I took my own youngsters fishing from the time they were small, and plenty of others since, and it doesn’t take many trips to learn that you’ve got to plan the experience like a general.  Last week I took my two young grandsons (9 and 7) out again, and as usual I planned carefully, and gave the trip plenty of thought.  Here are the 7 basic things I did, and you should, too.

1. Initial outings should always be to a farm pond, rather than a big lake or river, and I always check out the pond first.  I want one that has smooth, grassy banks and clear water, rather than one that the youngster will have to reach by fighting through brush and skin scratching briers.  There should be few or no weeds to keep fouling hooks, and no thick line of cattails surrounding the pond.  Easy walking and easy fishing.
2. Fish strictly for bluegills, and make sure the pond has plenty, though a bass or two will add welcome excitement if you’ve set the drag carefully.  Kids need fast action, and they won’t get it from a Lake Erie walleye trip or a half days boring casting on a muskie lake.  Bluegills will provide plenty of fast action as they did for my grandsons.
3. Make sure they have good equipment,  Some anglers are tempted to give the kid a junk rod on the theory that if he or she ruins it, it’s no loss.  But I still remember a man who took his boy to a pond I was fishing, handed him a rusty old rod, then hotfooted it down to the far end to cast for bass.  The boy made a few casts, tangled his line until it wouldn’t cast at all, then sat there frustrated and wanting to go home.
4. Don’t fish yourself.  I never did when I had a youngster out, but stayed close to clear tangles, offer advice, bait their hooks until they could do that easily, and  removed fish until they learned unhooking themselves.  While I was offering advice, I also offered plenty of praise (that’s a good cast – he’s a very nice bluegill).  Kids love that.
5. If fishing is slow for some reason and they begin to show signs of boredom, go to plan B.  Stop for a while, get out a little picnic lunch, walk them around the pond looking for tadpoles and frogs, maybe even throw a few rocks.  And talk about the creatures you’re seeing.  Then fish a little more.
6. Keep it short.  Few things put a kid off fishing more than staying too long, letting them get hot and tired, and again, bored.  Even if they’re catching lots of fish, keep it down to an hour or so.  If they leave eager to catch more, they’ll be eager to come again.
7. Finally, be sure to take some home for mom to admire, then clean the lot with the youngster helping a bit, fry the fillets or pieces up for dinner, and comment often as you eat them about their flavor and size.  Kids love compliments and this is a good place to give them. 

Simple rules indeed, but they’ll see that young lad or lady wanting to go  again.  When you hear them say “Let’s go fishing, dad”, you’ve done it right.

Bluegills move in close to shore then, and the brightly colored males begin to brush out small circular nests on the bottom, fanning hard to remove mud and debris, cleaning diligently down to gravel or hard pan bottom.  Then when all is ready, they hover almost motionless over their nest waiting for a duller colored, egg laden female to join them.

 The female selects one of the impatient males, and urged by nudges on her flanks, drops a cloud of eggs which the male immediately fertilizes, then she swims off to greener pastures while her temporary husband remains to stand guard and chase off any intruders.  It’s a togetherness business, and where one male nests, usually 50 to 100 or more others will join him, so walkers or boaters along the shore of a lake or farm pond see a broad pattern of nests about one foot apart, each with a waiting male.  These males are not only highly visible in reasonably clear water, but very hungry and extremely easy to catch in numbers.  Which is why spawning season is a great time to take as many as you wish to clean.

There are lots of ways to catch these fish.  Once you’ve  traveled around that farm pond or small lake, and located a spawning bed (or perhaps several), then stand well off so the fish won’t spook, and cast a pencil float, splitshot, and No. 6 hook baited with worm into their midst.  That float will sink with astonishing regularity.  In larger lakes, travel the shoreline in a small boat looking for clusters of beds, and do the same thing.

A refinement used by some is to trade the hook for an ice spoon in red, yellow. white or green, and use waxworms instead.  That float will sink even faster.  And often I’ve found a bed and tied two, even three small flies to a fly leader, one on lines end, and two more on short side lines above about a foot apart.  The kind of fly doesn’t matter much, since these aren’t brown trout, but I prefer small, nondescript nymphs in black, brown or green.

Then cast into the bed, wait for the line to twitch, and strike gently, then wait again.  You’re likely to get a second twitch, even a third, and fight it out with two fat bluegills, even three for your efforts.  A nice bluegill on a light fly rod is a good fighter, prone to turn sideways and give it everything he has, but two or three will put a bend in your rod that’s memorable.

For those seeking larger fish, keep in mind that the bigger bull bluegills will nest in slightly deeper water, so work the outside edge of the bed hardest and avoid the smaller males in very shallow water.  You’ll pick up the dull colored females in this deeper area too, and some love their twin egg sacs breaded and fried crisp.

