Sessions Lake (5/26/10)
Finished fishing the Rogue at about 1pm and still had plenty of day left, so I headed to the Ionia State Recreation Area in Ionia, MI, which surrounds Sessions Lake. I got there around 2pm, bought a park pass and got a trail map. Sessions Lake looked to be a smallish, irregularly shaped and shallow lake. I parked at a spot on the north east edge, near where the state runs a campground, and decided to hike around the lake on the 3.5 mile long trail. I brought my rod and camera with me. Walking along the lake, I could see the small panfish darting about in the shallows. The east edge of the lake has a fair bit of topo as the trail winds through a forest of beech and maple. There were a number of bridges constructed by the conservation corps and boy scouts spanning streams and ravines. This part was a very nice hike.
Sandhill Crane
At about the halfway point, the trail breaks out into reclaimed agricultural land. It’s a mowed trail at this point, and the vegetation includes a lot of autumn olive. It’s the kind of nature Anna calls “junky.” It was hot and the trail was all in the open, lots of sun. At one point, I came to an old parking lot and saw a deer hanging out on the pavement. A hundred yards down the trail, I startled the same deer again, and as it bounded off I spotted two sandhill cranes in the grass about twenty yards away. I’ve never knowingly spotted a sandhill crane before. These were pretty big birds and made a racket.
At the north edge of the lake there’s a spillway, which created the first adequate fishing access of the hike (the rest of the shoreline was far too shallow). Standing at the edge of the spillway retaining wall, I could see bluegill and sunfish nests in the shallows. I hooked a bass that spit the hook once I tried to land it and then caught another one. By this point, I’d been out for about three hours and I headed for home.
Tags: autumn olive, bass, deer, sandhill crane, Sessions Lake
This entry was posted on Friday, May 28th, 2010 at 11:23 am and is filed under fishing, hiking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.