by Wes Krupiczewicz
The club had a great inaugural warm water fishing trip to Western Indiana and the Green-Sullivan State Forest Area. In addition to the numerous lakes in the G-S Forest, there are other lakes in the Duggar Unit of G-S Forest, three larger lakes in Shakamak State Park, and lakes in the Hillenbrand Fish and Wildlife Area. All areas are an easy drive from Shakamak State Park. On some of our club trips, we tend to crowd each other with limited water. Not here! We stayed in a group bunk house in Shakamak State Park. The bunk house had recently been remodeled and had 11 double bunk beds with new mattresses. Since we limited the trip to 8 bunk mates, everyone had a lower bed with storage in the upper bed. We were joined by two club members staying in the campground area. The kitchen included an electric stove top and oven, a microwave, a sink, and an apartment size refrigerator; the kitchen was small and crowded by a bunk bed, so we kept that bunk empty to store utensils and food stuff. Fortunately, we brought a folding DCFF table to help with meal preparation. Outside, we had four picnic tables, our DCFF popup and a two burner propane stove top as well as our camp chairs. A very comfortable arrangement overall. We shared group meals including breakfast and supper. Unlike our trout trips, this was not all catch and release. There are nice fish cleaning stations in the area and we took advantage of those to have a fish fry one evening with at least 5 pounds of panfish fillets served with deli sides. There was a fire pit, so we gathered after supper to enjoy the camaraderie of the fire! We purchased the wood at Shakamak, making it a little pricey but with a large group, individual costs were small at about $10 each for four nights. Fishing was good to excellent with good numbers of large panfish and small bass taken by all. Productive panfish flies included mops, various nymphs and of course, the trout magnet! Topwater poppers took a number of the bass. Most of us fished out of kayaks or canoes, but larger boats were well accommodated by good launch ramps on most of the lakes. Large boats are limited to trolling motors, so there were no issues with large boat wakes. We were a little early for the panfish spawn this year, but a lot of the other fishers we talked with indicated that the 2nd week of May is usually great. Group consensus was that we are going back and possibly expanding the trip to more participants if we can get additional leader/coordinators. In addition to the twelve group bunk houses at Shakamak, there are 20 family cabins that accommodate smaller groups as well as almost 200 campsites. Reservations will need to be made in advance, but probably not as early as we did this year in January. Hope to see you there next year.  |
