When I was first dipping my toes in this whole fishing thing, the place I went to learn was the Neshaminy Creek. A 40 mile long creek running entirely throughout some imaginary lines on a map called Bucks County, a section lay less than 5 minutes down the street from my house. When I was done with school, my mother would drop me off and I would spend hours running around, netting minnows and crawfish and catching stocked trout and scrappy smallmouth. It was at the Neshaminy where I caught my first smallmouth, first brown trout, first trout on the fly, and countless other memories. However, it is also my Sissicu, my U.S. Grant Creek. And while it still has life, it has turned it into a husk of it's former self, a watery shell that once played host to countless moments on the water but has been discarded since by industrialization.
The Neshaminy flows past several different smaller industrial plants and construction sites, which served as sources of it's undoing. High amounts of PCB's, heavy metals, and other hazardous chemicals began to find their way into the water. In 2022, the PA Fish and Boat Commission made the decision to stop stocking the Neshaminy, issuing warnings against eating fish from the watershed that the Indians once called, "The Place Where We Drink Twice."
I hadn't realized to the fullest what had happened to the Neshaminy until I fished it on a July afternoon with some time to kill. It had been over a year since I had last stepped foot in the creek. What I came to see was almost unrecognizable from it's former self. The schools of killifish that I used to always net and drift as bait for smallmouth and trout were extremely thinned out. Almost no weeds existed in the places were huge hydrilla pads and milfoil once existed, providing cover to many a rockbass or smalljaw. There were no sunfish cruising the shallows. No suckers or chubs.
I spent about half an hour casting ned rigs, small swimbaits, jitterbugs, desperately hoping for a tug that never came. A tug that would have served as a symbol of survival, a will to live and consume against all odds. I keep moving upstream.
Some mayflies are buzzing around dimpling the surface and creating their own little whirlpools within their own little ocean. Nothing is rising to them. A splash off in the distance creates a fleeting hope that leaves with the wood duck that momentarily touched down in the creek. Still, her presence as well as that of a snapping turtle provide some creature comfort. Life finds a way. The creek will heal.
Desperate for a sign of ichthyological life, I tied on a trout magnet and a float, drifting it down the deepest hole I could find. It gets dropped by a native redbreast sunfish in a few drifts.
It wasn't anything completely fire, certainly nothing like how it used to be, but I soon was able to catch a few redbreast, green sunfish, and rock bass drifting a magnet. Rock bass were an especially welcome sight because of how sensitive they are to sudden changes in water quality. I admire that about them. Rock bass know what they like and how they like it, traits I greatly respect in people. They don't take crap from anyone. They weren't big fish, but each little tug on the line was a message reading, I'm still here.
At this point, I hadn't seen a single smalljaw. I decided to throw a Hail Mary and tie on a topwater popper. I pushed further and further upstream, ringing the doorbell at each and every hole with the short pushes of water emitting from my plug. Soon, someone answers. My popper disappears with a toilet-flush of a blow up. I give a snakehead level hookset and my rod bows up. The fish explodes in a zip of drag, fighting all the way in with that signature smallmouth spunk. It's a big fish too, tapering in just at 19 inches.
Unfortunately, she was very thin and malnourished. I always feel bad when I catch fish like that. I love catching smallmouth, but I didn't feel the same amount of joy landing one of my biggest of the year usually would have produced. Some of the biggest smallmouth I've ever laid eyes on were in the hole that I pulled this fish from. Now, it almost feels like they're a dying breed. I hope I'm wrong. I pray I'm wrong.
The Neshaminy isn't the Bushkill. It isn't the Yellowstone. It isn't the Columbia. It doesn't draw angler tourism. However, my guess is that there's thousands of little streams, lakes, and rivers around the world in the same predicament. This story goes out to them all.
Cheers, fishy people.
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