we walked upstream, bypassing marginal habitat in favor of the best-looking riffle-hole-runs. We’re wading wet, in old tennis shoes and jeans, hats and sunglasses, me with a backpack on with cold drinks and Spam sandwiches with red onion and sweet pickles. Toad’s carrying a fish basket to keep a mess of eater cats.

Talk about fun, in more recent times about once a year when conditions are right, I have several old Shakespeare Ugly Stik Crappie Poles. They’re extendable to 10 or 12 feet. Not much backbone in these sticks, but that works. No reel. I use an 8-foot section of 12-pound line from the end of the pole. Hand-to-hand combat. Little box of hooks in one pocket, a bag of lead shot and maybe some cutbait in a plastic bag in my back pocket, in case I can’t find grasshoppers along the stream bank. Dipbaits or punchbaits work well this time of year, too.

And here we are, no real surprise, walking and fishing small streams, because my mind wandered from my intent to address the many letters and emails that I’ve received over the years, with anglers complaining about not having the means to buy a boat. I was intending to say that having a boat to fish out of is fun. And it surely increases the available fishing options.

But a boat isn’t necessarily the key to fishing success, much less to enjoyment and fulfillment. There are plenty of fishing options out there for shore anglers—knowledge is the key to fishing success—knowing where to be when and understanding the target fish species to make the right presentation choices when you get there. And, noteworthy, these days there are many more small-boat options like kayaks that make owning at least a small craft more affordable.

Most of the time these days, unless we’re shooting TV or looking for specific fish for a magazine photo, I just want to get out fishing, get away from it all for a while, so much the better if the location is secluded, catch some fish, and probably keep a couple for the table. Just about everything swimming can be caught from shore and lots of them. You just have to time it right, play the game with appropriate finesse, and be willing to go to where the action is. It isn’t always easy, but it’s almost always fun.

Unless you slip down a riverbank and roll through a bed of stinging nettles. Or rip out the crotch of your waders bending to net a big walleye in icy water. Or get treed by a overly protective momma cow that then proceeds to stand on your fishing rod. Or step on ground-nesting hornets as you walk through a stand of trees to get to a favorite stream section. Or roll your waders down and assume the position in the bushes, realizing that you’re loading the back lip of your waders. Been there and done that. And then some.

The agony of such defeat was captured in Peanuts cartoon strips in which Charlie Brown, after striking out yet again or giving up yet another home run, would be consoled by Lucy. “You win some, you lose some,” she’d say. “That would be wonderful,” he’d sigh.

From shore, boat, or both, fishing’s bound to be fun, unless you try real hard to make it otherwise.

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