Ah yes, flowers, rhubarb, mushrooms, gas prices UP, Coralville streep sweeper creating more dust than good....SPRING!! A sure sign of Spring when I was a kid here in Coralville was 'messing' around down at the Iowa River.. Yep, same spot as you see today. The old 'catwalk' was cool. Kind of shaky, but nobody seemed to notice. The catwalk today is new, sleek, strong, and serves as a nice trail link with Iowa City.. Before this new one, the old one served as a great fishing platform. On a Saturday morning in Spring, Summer, there would be AT LEAST 10-15 guys lined up along the catwalk, fishing. They all had their tackle boxes, minnow buckets, poles, etc. They would lean forward on their elbows on the steel rail, and 'watch' their line! ALL SUMMER LONG.. When you walked across the catwalk to the east end, you had to be careful not to trip over their gear, or touch their pole. YES they caught fish. The fish of choice was the channel cat, with great hopes of landing a big flathead. IT happened all the time. Now, at the east end you could make your way down to the river. The water swerved around to the east and created a real shallow, ripply, water flow. You just walked out into the water with your boots on, or most usually just your tennis shoes and got wet, (who cared) and walked out to the "Island'. The Island was south of the catwalk, (down river) about 30 yds. LOTS of kids (mainly) would wade out there, cast our bait up TO the water coming over the dam, and let our bait sink, HOPING to get a big cat or flathead. The island was all rocks. We would turn over rocks and grab little shellfish for bait. We did this ALL the time. We caught lots of carp, cat, flatheads, maybe a striped bass once in a while, AND some walleyes! Caution.. On the back side of the Island (which was about 50' by 100', was a deep hole. It was deep!..More on the Iowa River soon!