Enjoying the Weather

It was Sunday evening on the river. I was fishing the deeper water near the bridge for the second time. Earlier, I had explored its rocks and channels close up; now I was probing them with the weighted fly as thoroughly as I could.

After that first pass through the run I had ranged up the river farther than my first trip here. I found some more good looking water, but no fish. If I was going to find any fish at all this day, it would be here in the bridge run.

A man came to the bridge. He looked like a young farmer, maybe taking a walk, or crossing the covered bridge to check out his fields on the other side. He saw me and stopped.

     "Doing any good?" he called.

     "Nope," I had to admit.

     "Enjoying the weather, though?"

     "For sure."

He wished me luck and started across the bridge, his footsteps echoing off the old planks. I went back to enjoying the weather and everything else that goes with fishing through a golden Autumn evening on a quiet country river.

My New Friend

I was at Sugar Creek again for my first November outing, but this time I was at a new location. I was farther downstream than I had been, not too far from where Sugar Creek joins the famous Wabash River.

There is another covered bridge at this crossing, the West Union bridge, named for the little town nearby. This bridge was built by the same man who erected the Deer Mill bridge that you have seen in previous posts on this blog. This one is two years older than the Deer Mill bridge.

Both bridges admonish people to "cross this bridge at a walk." That means to slow your horses to a walk, of course, but I was happy to go at a walk when I crossed the bridge to scout out the best place to get to the water.

The view upstream was promising.

So was the view downstream.

I walked under the bridge and found a good path to the water. There were still keel marks in the sand from where paddlers recently launched their canoes.

I went back to the car, geared up, crossed over again and waded in. I decided to begin by working downstream. There was a brisk flow, good structure, and a deep channel that looked like it could hold some good fish.

The river here is different from the Deer Mill stretch. Deer Mill has a cobble bottom and lots of rocks. This stretch is sandy and silty. On downstream it got silty enough and slow enough that I decided to head back and explore the upstream portion.

The river upstream was wider and mostly shallow.

I explored around the bend for a ways but found nothing that looked promising at first glance, so went back and crossed over in the shallows.

There was a nice little slot right up against the rocky shore here, and I began swimming a fly through it.

It looked like it should hold fish, especially at those places where rocks had tumbled into the water.

As I worked downstream toward the bridge the bottom got softer and the slot along the bank widened into a decent pool. There were riffles and swirls on the surface indicating the location of rocks or potholes. It looked fishy to me. I waded as deep as I could in the shifting sands, then extended my casts trying to cover as much water as possible.

It finally paid off with a bump and a pull. It wasn't the twenty incher that I thought could be in there, but it was a smallmouth nonetheless. Glad to have it.

I waded around the pool and under the bridge and worked on downstream where I had been earlier.

I was hoping for some action with the sun off the water and the shadows of evening lengthening across the stream. The minnows seemed to get active, dimpling the surface with tiny rises, but that was all the evidence of fish that I saw.

I waded out and walked across the bridge to the car. Now I know two places to fish on Sugar Creek.

Rivers are like good friends: the more you get to know them the closer you become, and the more you miss them when you're away. I'm really looking forward to the next time I can hang out with my new friend.