100 years of Izaak Walton: Fishing, shooting arrows and advocating for Juday Creek

Down the hilly wooded lane off of Darden Road and hugging a trout-dwelling creek, the Izaak Walton League will mark its 100th anniversary in South Bend on April 21. Rightly so, it will be in the midst of the area’s Earth Day cleanups and plantings — including its own tree giveaways and nature/history tours for the public along its native wildflowers, three ponds and archery trails.

The League is a quiet force that owns and maintains the oft-used public St. Joseph River access just north of Cleveland Road. Surprising, eh? The Indiana Department of Natural Resources maintains the boat ramp.

But the chapter also serves as a watchdog for Juday Creek. That advocacy never rests for chapter Secretary J.C. Sporleder, who right now is carefully watching yet another proposed development on the creek’s banks, this time on 914 acres of the old St. Joe Farm in Granger, where an unnamed developer aims to build a “business tech campus” with up to 300 workers.

Near Juday Creek: Unknown developer seeks 'business tech campus' on 900 acres of St. Joe Farm, rezoning

County officials say the developer proposes a 200-foot green buffer around Juday Creek, which ultimately flows to Izaak Walton. It’s more than the county requires. But Sporleder, who serves on the Juday Creek Task Force, which advises the county drainage board, remains wary until he sees real assurances.

Silty, warm drainage could kill the creek and the trout who cannot live without its extra cold, clean water. Warmer water has less oxygen, and trout can’t tolerate it.

“We don’t want to stop people from developing their property,” he says. “We don’t want them to hurt the creek.”

Sporleder will be among those giving tours on April 21, having grown up with Izaak Walton and its 130 acres, where he’d ride his bike from his family’s Roseland home to fish in its ponds. His late father, Don Sporleder, had been a local environmental force and Notre Dame architecture professor who’d led the advocacy group Michiana Watershed and served on several park and trail boards, pushing for the East Race Waterway and local trails well before civic leaders latched onto them.

You’ll also find Mike Hay, chapter president for 24 years, who grew up here, too. He may tell you how the chapter started in 1924, just two years after the national Izaak Walton League formed through a group of anglers who wanted to do something about pollution in the Upper Mississippi River. He says they took the name Izaak Walton from a fisherman in England in the 1600s who'd written a still-popular, poetic book on the art and spirit of fishing, “The Compleat (sic) Angler.”

Hay may tell you how in 1938 the chapter moved to this deeply wooded site at the northern edge of South Bend on 100 acres. Half of it is city land, as the city allowed the chapter to care for it. That is why, on Google maps, the area is still labeled Wheelock Park — George Wheelock owned a dry goods store at the time and sat on the city parks board, Hay says. The city still owns the land, and, with a 50-year lease that was renewed in 2000, Izaak Walton fully maintains it and keeps its lodge.

The chapter now owns the other 50 acres, he says, having first leased it informally from Indiana Michigan Power, then purchased it in 1950. The company had held it for a possible hydroelectric project that never happened.

Today, the chapter advocates for ecology by encouraging the public to come up close to it, to put their hands on a fish.

Every year on one of the state’s free fishing days when licenses aren’t required — this year, it’s June 1 — the chapter invites the public to come fish, especially if you don’t have experience. Chapter members will let you borrow fishing poles and even bait your hook. And they’ll feed you free hot dogs, pop and chips.

Izaak Walton stocks trout in Juday Creek at its property. The community benefits as the fish travel up and down the creek and into the nearby St. Joe River.

Feeling hooked yet?

Sporleder says Izaak Walton’s efforts to protect Juday Creek have been “pretty successful.”

One legacy of the Juday Creek Task Force remains today among the malls and shopping bustle of Mishawaka’s Grape Road. You can’t see it because it’s embedded in the retention basins that collect drainage from streets and parking lots. The basins are designed so that, in those rare times when they exceed their capacity, they don’t overflow from the top — that could otherwise launch warm water toward the creek. Rather, the basin’s excess water drains through a pipe at the bottom, drawing relatively cooler water.

The task force had pushed for that design through the county drainage board decades ago when Grape was being developed, Sporleder recalls. It also pushed for vegetative strips that soak up more warm drainage from the pavement rather than letting it trickle down to the creek, he says.