Keep in mind one more point about spawning ‘gills, they’re an ideal kids fish, so when my youngsters were both pre-teen I routinely took them after bedding pansters.  I never fished on these occasions, spending my time clearing tangles, showing how to bait hooks, and removing fish, then stringing them.  It’s a fast paced type of fishing with almost constant action, and kids LIKE constant action and big catches that they can take home and brag about.  A good way to get them started.

Does fishing for spawning panfish hurt a pond?  Not at all, unless it’s an unusually small pond.  There are almost always too many bluegills, and only a certain amount of food available.  Remove a fair number and the remainder will eat better and grow large more quickly.  You’re actually helping a pond most times by removing a good catch, and that’s another reason to do so.

It’s important to remember that spawning walleye aren’t very hungry, and will rarely chase a fast moving bait, so the rule is “Keep it slow and low.”  And since special regulations require fishing with a single hook (not a treble), that fishing is usually done with a jig of some kind.  Most anglers at either river do their fishing by casting out slightly upstream, letting the lure sink, and bringing it back as slowly as possible.  They catch one once in a while.  But a better method, if you have a small boat or canoe, is to anchor out there in a likely spot and do your casting with a three-way rig straight downstream.

To make this rig, you’ll tie your fishing line to one swivel, then add a short length of monofilament and a sinker to the second swivel.  You’ll need to experiment with the sinker, choosing a weight just heavy enough to hold the rig lightly bumping bottom.  To the third swivel, tie another piece of monofilament maybe 18 – 24 inches long and a floating jig.  The jig should have a twister tail at the very least for eye appeal, or a small minnow on the hook.  Keep in mind that nearly every walleye down there will be facing upstream, so when you cast straight downstream and bring the rig back at a crawl, it’ll pass their milky eyes very slowly, and just a flip of the tail will let them catch it. 

That’s a basic problem shore casters with a single jig have to face – if there’s any even semi-serious current, the jig will whip past a waiting walleye at a fair rate of speed, usually before they can react, and they’ll rarely turn and chase it.  One refinement of this technique for boating anglers is to keep moving.  Stay here for ten minutes and cast downstream, then up anchor and move 50 feet or so before anchoring and trying again.  You’ll probably want to stay in mid-river, especially on weekends when the shore is clogged with casters who might tangle your line.  Or move far enough downstream to avoid shore casters. 

 Waders can do much the same as boating anglers.  They can either wade (very carefully) out a bit and cast a three way swivel rig downstream or, if they lack swivels, at least cast downstream with a jig and minnow heavy enough to stay near bottom.  Again, retrieve slowly and strike at any tiny change in the lure.  Most “strikes” will be just a bump or a change in tension, they’ll rarely hit hard.

Another technique for boat anglers that works very well is to fish with an electric motor and again, a small jig with or without minnow.  This tactic was developed in Michigan and is now spreading to Ohio.  Basically, you drift very slowly downstream using the motor pointing upriver to slow your drift.  Some toss a wood chip over the side and keep the boat moving exactly as fast as the wood chip, which means the jig below is floating along as normal current speed, not racing past as it would if being reeled in.  The jig will approach those upstream facing walleye just like any morsel giving them time to look it over and hopefully suck the jig into their mouths.  Another advantage of this downstream drift is that sooner or later you’re bound to pass a pod of walleye holding in a pocket or eddy below.

Finally, if you lack a boat or even waders, try tightlining a minnow or nightcrawler behind a slip sinker.  Cast here and let the bait sit for five minutes, then cast there and elsewhere, covering as much ground as possible.  It’s a restful business, totally non-tiring, and sooner or later, a hungry one should swim by.

We all love the excellent to goods, and many a reader either has a farm pond, plans to buy country land and build one, or hopes to purchase a little rural paradise that has a long standing pond. Whether that pond falls into the top categories or stays there won’t happen by chance. Instead, it’ll depend on various moves and maintenance made by the landowner.

Old ponds are my personal favorite. I love those with a little bay or two and a bit of swampy backwater instead of pure, near rectangular symmetry. I like to see a weed bed or two along its sides, a clump of cattails here and there, and deep water of at least 8 feet, hopefully more, that gradually shallows to dry land. Ponds like that are usually good for fishing, and nice places to swim, boat a little, catch bullfrogs, maybe trap a few muskrats, and do some duck hunting.

