May 14, 2008 11:59 pm
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The natural lakes of northern Indiana are fast becoming one of the top destinations in America for catching muskie. The area has its own muskie club that works with the Indiana DNR to make sure this area remains a hot spot on the map.
At the heart of this great muskie fishing is the Barbee Chain of Lakes. Big fish that exceed 40 inches are not uncommon in these waters.
Joe Brandon of Anderson has spent many summers on the Barbee Chain. For a long time, he took a fancy to a property on Kuhn Lake. The waterfront, 3-acre lot featured 10 authentic and spacious cabins. The log cabins are modern with running water, electricity and gas for cooking. Three cabins have rustic fireplaces.
When the property went on sale, Brandon bought it.
The Log Cabin Resort is open from May 10 to Sept. 30. The lake property has a sand beach, dock, boat launch, recreation area, fire pits and grills. Each cabin comes with a 14-foot boat. A six-horsepower motor is available to rent, but a trolling motor might be all you need.
For more information on the Log Cabin Resort, go to: logcabins@kconline.com or call (866) 611-0182.
The state’s muskie stocking program got a big boost from 40 adult female muskies that fisheries biologists from the Division of Fish and Wildlife captured in traps last month at Lake Webster. The process yielded more than 700,000 fertilized eggs, compared to 275,000 last year.
Biologists stripped more than 1.5 million eggs from the fish, which measured 31 to 45 inches. The eggs were fertilized using 50 ripe males.
Ideally, the eggs will yield nearly 20,000 muskie fingerlings about 10 inches each, which will be stocked at 15 lakes throughout the state in October.
This year also marked the first time biologists took eggs directly from adults while at the lake, rather than first hauling them to the hatchery. Fish tanks in the basement of a cottage owned by a local resident were used to temporarily hold the adult muskies.
While collecting muskies at Lake Webster, biologists also marked them, for the third year in a row, with a uniquely coded tag, called a passive integrated transponder, or PIT tag. Tagged fish that are recaptured in future years will enable biologists to accurately estimate muskie growth rates.
“By comparing the total number of muskies we have tagged and the number of tagged fish recaptured later, we can also estimate how many adult muskies are in the lake,” said Nate Thomas, DFW assistant fisheries biologist. “Past estimates of Lake Webster’s muskie populations make it one of the premier fisheries in the Midwest.”
For more information on muskie fishing and stockings, see www.dnr.in.gov/fishwild online.
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If you hunted morels last Friday and Saturday, luck was surely with you. I found a lot of those big, 4- to 9-inch, golden sponges. I spied two growing out of a fox den on a creek bank. The two morels had the same root system and were large.
I hunted a woods for the first time Friday. It had recently changed hands, and I was fortunate to gain permission. The landowner told me, “A lady hunted it last week and never found a thing, but the guy I bought it from told me it was a good mushroom woods.”
I was beginning to think this new woods was a dry run until I came to this one spot. There were big beautiful yellow morels in every direction. I picked 25 that were fresh. I left more that were too old.
I went to Pendleton Heights High School to show my friend, teacher Angie Cox. She was in awe of my find and vowed to go looking after school. She has not had any luck in finding morels this season. She can’t get into the woods until after school, and the places she hunts are public. I instructed her to call me early Saturday morning if her search proved unsuccessful.
My phone rang at 7:45 a.m. “This is Angie, and I’m ready to go,” she said.
Three minutes into the woods, Mrs. Cox began finding small yellow morels. A handful was enough to make her happy. It was like a spell had been broken.
Finally, Angle spied a very large morel.
“I found a big one,” she shouted.
The morel was in heavy weeds and rose vines. I instructed my friend to look very carefully. I literally pulled up thorny vines so she could harvest the large morels hiding underneath. It was an unusual place to find morels. I wouldn’t have looked there. Chalk that up to the luck of a novice or perhaps a woman’s intuition.
This lady needs to let her husband stay home with the kids while she deer hunts. Angle Cox proved to have the hunter’s eye by seeing morels at long distance.
“Look, there is one at the top of the hill,” she said.
I didn’t see it until we approached much closer.
The teacher headed home with a bag full of morels. I headed for my granddaughter Hayley’s softball game.
I found four morels in the new woods on Mother’s Day and four more in another woods on Tuesday. You’ll have to migrate north to find them next week.
Rick Bramwell’s column publishes Thursdays in The Herald Bulletin sports section. To contact him, e-mail rick
bramwell@aol.com.
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