Are you sick of hearing about Lake Monroe wipers?

All of our readers (seriously, both of them) are tired of the same old wiper fishing stories.  They've requested more content devoted to craft beer and recipes.  So, taking those critiques under consideration, I'd like to tell you about the wiper that I caught this morning.

It was almost chilly here, in the low 50s before the sun really crested the horizon.  Being a Monday, most fisherman were behaving themselves and going to work, but I decided to stop at the spillway for a few minutes before heading in myself.

I got the "good" spot between the stairs and the spillway itself, which has access to the rushing water and a relatively calmer but deep pool beside it.  I started by casting around my Goture swimbait, but for once, nothing was chasing it.  With my free time running short, I rummaged through my tackle box trying to figure out what to tie on next.  I almost went for a blade bait, which I actually found at the spillway a few weeks ago, but decided to go with my 3/4-oz bucktail jig instead. 

In a half-dozen casts or less, I hooked into a monster.

I could tell right away that this water donkey was a big one.  It was pulling drag like a mofo (as the kids say), and every time that I reeled it in a bit, it would make another run for the current.  This tug of war went on for a few minutes until I finally got the wiper to the surface.  It was hard to tell how big it was while it was still in the water, but when I got him toward shore, I immediately dropped my net.  There was no way this thing was fitting in my admittedly too-small landing net.  Instead, I hooked him by the gills and hauled him out of the water:

I don't have a fish scale (yet), but this was undoubtedly the biggest wiper I've ever caught.  It had to have weighed more than my 8.25 lb personal best, and it was easily longer than 24 inches.  I briefly considered keeping it just to weigh it at home, but work beckoned, and fish wasn't on the dinner menu this week.  I tossed the behemoth back into the water, halfheartedly cast my bucktail a few more times, and then packed up.

So there you have it, another wiper tale from the crypt.  Don't forget to leave comments below, and follow us on Twitter (@WaterDonkeyAdv1) and Instagram (@H2ODonkeyAdventures)!

The Clear Creek rockbass honey hole

After several bouts of my recent surly attitude boiling over, my wife suggested that I take some time to myself Saturday morning to relax and stop acting like a douche.  That sounded like sage advice, so I hopped in my SUV early and headed to the Cedar Bluffs Nature Preserve for a short hike to the southern portion of Clear Creek.

I had recently taken my two older kids to this trail, though they ruined my afternoon by whining about how they wanted to go to the Cedars Preserve instead.  How was I supposed to know that two different hiking trails existed in nearly the same place with nearly the same name?  What, this one doesn't have a waterfall, so now you hate your life?  How would you and your crap attitude like to walk home?

Anyway, I thought it was great.  The first half of the trail runs right along Clear Creek, and I could see fish swimming everywhere.  What more could you want!?!

Now, I don't have anything against catch-and-release fishing.  I think it's great for certain fisheries and certain species.  I generally practice it myself.  That said, I've been enjoying all of my fish meals from the water donkey wipers that I've been catching, so it's a good thing I researched Clear Creek before fishing there.  It turns out that a few decades ago, a Bloomington Westinghouse plant dumped a ton of PCBs into the creek, essentially making all of the lifeforms that live there poisonous.  You can catch the fish, but you really shouldn't eat them...

You know what though?  That took the pressure off.  I could fish and just have fun instead of trying to catch a meal.

I started out by tossing around a worm and bobber, and almost instantly, I started getting bites.  This little guy is the first thing I reeled in:

He's not a water donkey by any stretch of the imagination, but a fish is a fish!  I decided to see if anything else was lurking in his neighborhood and ended up landing the biggest fish of the day next:

A nice little chunky bass.  He hit hard and was fun to catch on an ultralight rod.

At this point, I made a mistake (first time for everything, right?).  Instead of continuing to fish where I was getting bites, I decided to head downstream to fish a dead fall in the water:

The water was super-shallow, and although I saw a few small sunfish, I couldn't hook up with anything other than sticks and weeds.  At that point, I decided to cut my losses and move further downstream.  I followed the trail a short way to another spot where a dead fall had caught a bunch of brush and detritus.  There was slack water, a bit of current nearby, a bunch of large rocks, and what looked like some deeper water further out in the creek.  In other words, it looked fishy.

