COLUMN: Outdoor Type: Finding the right fishing spot isn’t always easy

For a long time one of my bucket list places to fish has been Hovey Lake, located near the Ohio River south of Mt. Vernon, Indiana. So eventually curiosity got the better of me, I picked up my youngest son on the west side of Evansville, and we made our way down to the lake.

I’ve always considered Reelfoot to be one of the gems of Midwest fisheries. The fact that I haven’t done that well there myself is because it’s one place where a guide is darn near a necessity, unless you want to constantly battle running into stumps and end up catching very few fish. But I’m too cheap (and too proud) to hire one.

Hovey looked a lot like Reelfoot from the online images, so I thought we could catch some crappies. I also recall years ago reading Steve Ford’s outdoor columns in The Evansville Courier about the big crappie residing there.

Hovey is a natural lake, created when the Ohio changed course. It’s all of 1,400 acres inside a DNR managed property of over 7,000 acres. When Justin and I pulled up to the boat ramp parking lot on a nice Saturday afternoon, there was exactly one boat trailer.

“This can’t be good,” I thought.

We launched on a wide concrete ramp and headed out into a fishy-looking cypress tree-studded lake. The water color looked cloudy, but that can be OK. We spent some time casting the brushy bank for bass near the launch ramp, but no go. We then checked out the situation out in the middle where some standing trees looked inviting.

I had minnows and began dabbing them around while Justin continued to cast for bass. Nothing doing. The deepest water I could find on my graph was about seven feet, pretty shallow.

The whole place just seemed dead as a fishery. Something just wasn’t right. About then Justin brushed into a tree limb and was bombarded by a horde of bugs, maybe mosquitoes. I wouldn’t want to be on this lake at sunset.

We continued motoring. Where was that other boat?

We found it way up toward the east side. We pulled up and inquired how they were doing. Anyone with a spider rigged boat like they had knows about crappie and is proficient at catching them.

“Any luck?” we inquired.

“Nothing on crappie, but we just caught a 25-pound catfish on six-pound line. Took us about 45 minutes to get him in.”

“Been here before?”

“Nope. First time. We won’t be back. It’s a waste of time.”

Darn, I thought. What a great looking lake to not hold anything but carp and catfish. We motored back to the ramp, spooking hundreds of rough fish out of the shallows along the way.

Craig Jansen, Big Rivers Fisheries biologist, told me that a crappie sampling with good results was done in the spring of 2017. There are very few bass or bluegills, but apparently the netting showed good numbers of large crappie and lots of big catfish.

If you like to fish for cats, this might be a place to try. The water level is influenced by the river somewhat, as once or twice a year flooding comes over the culvert pipes at the drain. Lower lake levels could be the result of natural silting, he said.

Waterfowl hunters should keep this place in mind too. You can see how ducks and geese would be attracted to the area.

Property Manager Nick Echterling told me that when the lake was five feet higher in February and March this year, crappie were caught by bank fishermen on the west (road) side.

“The lake is heavily influenced by the river levels, so that’s why there are rough fish. The crappie are there though,” Nick said.

So, the takeaway is that this might be a place to check out in the early spring when the lake is up. Nick’s office is open Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Eastern; phone is 219-838-2927.

The day was still ahead of us, so we went to Plan B, the Bluegrass Fish and Wildlife area northeast of Evansville. It’s a huge, reclaimed coal mine locale—2,532 acres overall with 28 strip pits and 600 acres of water. It’s named after the nearby Bluegrass Creek.

A few years ago Justin and I had tried the largest lake, naturally named Bluegrass, but the wind had driven us off. There were quite a few boat trailers in the big lake parking lot, and that was a good sign.

After discussing the area with a local fisherman, who bemoaned the good old crappie days at Hovey, we decided to try smaller Loon Lake just across the road, where we saw fewer trailers.

Outboards with a 10-mph limit are permitted in Bluegrass, Loon and Otter pits. On the rest it’s trolling motor only. We motored out into a gorgeous pit with clear water and fishy-looking grass beds here and there. Gin clear water is usually tough going for fishing.

After a couple of hours of fruitless casting, we got into the south neck of the lake that had some grass beds bordering a channel. I caught a nice two-pound bass on a crankbait, and it surely felt good.

After that I caught a crappie, and Justin caught something that looked like a muskie. Maybe it was a pike or a pickerel. I had never seen a fish quite like it, 18-20 inches long and sporting odd markings and a nasty set of teeth.

That was it for the catching, but being with my son was well worth the drive. Our trips together don’t happen often enough. We talked incessantly about life and his brothers and his job and Evansville and, well, you know. It was all good.