Orlan Love, outdoor writer for Cedar Rapids-area paper The Gazette battles a big smallie on the Maquoketa River. Photo by Mark Tade.

The fish was magnificent, at least 19 inches long, husky and healthy. Near where Indian Creek flows into the Cedar River downstream from Cedar Rapids, I watched her cruise slowly around an old brush-tangled bridge abutment.

My office is only a five-minute walk from the fish, and for several weeks I tried to outsmart that smallmouth during lunch breaks and whenever else I could find a few minutes to fish. I wasn't alone: Several other anglers tested their skill on the big bass. As far as I know, no one ever caught her, and she's out there yet.

That a lunker smallmouth lives so close to Iowa's second-largest city is living proof of one of Iowa's outstanding but little-known fish success stories.

A few decades ago smallmouth were rare throughout Iowa and almost nonexistent below Cedar Rapids. Creatures of relatively clear water, smallies love a hard bottom. They'll rarely be far from rock or gravel. Years ago Iowa rivers were murky from agricultural and urban runoff and discharges from sewer plants and industries. Our rivers received constant inputs of nutrient and sediment that flowed downstream to settle on the rocky bottom that smallies love. Although most Iowa rivers always had remnant smallmouth populations the fish were few and far between. Our rivers produced quality fishing for catfish and carp and not much else.

That began changing several decades ago, and the Cedar River provides a good example of what happened in many of Iowa's streams. In the early 1980s, Cedar Rapids opened a new sewer plant to replace an aging, ineffective one. Industries that once dumped a toxic stew of chemicals and nutrients into the river invested millions in pollution control. Today, it's common for factories to discharge cleaner water back into the river than they draw from it. Good news didn't all come from cities. Agricultural run-off declined as no-till farming and Conservation Reserve Program enrollment became widespread on farms. A further factor on the Mississippi River was the establishment of exotic zebra mussels. Millions of these Caspian Sea natives now filter particles from Iowa water. Although Iowa's river water quality is still far from pristine, it has improved, and smallmouth bass responded with gusto. Iowa Department of Natural Resources fisheries management has helped improve walleye and trout fishing, but smallies did it on their own. Most of the comeback can be pegged to better water quality but a 12-inch minimum size for smallmouth bass helped the comeback.

The improving fishery is so new that relatively few Iowa anglers know about it or target that "other bass," the smallmouth. I didn't realize how much fun smallies are to catch until I tangled with my first one on the Cedar River. I'd been successfully fishing for largemouths for over 40 years in many states and had landed thousands of them.