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!

Fishing for wipers with live bait

It's been 8 days since I've gone fishing - yard work and family obligations trump free time shenanigans - so I decided to hit the Lake Monroe tailwaters again this morning.  It's been hot (80+ degrees) lately, so I didn't know what that was going to do to the wiper bite.  There was only one way to find out...

I started out by casting around with my Zoom Super Fluke/jig head combo from last time.  On my third cast through the steadily drizzling rain, something hit my rig hard and started peeling line.  I had my drag set tight, but it wasn't stopping this water donkey.  The fish fought like a wiper, and sure enough, I could see that's what I was dealing with the first time it surfaced.  After a fun fight, I got the fish near shore and managed to get my net around half of it (I need a bigger net!), and it's a good thing I did.  My line snapped basically as soon as I netted the fish, and I surely would have lost it and my lure like I did with the walleye a few weeks ago if I didn't have a landing net.

This fish was my personal best wiper, weighing in at 8 lb 1 oz.  You wouldn't think that an extra pound worth of fish would make it fight so much harder, but I guess that's more than a 10% increase in size.  If you added that much muscle to me, I'd be on the Brute Squad too.

Anyway, as you can tell from the picture above, I ended up catching another 8-lb wiper.  That one took some work though.

I jigged around with my soft plastic for a while but I wasn't getting any bites.  Actually, I kept snagging some busted fishing line on the bottom of the creek, so it's probably no wonder that I was catching any fish.  After I got bored with that, I decided to dip into my tackle box and try some other lures.  I had a lipless rattling crankbait on top, so that's where I started.  I cast it through the current a few times and eventually felt something small take it.  I reeled in a foul-hooked gizzard shad:

I was just about to throw him back when my old man brain finally realized the obvious.  I've been catching wipers on shad imitations, so why not try to catch a wiper on an actual shad?  I quickly tied a 1/8 oz jig head onto my line, nose-hooked the shad, and tossed it into the spillway current.  Almost immediately, a huge silver shape hit it and left me with an empty hook.  That was fun to see, but it would have been more fun to catch that water donkey.

I tied my crankbait back onto my medium action rod and added a silvery spoon to my ultralight and went shad fishing.  I managed to hook two more (one on each lure) and then rigged up my jig head again.  After nose-hooking the first of these shad, history repeated itself: cast, water donkey attack, empty hook.  Now, I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but even I could tell that this a good way to feed wipers but a poor way to catch them.  So, I took a different approach with my last shad and hooked it through the back.

I cast my bait into the back corner of the spillway, and mid-retrieve, a big fish hit it!  Not only that, but it felt like I'd hooked it good too, which was necessary because this guy was right in the thick of the current.  I eventually fought it into slack water and managed to coax it toward shore while it zig-zagged back and forth to try to get rid of me.  I managed to land him though, and ended up with my second personal best of the day: 8 lb 4 oz!

I had my limit on the stringer but was having so much fun that I went about trying to catch another shad.  I snagged one on my spoon, transferred it to my jig head and hit the raging water again.  This time though, the shad either came off or was snatched off.  When I reeled my line back in, I noticed that my hook was bent, and I decided to call it a day.  I'll definitely try fishing for wipers with live bait again.  I wonder if they'd go for a bluegill...

Multi-species Monday: wipers, largemouth bass, and crappie at the Lake Monroe Spillway

After all of my recent fun at the spillway, I headed back on the morning of May 11.  I figured that I'd have another wild wiper fest on my Goture swimbait, but on my second cast, I got snagged and broke my line.  I reached into my tackle bag to find another, but apparently, I left them in the garage.

Life is cruel.

I tried to jury rig something that would work - one of the big Extreme Shad that I tried before, the largest circle hook that I had, and a 1/4 oz egg sinker - and actually got some bites.  I couldn't get a good hook up though.  At least not with a fish.  I hooked a rock just fine and was stuck again.

I tried to walk my line around the bank of the river a bit to see if I could get a good angle to free it, but nothing worked.  Swimbait rig #2 was gone.  On my walk though, I found a lipless crankbait that had washed up on the rocks.  Hey, free lure, why not try to use it?  On my first cast, I hooked into this 6.5-lb beauty and reeled her in:

With visions of fish tacos dancing through my head, I put the wiper on my stringer and tried to catch another.  Instead, I must have been casting through a school of crappie because I reeled in two in a row that were hooked in their backs:

 

I don't understand the physics behind how that happened in the water...twice no less...but I decided to target some different water so that it didn't happen again.  Not long after, something hit my lure hard, and I thought I had another wiper on my hands.  It didn't feel as big as the first water donkey that I landed, but it was still putting up a decent fight on a medium-action rod.  When I landed it though, it turned out to be a chunky largemouth bass!  I need to get a fish scale because this might have been the biggest largemouth that I've ever caught.

