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!

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.