Everything seems to love a pond like that. But if you buy such a pond and fish it with poor success, other than a few midget panfish, then it’s important to do some seining in shallow areas, and check the ratio of young bass to bluegill. Some landowners fish bass hard because they’re “bragging” fish, and ignore the bluegills, so largemouth populations plummet, can’t control the panfish, and the result is thousands of stunted and always hungry little guys who harass bass nests and eat their eggs, leaving a few old mossbacks that can’t reproduce.

If this is the problem in that newly purchased pond, try seining as many bluegills as possible from shallow areas for use in flower beds or as woodland raccoon and opossum food, and purchase some bass at least six inches long so they won’t be eaten by the old timers. Then stop all bass fishing, or at least keeping of bass, and let the pond come back to normal. It’ll take a few years, but the end result should be good fishing for both species. And don’t worry about weeds, unless they cover a fair piece of the pond. Weeds are good in that they provide pastures for aquatic insects and snails which are eaten by bass and bluegills, and make good hiding places for fry of both species as well as ambush sites for larger relatives.

In small ponds particularly, where owners kept weeds totally absent, I’ve more than once seen a few large bass and a few large bluegills swimming around, but nothing more. The bass were all head, starving, ate bluegill fry as soon as they hatched since there was no place to hide, and bull bluegills did the same for bass fry. Not a good situation.

What about new ponds? Your first step should be to contact the county Soil and Water Conservation District people, have them check that new acreage for the right location, and offer advice on construction. Then let the Division of Wildlife make recommendations on stocking ratios of bass and bluegills, along with maybe a few redears and channel cats. Then after 3-4 years start fishing bluegills fairly hard, and return bass caught to grow and fight again, though it doesn’t hurt to remove just a few bass each year.

Don’t stock crappie or bullheads, which can overpopulate a pond, and don’t make the sides too steep against the shore. That’ll prevent most weeds, though again weeds are a good thing in moderation, and if you must make them steep, at least leave a few gradually shallowing spots for spawning. If weeds are simply out of the question, then sink some clusters of Christmas trees wired together with a cinderblock or make some brushpiles to give little fish cover. DON’T add white amur (grass carp) to a pond unless weeds are a definitely problem. I’ve heard of people stocking white amur in a brand new pond with no weeds whatever, and that’s silly. The fish simply starve.

It’s a simple formula, really. Get expert help, keep the pond in balance, and make changes as necessary. You too, can have good fishing, duck hunting, frogging, and more with just a little thought and effort.

Soon after ice goes off on Lake Erie and temperatures rise a few crucial degrees, perch begin to move close to shore from their winter deep water retreats.  The females are swollen with eggs now, and the males burdened with twin sacs of milt.  Both are there to gather in large schools and drop their spawn to ensure the next generation, and while some may be only six or seven inches long, a surprising number will be chunky ten to fourteen inchers.  It’s the years best chance to catch big perch and plenty of them, either off a boat or along a handy fishing pier or breakwall.

It takes a lot of energy to maintain those eggs and milt, so fish feed avidly before spawning, during the process, and even more so afterwards to rebuilt energy lost in egg producton.  A magic combination, if you can handle the weather, and warm clothing, a heavy hat and gloves, and plenty of hot coffee can make comfortable even rugged days.

To catch perch requires an ordinary spinning rod or two, a bucket of shiners, and a two or three hook rig.  Some anglers use spreaders, which is basically a wire arm with hooks dangling below each end, and a sinker in the middle.  They’ll drop the spreader to bottom, reel up a few turns, and wait for a bite when boat fishing, and routinely try the same rig even when shore fishing.

It works just fine when perch are plentiful and hungry, biting hard, but boat anglers will find those free swinging arms less sensitive to gentle taps, and shore anglers will find their offerings lying in the mud where fish often can’t see them.  A better choice is two No. 6 snelled hooks on their short side lines above a sinker.  The lines hang almost straight down making even a gentle bite register nicely, and the sinker on lines end keeps anglers in proper contact with bottom even on a wildly swinging boat.  Such “crappie rigs” can often double your catch.

The right rig is important, but there are other factors that can improve a catch.  These early spring perch will bite all day, but as a rule of thumb the best action usually comes just after dawn and in late evening.  Many a time I’ve reached a pier or breakwall or dropped an anchor when it was just cracking dawn, caught fish hand over fist until 9-10 a.m., then had action slack off just as late rising anglers were arriving.

Always use two rods too, especially if you’re shore fishing, and cast one out while keeping the other near shore.  Perch travel in loose schools, roaming along the bottom and seeking food from minnows to bottom insects and little crayfish, and they might be close or 50 yards out.  By fishing two different distances, you can cover the area, and when bites on one rod become frequent, move the other to the same spot.