After a quick pic and release, I went back on the hunt for wipers but eventually lost my found lure.  What can I say?  It was a great #MultiSpeciesDay, but it was also a day of snags.  Either way, it was better than being stuck indoors.  I can't wait to wet a hook next time.

Sometimes, fish shelter in place too

After another 3 days of hanging around the house since my last WDA, I needed to escape for a little while again.  It was the afternoon this time, and I didn't want to deal with the spillway, which tends to fill up as the day goes on.  Instead, I headed for a spot where the road crosses Lake Monroe, which separates an expansive cove from the lake proper by a big culvert.  I've seen people fish there before, so I figured it was a decent spot.

I started worm-and-bobber fishing on the lake side of the culvert but didn't catch anything.  It was quite windy, and my bobber would just end up back on the bank not long after I cast.  I tried to swap the bobber for some split shot to fish deeper in the water, but that was also a no go.  This went on for probably a half hour before I gave up and tried the cove side of the culvert.

I should have just started over there because on the first cast, BOOM, bass:

It wasn't a water donkey, but I'll take any fish over no fish.  He put up a running, jumping fight too, so on an ultralight rig, it was a fun fish to catch.  After that, I fished around the culvert pipe itself and landed a few panfish:

 

In the last picture, you can see part of a tree down in the water, and noticing that at the time, I decided to fish around the deadfall to see if anything was swimming around its nooks and crannies.  The first fish I caught was what I think is called a warmouth.  Regardless, he was a little fatty boombatty:

 

A variety of panfish followed, including a decent crappie (compared to the small fry).  Apparently, the fish were sheltering in place around this tree.

 

 

I'm not great at telling panfish apart.  Bluegill, green sunfish, pumpkinseeds, longear sunfish, etc. all look the same to me.  It doesn't help that they hybridize in nature too, but it also doesn't really matter.  I landed a bunch of fish (#MultiSpeciesDay) that were fun to catch and had a good time doing it.  None of them were keepers, but that just means I need to keep chasing the big one.  Until next time...

It begins...

I'm not a fisherman.  That title would suggest that I consistently catch fish.  Instead, I just like to think of myself as a guy who likes to fish.  It's great if I can hook into something, but half of the fun is just being outside, getting some fresh air, and resetting my rage-meter back to zero.

That's the way it used to be at least.  Over the past few years, I've moved from Pennsylvania to New Jersey to Indiana, got married, and had a bunch of kids (not necessarily in that order).  In all that time, I've probably only been fishing a few times a year at the most.  I want to change that though, and I'm going to chronicle my adventures here.

A few weeks ago (April 22, 2020), I got so stir crazy from being cooped up inside due to COVID-19 that I jumped in my car and drove to the Lake Monroe spillway just south of Bloomington, IN.  I took my Shakespeare ultra-light Ugly Stik and some night crawlers, hoping to do some worm and bobber fishing, only to find that the flood gates were wide open, and the river was super high.  When life gives you lemons though, find some slack water, and hope for the best.  I skipped the bobber, added a split shot about 12 inches above my hook, and tossed in a worm.

It took a while to figure out where the eddies and current would take my line, but eventually I figured out the spot I was in and started getting some bites.  My first hook up was with a yellow bass. He wasn't quite the water donkey (i.e., keeper) that I was looking for, but he was fun to catch!

The panfish were next.  I reeled in a tiny sunfish and a micro-crappie.  #MultiSpeciesDay

At this point, my hall pass away from home was expiring, and too many people were showing up at the spillway for my liking anyway.  I packed it up, headed for my car, and decided that I'd get back to the water soon.  Maybe I'll catch a water donkey next time.

Back in the saddle

I still had some worms left from my April 22 water donkey adventure - and my wife hates having worms in the fridge - so I decided to head back to the spillway two days later.  There was a fly fisherman working the spot that I was in last time, so I set up shop next to some flooded stairs hoping that a few fish would be hanging out around there.  Long story short, it wasn't a great place to fish with worms.  The fly fisherman was having some luck, so I decided to try tossing out a lure.  Out of sheer dumb luck, I managed to land a blue gill and another yellow bass (#MultiSpeciesDay).

Obviously, none of these little guys were water donkeys, but that's what the fly fisherman was reeling in.  He caught a 5.5 lb largemouth bass and a good-sized wiper.  Either fish would have been a trophy for me and ended up in my belly, but he was strictly a catch and release kinda guy though.

He was also friendly, and we got to talking, which wasn't easy next to the roar of the spillway and our physical separation due to social distancing.  He recommended bottom-fishing for the wipers, using anything that looked like a shad.  I might just give that a try next time...