Northwoods Treasure
Bigelow Creek is a humble spring creek. It winds through the towering white pines and angular oaks of southern Newaygo County, starting south of White Cloud where the water quite literally gushes out of the hillside in a number of locations. Even in the coldest days of winter, these areas are typically free of snow and full of bright green water cress.
The sandy brook flows gently for a while, with old logs, most of them cedar, forming the riffles and pools of the sandy stream. Suddenly the little brook flows into Twinwood Lake, a 41 acre pond that is more than 20 feet deep and holds perch and pike. The lake is so full of springs that those who like to ice fish steer clear except for during the coldest of winters.
When Bigelow Creek leaves Twinwood Lake, it’s nearly twice as large as when it entered. That stretch, pictured here, winds back and forth through the black willows and alders in a shallow valley rimmed with mammoth white pines. The day we were there, we saw otter slides from the uplands down to the riverside.
The little stream is allegedly home to some large brown trout and gets an April run of spawning steelhead from Lake Michigan via the Muskegon River. Apparently the steelhead are quite the attraction for poachers, as a friend found out when he camped on a hillside overlooking the stream the weekend before the trout opener. In the early dawn hours, a conservation officer quietly visited his camp and asked to see his fishing gear. He told the CO he had none and was just out backpacking, and the CO explained that the area had a history of illegal steelhead takings in the spring.
One humid June morning, I visited the bridge where the North Country Trail crosses the creek and watched the cedar waxwings as they picked off the few remaining Hexagenia that had hatched the night before.
That experience got me to thinking that some nighttime fishing from a canoe on Twinwood Lake between the inlet and outlet of the stream might not be a bad idea.
As I walked the banks of the river that cold January morning, my mind wandered to the warmer seasons when small, Class 1 streams like the Bigelow are open and can be quietly and carefully fished.