Outdoor Indiana - May/June 2023

Seeking, catching, and releasing fish other anglers can barely see
By Scott Roberts, OI staff
Photography by John Maxwell

Ron Anderson nets a Northern studfish while microfishing Sugar Creek last June with Jarrett Maurer. The Bloomington anglers seek and learn about many wild fish species most sportfish anglers overlook.

Ron Anderson and Jarrett Maurer admit they’ve gotten strange looks when practicing their craft.

“We’ve fished in roadside ditches with just a few inches of water, in people’s front yards, with their permission—just about anywhere water can pool, we’ve stuck in a line,” Anderson said. “We always get the same comment: ‘There aren’t any fish in there.’”

The onlookers are correct—in terms of sportfish. Bass, walleye, bluegill, and crappie aren’t found in roadside ditches or puddles. But that’s not what this Bloomington duo goes after. They’re looking for tiny, hard-to-find species that many times can only be found in out-of-the-way places. They’ve caught their share of common sportfish throughout their years of angling and moved on to pursue what they consider the more exotic and interesting fish of Indiana and the rest of the Midwest.

Their sport, called microfishing, is, as the name suggests, about catching tiny fish. Many of these fish can be found in only a few places, and only at specific times of year, which is why microfishers occasionally venture to nontraditional fishing spots.

No standard classification deems a fish a microfish, but aptly named DNR nongame aquatic biologist Brant Fisher says about half of Indiana’s 200 different species meet most standard definitions. Most Hoosier anglers target only about 25 species, all sportfish.

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Merry Lea in Goshen doubles as nature destination and learning center
By Phil Bloom

Rieth Village, a platinum Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certified site as an example of best practices in sustainable design, features two cottages for undergraduate summer housing as well as a classroom and office.

As a young civil engineering graduate of Purdue University, Lee Rieth was sent on a scouting mission to find gravel deposits to use to resurface State Road 109 north of Columbia City.

When he came across an area near Wolf Lake in Noble County, he crossed it off his list of possibilities. Not because it lacked the target materials but because, as Bill Minter tells it years later, Rieth saw something different in the landscape.

“He said, ‘We need to leave this alone and not exploit it,’” said Minter, the director of land management at Merry Lea Environmental Learning Center. “Even though he was an engineer and developer, he had a sensitivity that there are special places.”

Rieth, who later helped lead the family-owned road construction company Rieth-Riley, and his wife, Mary Jane, took a first step toward protecting the area in 1964 when they purchased a 40-acre parcel near Bear Lake. A year later they named it Merry Lea, meaning “happy meadow”. To support their vision, they established the Merry Lea Nature and Religious Foundation.

These actions set the stage for the couple’s goal of fostering environmental education in a natural setting.

That idea has evolved into a nearly 1,200-acre gem owned by Goshen College. Its mission is to provide:

• A natural sanctuary for northern Indiana’s plants and animals.
• Environmental education for people of all ages.
• A setting that fosters activities “to benefit the human body and spirit” without exploiting the natural resources.

From that small beginning, today’s Merry Lea complex includes lakes, wetlands, upland and lowland forests, oak woodlands and savannas, prairies and meadows, and landscape remnants of glaciers that shaped northern Indiana eons ago. About half the area is reachable on 8 miles of hiking trails that are open to the public from dawn to dusk.

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