Sugar Creek but not very Sweet!
8/31/08 ? Sugar Creek between Shades and Pine Hill state parks in Indians. Me and my fishing buddy, the wife, walked into Sugar Creek at Clements Canoes rental at about 8 am. The river level was way down, its only registering about a foot on the DNR gauge. We had water levels between ankle and thigh deep. That is, up to about 3 feet deep in the holes. The water temperature was cool to the touch all morning. The water was stained but you could see all the way to the bottom, so at least 3 feet. The air temperature started out around 70 and worked its way up into the mid to upper 80s. It was a clear warm day.
It?s a really nice area. The river is wide making casting very easy. The bottom is sand, sandstone, or bolder strewn over its course. There are sandstone cliffs and the shoreline is mostly forested. So it?s a surprisingly beautiful place, especially for Indiana. Who knew Indiana had 200 foot cliffs?
But what did we catch? A lot of sun shine. We fished up stream of Clements Canoe rental, at Deer's Mill Covered Bridge, and found some deep holes, like under the near by bridges, and a lot of good bottom structure where fish could be expected but ? nothing.
A school (50ish) of some type of bottom feeding fish (mouths pointing down) of various sizes were seen. They were uninterested in what I was casting (black woolly, prince nymph, chartreuse muddler, black nose dace, and a sparkly hare?s ear nymph). A variety of other types of fish were seen, mostly small (who can tell when they are not at the end of your line so maybe they were really big but the water made them look small?) including SMB, LMB, and either a white bass or stripped bass (a dark line on the white/ silver side of the fish was seen). I could not be sure of any of these since I did NOT catch any of them! By noon we were cooked and called it a day.
I?ve read the river is very good for SMB. When the temperature cools and we get some rain we will have to give it another try.
Joe
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