Use a little patience too, because those schools mean feast or famine.  When a school comes by, they’ll hit hot and heavy, and when it passes, action can slack off to nothing for minutes or even an hour or so.  So, boat anglers have a choice.  If they’re catching fish, just stay put and haul them in.  But if fishing thins, you’d best lift anchor and move until the fish locator finds another school.  Staying put is a bad business for boat anglers when nothing is going on.

Good places to fish?  April perch are found from Toledo to Conneaut, and any breakwall or pier is likely to yield a catch, but one usually top spot is the Huron Pier in downtown Huron, especially for those who walk clear out to the end.  Boat anglers will find good action off Marblehead, near Starve Island, around Kelleys Island, just off the Lorain pier, and parts east.

It’s a simple business.  Dress warm, carry the right gear, have patience, and move as necessary.  An easy formula for a skillet of prime eating.

A few turns and the auger went through, showing ice that was about 3 inches thick, maybe a little less.  We should have walked away, but those juicy bluegill fillets beckoned, and finally I said “Let’s walk out well apart and keep our feet well apart, too.  I think it’ll be okay.”   So, out we went, stepping slowly and carefully while the ice made noises beneath us, drilled our holes, and caught about 20 dandy bluegills apiece.  But I couldn’t enjoy the experience.

I was nervous throughout and constantly thinking “This is stupid.”  So, we bucketed our catch and walked back in.  I remember looking down as we eased toward shore and was horrified to see that the ice was actually bending under my feet.  But we made it, and I made a mental promise “Never again.”  What would have happened if one of us had broken through?  That person would have died.  We had no rope, no ice picks or screwdrivers, no rescue gear at all, and the ice would certainly have been wet around the hole, making it impossibly slick.  For 20 bluegills I might have left my wife a widow and my kids orphans.

There’s an obvious moral to the above story.  Ice fishing is a reasonably safe sport if you follow the rules, but I’m guessing that it’s the most dangerous of winter sports, more dangerous than hunting, which is a relatively safe occupation.  And if you’re going to do it, as I always do, try hard to fish with a friend or several friends, and make sure you have at least 50 feet of rope coiled in a bucket with a loop tied in both ends.

Have those two screwdrivers in a shirt pocket, too.  Jabbing them into the ice will give you traction to pull yourself out, and it’s wise to carry a loud whistle, and a cell phone in a plastic bag.  All of it weighs little, and can save your life.  Personally, unless it’s been a bitter cold winter and the ice is a foot thick, I carry 100 feet of rope and if I’m fishing alone, tie one end to a solid obstacle near shore and the other around my waist.

And I ALWAYS walk out a few feet and drill a hole to make sure the ice is plenty thick, six inches minimum.  It’s said that 4 inches will support a man and I’m sure it will, but even a pond can have springs that eat out ice from below or currents that do the same if there’s a creek running in.  The extra inches provide a margin of safety.

What do you do if a partner goes in?  Get him out and to the truck as soon as possible.  Strip off his clothes, hopefully while another friend is driving to the nearest hospital, rub him down with a towel, shirt, anything, loan him your thick coat, and give him a warm drink if you have one.  That means something without caffeine or alcohol.  With luck you’ll be pulling into the Emergency Entrance well before his uncontrolled shivers turn into mental confusion, apathy and speech that’s slow and slurred.

Again, ice fishing is a fun and productive sport, and reasonably safe most times.  But a catch of walleye, perch, crappie, or bluegill isn’t worth your life.  No fish is.

 It’s a wonderful sport, one that lets you see just what’s going on under that mysterious surface of lapping waves, and puts you into a totally different environment, a new place with new rules. I fell into snorkeling almost by accident. During 3 summers spent at OSU’s Stone Lab field station on South Bass Island, my professors quickly discovered that I knew something about the outdoors and could swim. So, I was soon being given jobs like “Martin, go get me a couple of dozen clams for tomorrow’s dissection,” and being handed a face mask and snorkel. Another professor often needed a partner to help him seek channel cat nests in caves under the island, so we’d use his tank and “buddy breathe” while we searched out nests at night with flashlights.

Lake Erie was a little murky then, but on a good day often had 6-8 feet visibility, and I still remember fishing for smallmouths along Peach Point in the Put-in-Bay harbor, catching nothing, and deciding to put on a mask to go down and see if there were any fish there. I saw dozens! Some of them were big, bronzed and red-eyed lunkers of four pounds or more, that came up and goggled right into my face plate. I swam back up to the boat, climbed in and fished some more. And caught nothing.

