Otter Creek fishing...no luck, but fun.

Kentucky fishing licenses expire at the end of February, so I decided to take mine out for one last spin yesterday.  I went to Otter Creek Outdoor Recreation Area, since it had been a very long time since I had been out there, and it’s one of my favorite spots to be outdoors.

I parked at the end of the road that leads down to the area near the Blue Hole, and hike from there. I headed downstream first, and fished in spots I could get down to the water. The banks were steep and slick with mud, so I had to find gullies that I could descend through and gravel bars to fish from.  Fortunately, there are quite a few of those.

The first spot I fished in, I got a couple of good hits on a spinner.  The second hit, I could see the fish in the water, thrashing; it looked great, certainly a respectable size fish, but it threw the hook.

The first spot I fished

After that, nothing. I fished as far down as the old stone remains of a mill, which was a beautiful spot to fish, but there was nothing doing.  It was hard to decide between changing lures or moving to a different spot, but since fish had hit my white spinner, I stuck with that, and occasionally switched to a second rod that had a cream-colored curly tail jig.

In the mill ruins

This time of year, one is likely to only catch trout or smallmouth in a creek like that (the trout are stocked). However, there are plenty of spots that would be good in the future to look for largemouth, catfish, and various species of sunfish. There were lots of nice little pools alternating with rocky riffles.

At one point as I was walking, I saw four deer standing in the creek ahead. I moved as close as I could, taking pictures, before they bounded off.  The deer were still far away and hard to make out in the photo, so I circled them in red.

White tail deer



At mid-afternoon, I moved to the old boat ramp area on the Ohio River. I baited up with some chicken livers, thinking that a couple of days of milder weather and sunshine might have prompted some channel catfish to move in shallower to feed, but I had no bites.

It was a nice place to hang out, though.  From that spot, one can see five or six miles of river.

I spent quite a bit of time watching the Indiana side. Upstream, on the opposite bank more than a half mile away, I could see two people.  They were tiny dots, and they were there the whole time I was. I tried to figure out what they were doing. They were climbing up and down the bank, walking all around.  At first I thought that maybe they were playing with a dog that was just too small to see, because their wandering around was just like the behavior of someone outdoors with a dog. However, I don’t think they had a dog.  Maybe they were looking around for artifacts washed from the bank, or collecting driftwood.

A tug, the Donna Rushing, came dramatically into view pushing 24 barges around the upriver bend, and I watched it get farther and farther away. Miles downstream, I could see another one, tiny with distance, approaching, but I left before it drew near.

The Ohio River, near the boat ramp. I've painted down here a few times, too.