Ditches are also wider, with earthen mounds that slow the water’s flow. If water drains too quickly over soil, it picks up sediment, eroding the soil and dumping it into the creek, choking off its natural ecology.

Today, whenever contractors lower a portion of Juday Creek, to put in a bridge for example, the drainage board requires them to divert the water through rocks and a way to cool and draw oxygen back into the water before it returns to the creek.

“We’ve had good compliance,” Sporleder notes.

Izaak Walton is now investing a lot of volunteer hours into removing another ecological issue from its land: the highly invasive bush honeysuckle. Planted decades ago when it was thought to be good for wildlife, Sporleder says, the now “monstrous” bushes are taking over from native plants.

But if you look elsewhere along the St. Joe River, you’ll find a lot more bush honeysuckle. Izaak Walton sets a good example. And if we are mindful, the rest of us can carry out the ripple effect of keeping our waterways clean and strong.

More about Izaak Walton League chapter

∎ Where: 20400 Darden Road, South Bend (574-272-3660, Izaaksb.com).

∎ Camp Awareness: South Bend’s Venues, Parks & Arts department still runs this hands-on summer camp for kids with fishing, archery, hiking and crafts that’s been going for more than 50 years. (sbvpa.org/things-to-do/camp-awareness)

∎ Random visits to the property: That’s for members only. But chapter President Mike Hay welcomes people to check it out if they’re seriously thinking of becoming members.

∎ Membership: With roughly 300 members, income from dues are just enough to “keep the lights on,” Hay says. Membership costs $102 for individuals or families, of which $42 goes to the chapter, the rest to the national organization. The chapter also relies on donations and wedding rentals. Members have access to programs like monthly fish fly tying classes.

∎ Fishing: Fishing is strictly allowed for members only, unless you’re there for the chapter’s public free fishing day from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. June 1, with free hot dogs, loaner poles and guidance. Fishing also must be done without barbs on the hooks. Catch-and-release fishing is encouraged.

∎ Free for 100th anniversary: Guided tours of the grounds will start at 2:30 p.m. April 21. Trees will be given away to the public starting at 3:30 p.m., including serviceberry, arborvitae, eastern redbud, eastern white pine, pagoda dogwood, shagbark hickory, hazelnut and tulip poplar.

Leeper bridge update

Fellow Tribune reporter Jordan Smith, who covers South Bend city government, shares an update on the closure of the East Bank Trail’s bridge over Leeper Avenue. The bridge, which has been closed since late last year, won’t reopen this summer as the city had originally expected. Instead, city officials say it will reopen at the end of September.

Prior update in January 2024: Key section of East Bank Trail closed through mid-summer as South Bend plans redesign

Construction to replace the old wooden decking with concrete should begin in June. Project engineer Chana Roshyk says that, by using concrete, the city will shore up the bridge for another 70 to 80 years. If the city simply replaced the bridge’s timber with new timber, she says, it would likely need renovations in another 20 years at most.

So, the South Bend Redevelopment Commission recently agreed to give an additional $120,000 to the project after allotting $300,000 this January.

I know. This has been a pain for such a key connecting trail. You can detour the closed bridge via stairs that connect to Leeper and a separate set of stairs connecting to the trail from the sidewalk along Indiana 933.

Other bike/trail news

∎ Meet local bike organizations: Spin Zone Cycling Outfitters, at 51345 Bittersweet Road, Granger, plans to host various bike-related organizations from 9:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. April 20 so you can casually learn what’s new, what they do and how you can get involved.

∎ Calumet Trail closure: Work has just begun to raise and pave the Calumet Trail between Mineral Springs Road and Indiana 49 in northwest Indiana. So, that part of the trail is now closed until the middle of June. As I’d reported in late March, this is part of a bigger project to rebuild the nine-mile, crushed stone trail in order to fix its persistent flooding. Also, it eventually will entail rerouting a 6.3-mile portion of the Calumet Trail through the Indiana Dunes National Park as it becomes part of the 60-mile Marquette Greenway between New Buffalo and Chicago.

Find columnist Joseph Dits on Facebook at SBTOutdoorAdventures or 574-235-6158 or jdits@sbtinfo.com.

This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: Izaak Walton South Bend chapter marks 100 years Juday Creek advocacy