But it wasn’t until I tried salt water snorkeling that I really began to love the sport. My first little adventure was a mile or so off Fort Lauderdale where two friends and I used Hawaiian slings to spear enough fish for a dinner. The water was so amazingly clear that I could see brightly colored little fish 20 or 30 feet down, along with moray eels and small sharks. It was wonderful. The water was so absolutely silent that I could hear my heart beating and blood rushing through my arteries, and the reef fish ignored me almost completely, going about their business of probing through the coral for morsels. Another world.

Hawaii was even better. I did a guided boat trip there (lots of these) and they took a dozen of us to a quiet bay with a sunken boat on bottom. Myriads of bright fish, but my real memory maker was three squid swimming in perfect formation below, that turned sideways in unison, eyed me carefully, then hurried on their way. What were they thinking? Where were they going? I’ll never know.

Perhaps my greatest experience came several years ago when I left a cruise ship for a day trip to the island of Bonaire, which many call one of the 10 finest scuba and snorkeling spots in the world. It was amazing. In 90 feet of water I could see fishes just inches long on the bottom. There were angel fish, black parrot fish, wrasse, groupers, yellow tails, and more, an occasional sea turtle, and once a six foot barracuda that took up residence right under our boat. A place of wonder.

My most recent snorkeling experience was at Half Moon Key in the Carribean where I saw my first cleaning wrasse working on a two pound sea bass, and had a fair sized grouper grab my heel and pull in his efforts to chase me away from his little cave. Lots of memories, and all good. You can find a rather surprising number of clubs and organizations around the state dedicated to scuba and skin diving. Google “Ohio scuba divers” and you’ll find enthusiasts from the Columbus Sea Nags and the Ohio Council of Skin & Scuba Divers to the Toledo Submariners and Lakewood Aquamasters. You’ll also find shops and groups that will teach you either sport, sell or rent equipment, and make field trips for hands-on learning. I think you’ll like this sport once you slip beneath the waves for the first time, and come back to it again and again. Definitely addicting.

I’ll be the first to admit that only a few of the hardy try their luck at ice fishing, and most prefer to sit near a warm fire and wonder why some of us are out there freezing solid.  There are some good answers.  First, we’re not freezing solid.  Warm clothing, insulated boots, and Gortex gloves keep us cozy, even hot.  Two, the fishing is GREAT! 

Our hio Division of Wildlife did a study once that showed ice anglers catch more fish per hour than are caught at any other season.  In short, while bad days do occur (they always will), you can usually fill a bucket with good eating in short order.  And coming out of ice water, those bluegill, bass, and crappie are going to be at their tastiest.

Maybe most important of all is the fact that ice fishing is usually a no-brainer.  It’s so simple and easy and requires such low cost gear that it’s hard to go wrong.  No  tricky tactics, no unusual rigs, a rank amateur can learn the basics in minutes and be busy fishing in minutes more.  Here’s how it works.

First of all, it’s best to concentrate on farm ponds, at least initially, and only partly because they freeze over first and have fair populations of fish.   Larger lakes have plenty of fish too, but concentrations can be harder to find, while on ponds you know where they’ll be at seasons beginning.  That’s in the deepest water they can find, and usually such water will be near a dam.

Gear?  You’ll need two short ice rods, 4-6 pound test line, and a selection of  half inch ice spoons available in almost any sporting goods store. Get a few each of white, red, yellow, and green (chartreuse).  That’s enough.  To make my rigs, I tie a quarter ounce sinker on lines end, and two spoons in different colors on short side lines above.  I like one to be white,  the other whatever, and the lower spoon should be inches above the bottom with the second maybe 8-10 inches above.

Maggots, mousies, meal worms, etc. will work, but I’ve found that waxworms almost invariably produce best.  Final step, after checking the depth of the ice near shore is to walk out to the deepest part, bore a hole with your newly purchased ice auger, clear the hole of ice and drop down a baited rig, adjusting your tiny float so it’s half submerged.  Then you start a slow, gentle jigging, a few twitches of the rod tip, then wait, more twitches, then wait. 

Pond fish love movement, and if they’re down there, they’ll start biting in minutes. If not, move 20 feet and bore another hole.  When you find action, drill a second hole, use two rods, jigging each alternately, and start filling that bucket.  Quick, easy, and effortless.  There’ll be days when nothing much happens, usually days when the barometer is bouncing, a storm is coming, or other factors intervene.  But most days you can catch all you want in an hour or two of early morning or late evening fishing.  Reason enough to be out there on the ice.

The Ohio Division of Wildlife often stocks rainbows  in selected lakes and reservoirs and has for long years now, and while many are caught out of each spring and sometimes fall stocking, a fair number aren’t.  They survive and grow until some places almost certainly have trout that will reach several pounds.  One of these battlers on lines end (or even a 12 incher) would be a welcome change from your average six inch bluegill.