I tied on a white spinner bait that I got from Walmart and caught what turned out to be the first of many rockbass:

You've gotta love their huge red eyes and the way they fight like they're pissed off rugby players. 

Anyway, my spinner got stuck on something, and one of the hooks on the treble snapped off (thanks for the garbage lure Wally World).  So, I decided to go back to the worm and bobber.  Now, I saw lots of other fish, but every one that I hooked up with was a rambunctious rockbass:

Some were little guys; some were on the bigger side.  None were monsters, but they were all fun to catch.  By this point though, it was just about 9 AM, and my domestic duties were calling.  I packed up my tackle, hiked back to my vehicle, and headed to the grocery store.  You better believe I'll go back to the rockbass honey hole to catch another mess of goggle eyes though!

Early morning wiper fun

My children hate me.  They stay up late even if I put them to bed early.  They wake up screaming in the middle of the night.  They climb into my bed if there's a moth haunting their room.  In other words, sleep is hard to come by some nights, and last night was particularly cruel. 

After a night like that, I wake up a little...shall we say...surly.  And I'm not talking Surly but more like surly.

Anyway, as I showered away some of my insomniastic rage, I decided to go fishing instead of heading straight to work.  With everyone else in the house slumbering at 6:15 AM, I headed for the spillway to wet a hook.  I found a decent spot near the current and started casting my Zoom Super Fluke but got hung up in the rocks.  As you can imagine, this didn't improve my mood at all.

I searched high and low through my tackle, but I didn't find anything vaguely similar to use.  What I did run across though was an Offshore Angler striper jig (basically, a white bucktail with a pink jig head) from back in my NJ days.

I didn't know how well this 1 oz piece of lead would work in fresh water, but there was only one way to find out.  After a couple of casts to get the feel of it, I tossed the jig into the current and hooked up with a big ol' water donkey!  He was a fighter too.  I would reel him in a few yards just to have him peel line back off, screaming drag as he went.  The tug of war went on for a while, but eventually, I landed the lunker with my trusty net.

I don't know how big he was (I need to get a fish scale one of these days), but he was too long to fully fit in the selfie.

At this point, my day had turned around.  I let the wiper go, dried my hands, and packed up my gear.  I even made it to work by 7 AM.  Not a bad way to start the day after all.

Early evening wiper fun

A while back, I was catching wipers on live shad, and I wondered if they would go for a live bluegill instead.  Well, I recently got my answer. 

After a hard day of parenting and husbanding, I decided to take an hour or so of time in the evening to go fishing.  I headed back to the Lake Monroe spillway and found quite a few people enjoying some late day outside time.  The water was high and rushing out of the spillway again due to some recent rain, and the only decent fishing spot that was open was quite near the spillway and hard current.  Honestly, it wasn't a bad spot, and I'll take what I can get.

I started working my Zoom Super Fluke/jig head combo and was rewarded with a strike after a few casts.  The fish was using the current to his advantage though, so I ended up fighting a wiper and a force of nature.  I managed to work the beast back toward my spot on the bank, but he spit the hook before I could even see him.  My lure was mangled from the fight, but I rehooked it and went back to fishing.

Things slowed down for a bit, but I was able to soak in some of the scenery.  The white water was nice, and occasionally, a fish would jump.  At one point, I saw what looked like an Asian carp, which is bad news because they're invasive and known to ruin fisheries.  I'm old and half-blind though, so what do I know?  I also got to see a wiper chasing a good-sized panfish (probably a bluegill), so that answers my question.  Now, I just need to catch some bluegill for bait one of these days...

Anyway, fishing picked back up, and I managed to hook into another water donkey.  It felt like a monster, but most of that was the water current.  When I finally managed to land him, it was just a skinny little guy (compared to my previous wipers):

You can see some of the white water I was dealing with in this picture:

A skinny fish is better than no fish at all though, so I'm not complaining.  I released this one back to go get fattened up and started fishing again.  Eventually, I hooked into another behemoth from the deep and reeled it all the way to my feet, but my line snapped before I could net it.  One of these days, I'm going to learn to re-tie my terminal tackle after a hard fight...

At this point, I was losing the light and didn't have a head lamp.  While others continued to work the water, I called it a day and drove home.  I didn't have any fish in the cooler this time, but I still had fun.