Today's OED antedating: "up the creek"

Up the creek, figurative, colloquial, in trouble ("creek," n.1, sec 2 (c) (a), first use cited 1941): Book titled The Set-Up, by Joseph Moncure March, 1928, ch iv, p 69: "When he started to mix wid dat Mick,/I says to myself/He’s up th' creek!"