If all this sounds like a good idea, and you have a lake or reservoir in mind, your first step will be to make sure ice fishing is allowed.  A call to the nearest police department should answer this question.  If it’s “Yes”, you’ll seek these lively and hard fighting fish a little differently from ordinary panfish.

Rainbow trout have excellent eyesight and in super clear winter water, you’ll need thin line indeed, 2 pound test, 4 at the most.  And since these winter fish are feeding mostly on very small provender, zooplankton mostly, you’ll need small lures to attract them.  A tiny glow-white micro-tube jig is a good choice, and since trout love mealworms, tip it with a single worm.  If there’s snow on the ice, causing a low light environment below, stick with glo-white and take a few other colors that glow, like chartreuse and yellow, too.

If the ice is clear and smooth causing good lighting below, then turn to black, brown, and pink.  Another good trout bait is a 1/64 ounce black jighead with a black chenille dressing.  Take them all and try several until you find the magic one.  You’ll always want to use two rods and fish one just a foot or so off bottom, because often they’re down there probing for insect larvae in the mud.  Be prepared to have the bait attacked by an occasional perch or other panfish when fishing deep.

But trout often suspend and swim at mid-depths or even higher seeking those zooplankton, so start the second several feet above bottom, and every five minutes or so, move it a couple of feet higher.  One or the other should start making contact sooner or later, then you can switch the second rod to that depth.

Panfishermen follow a routine of jigging one rod up and down several inches, then let it rest while they jig the second.  Trout might be spooked by such fast moving lures, so it’s better to just twitch the bait a little, maybe holding some line in one hand and moving it gently occasionally.  And when you get a strike, have a loose drag and a gentle hand in landing your fish.  Give a 15 inch rainbow something to pull against, and they can snap 2-4 pound test line like thread.

Here’s a final thought. Many lakes and upground reservoirs have a good population of walleye, so if you like a mixed bag, fish one rod for trout, the other for walleye.  In low light conditions, a glo-lure, maybe a very small jigging Rapala or  spoon tipped with a minnow, can bring you a good catch, and in high light conditions, use ordinary jigging lures with a minnow.  A mix of trout and walleye should send any angler home smiling, and mke a welcome change from pond panfish.

Actually, reaching this biggest inland Michigan lake can take a long time if farmers travel with their wife and kids.  Because you’ll need to stop at the huge Cabela’s outdoor store which lies just off Route 23 and not far north of the Michigan border.  That store has everything for outdoor oriented landowners from every imaginable kind of boat and outdoor clothing to fishing gear and weaponry.

Frankenmuth lies just north of Flint, and you’ll need to stop there, too, to visit dozens of shops in an alpine setting, have a fried chicken lunch at the famous Bavarian Inn, and visit even more famous Bronner’s Christmas shop, which has seemingly every kind of Christmas ornament, artificial tree, painting, music, and knicknack known to man.

Still, you’ll reach Houghton Lake eventually, with most of your travel over 4-6 lane highways that have 70 mph speed limits, and you’ll find the lake and surrounding area classic Michigan.  That means white barked birch trees, hemlocks, and bracken fern, clear, clean water, and a hint of wood smoke on the early morning air.  With Labor Day long gone, there’ll be few people compared to busy summer days, and prices for the innumerable cabins, motel rooms, and campsites lower than usual.

Better yet, since the autumn foliage turn starts north and gradually progresses south, you can leave Ohio with its green trees only touched with reds and golds, and drive into full fledged autumn which is where Houghton will shortly be.  There’s lots to do in and around the lake, and fishing is just one of the sports waiting.  Stop in at a place like Lyman’s Tackle & Bait Shop on M55 near the west end of the lake, and you’ll hear plenty about what’s biting and where.  Lyman’s also has several rental cabins with cooking facilities.

The lake has excellent panfishing for rockbass, bluegill, redears, and crappie, and one easy way to catch some is to work  nightcrawlers or waxworms around small weed beds.  There’s very good northern pike action too, something scarce in Ohio, and one tactic is to rent a boat at such places as the L & G Boat Rental or Edgewater Beach, again on the west end, and troll right off their docks with black and grey sinking Rapalas, spinnerbaits, and stick baits.

Since the lake covers 22,000 acres it can be fun to take the family and just boat, exploring here and there, and watching flocks of mallard ducks.  Or paddle a canoe down a little river where you might see anything from deer and wild turkeys to bobcats and black bear.  Or go for long hikes in thousands of acres of public land nearby.  Plan your seasons right, and you can do some hunting on those acres of public land, too.  I arrowed my first Michigan deer just a few miles out of town some years ago, and shot my first Michigan ruffed grouse and black squirrel there.

It’s always nice to make the short drive (10 miles or so) to Higgins Lake just north, and see what really clear water looks like in this haven for lake and rainbow trout.  Sometimes you can see fish finning 40 feet below, and swim, if it isn’t too cold yet, on a white sugar sand beach.  My wife likes to travel on Houghton Lake trips, so we take time to explore little towns like Roscommon and Prudenville, St. Helens and West Branch to browse through little shops, country markets, and antique stores.

On our last trip we made a longer drive to Sleeping Bear Dunes National Park in the northwest corner of the Lower Peninsula.  And climbed high rising dunes where many a movie actor had ridden camels and fought Berbers in the shifting sands.  Against a background of impossibly blue Lake Michigan water it was quite a sight.

It’s a nice place to visit, this Houghton Lake area, and again, far different from northern Ohio.  Whether you go to hurry around and pursue multiple activitities or just sit in a lawn chair and watch waves ripple onto shore, you’ll need information.  For fishing tips, try Lyman’s at (517) 422-3231 and for any other needs, call the Houghton Lake Chamber of Commerce at 1-800-248-LAKE.  Then plan  a  pleasant, low key trip to a good place.

Looking back over a checkered career I’ve fished for stream bronzebacks in a little creek outside of Dayton, in Ohio Brush Creek, the Kokosing, the Mohican, the Sandusky clear down to Bucyrus, the Huron, Vermillion, upper Olentangy, the list goes on and on.  And caught bass in every one of them.  In the wading streams I asked landowners for permission first, then wore shorts and old tennis shoes to probe the pools, long, smooth runs, and the base of riffles.

On trips to the Vermillion River, for example, I remember seeing another angler just once, this after I got away from bridges, and was so surprised that I just stood there dumbfounded.  The other angler did, too.  But I did see deer and was glared at by suspicious groundhogs.  Fox squirrels chattered in the treetops and wood ducks rose in flocks with their mournful whistle.  It was near wilderness, and the bass slammed into my offerings as if they’d never seen a lure.  Possibly, they hadn’t.

It doesn’t take much to do a little stream fishing.  I invariably travel with a whippy ultra-lite rod and 4-6 pound test line.  My “tacklebox” fits in a shirt pocket and usually has a quarter ounce, pearl-grey Roostertail spinner, a black jig or two with twistertails, a tiny surface Pop-R, and a minature crankbait of some kind that will imitate crayfish.  That’s it.  If these won’t bag stream bass, nothing will.

It never hurts to take mosquito repellent as well, though with the summer long drought, mosquitoes have been nearly non-existant so far.  And maybe a cell phone for a “Mayday” just on the slight chance that you slip and are injured.  I also like a very light little backpack to hold a sandwich or two, an apple, and a container of water.  But that’s it. 

Most days I start out with the spinner, working runs in early morning and the base of riffles where bass gather to feed on hapless morsels tumbling through white water.  As morning progresses and fish move back to deeper pools I usually switch to a crankbait first, then bump the bottom with black jigs.  It’s a tactic that seldom fails to succeed.

Don’t forget that even very small streams and creeks can hold smallmouth bass.  One that lies just a few miles from home winds through pasture land and timber and averages just 3-4 inches deep.  But there are small pools here and there, some just a foot or so , and others perhaps three or four feet.  The last time I fished it, my catch was over a dozen bronzebacks, along with several rockbass, a few big chubs, and even a bluegill. 

 The bass, all returned to fight again, were like stream smallies anywhere, averaging 6-10 inches with an occasional fish that went 12 or 13.  But they were vicious fighters, leaping high with their red eyes glowing.  Lots of fun on light tackle, and worth a trip over the next weeks.

Lots of other people are in the same boat, old, young, in-between, would-be anglers who don’t know what to do, and are simply confused by fishing jargon (crankbaits, pig and jig, working structure, etc.)  So, here are the absolute nuts and bolts of learning to fish, the sport boiled down to its simplest terms.  Cut this column out, hang it on the wall, pass it on to a relative or friend.  If they follow these instructions, they WILL catch fish.  At least most of the time.

 The first thing you’ll need is basic gear, and the place to buy it is at a good sporting goods store, or a department store that specializes in sport gear and has clerks that know their business.  Getting it from a place where the salesperson can’t tell a rod from a 12 gauge shotgun is pointless.  You’ll need a rod and reel first, and the best for beginners is a combo kit that has rod, reel, and line already in place.  Get a closed face reel, because they’re simple to cast.  Just squeeze the lever and release it as you whip the rod forward.  A clerk can demonstrate this.

You’ll need two kinds of very inexpensive gear, one set for float and a second for bottom fishing.  The float should be one of the thin pencil types, not a round red and white one that offers resistance to biting fish.  Buy a small packet of No. 6 hooks and a small packet of splitshot that are a little smaller than a dried pea.  Tie the hook on lines end, clamp a splitshot about six inches above, and clip on the float about 3 – 3 1/2 feet above that.  You’re in business.

Farm ponds with their abundant bluegills and bass are ideal for float fishing, so you’ll need to drive on country roads and knock on a few doors.  But once permission has been gained, bait that hook with garden dug worms, purchased waxworms, or a piece of nightcrawler, and toss it out.  Not to the middle of the pond, but where most of the fish are – within 20 – 30 feet of shore.  Then let it sit, moving the float toward you a little every 30 seconds or so.  That float should start sliding under with a fish on the business end soon.  If not, cast in other directions, and move along the shore until you find a hotspot.  Nothing to it.

For bottom fishing, you’ll need a few one ounce sinkers and a packet of snelled No. 6 hooks.  These are hooks with line already attached and a loop at the end for easy tying onto your line.  Tie two snells about a foot apart with the sinker on lines end a few inches below the bottom snell.  Again, nothing to it.  If you’re heading up to Lake Erie for pier fishing, place minnows on the hooks, toss the baits out a short distance and maybe a second rig out a little further, tighten line, and wait for the rod tip to start bouncing.

If you’re fishing a larger lake for bottom feeders like channel cats, carp, bullheads, etc., bait with nightcrawlers, shrimp, or chicken livers, and again toss out the morsels, tighten line, turn your rod tip at an angle, place it in a forked stick, and tighten line.  When you get a good bite, start reeling.  Will these two techniques produce a full stringer every time?  Of course not.  Even veterans don’t score every time. But they’ll work for you, and turn any amateur into a successful angler most days.

I found some answers at a last fall netting survey of Pleasant Hill Lake (Ohio) conducted by District 2 fishery biologists.  The men had placed 10 trap nets around the lake, and ran the nets for four days.  I went along on the last day, and that morning was an eye opener.  Trap nets are tied along shore, have a single hanging net leading out into the lake which fish bump into and are led into a trap with easy access, but nearly impossible escape.  The nets will catch almost anything that swims between shore and the trap, and are good for sampling specific fish populations.

The first net was set about halfway between the marina and the dam on the marina side, and it yielded a good catch.  There were 40 crappie, mostly 7-8 inchers, but with a good selection of larger fish in the 9-11 inch size, and a dozen or so bluegill and pumpkinseeds, but nothing else.  No carp, bass, saugeye, or other species.  “The crappie are in about 8-12 feet of water at this time of year”  one biologist said.  “And that’s where we’re catching them.”

As we headed toward the dam and checked nets on the lodge side, the catch dropped off to almost nothing.  The water here is rocky and drops off very quickly to serious depths, and it obviously wasn’t crappie country.  The first net had 16 very average fish, the second, 17 near a downed tree, and the third just 9.  It didn’t take long to figure out where to fish in autumn lakes.  They were gathered in areas where the shoreline and bottom sloped gradually, and best results were from mid-lake past the launch ramp and up into the shallow southeast end.

Pleasant Hill Lake is a fair drive from here, but the same tactics will work on lakes much closer to home.  Again, the fish will be deeper now, but otherwise they’ll fall to standard crappie tactics.  One good choice on a day with only light winds would be to lip hook a minnow, squeeze on a splitshot 6 inches above, and slowly wind drift along the shore in those 8-12 foot depths.  When you hit a fish, drop over a small buoy, anchor, and fish the bottom with gentle casts in all directions.  Do remember, they’ll be right on bottom, so fishing just a few feet down with a bobber won’t work.

Another good choice is to drift or anchor here and there and use small jigs with twister tails, maybe a 1/8 or 1/16th ounce in white, yellow, pink, or chartreuse.  If it takes a splitshot to get them down quickly, use one, and it wouldn’t hurt to add a very small minnow to the hook.  Then jig the bait gently along just above the bottom and as before, when a bite comes, stop and fish the area thoroughly.  The obvious ideal is to do your fishing with a portable little fish locator, and I’d recommend one of these to any boat fisherman.  Watch your screen as you move along, and just fish the blips as they turn up.  That’s easy.

Anglers who have no boat can still take crappie in lakes that hold them.  Fish with a slip sinker and floating Lindy, or a two hook bottom rig and minnows, make short casts only into that magic 8-12 foot depth, and keep moving, stopping in one place to fan cast with two rods for half an hour, then move on until you find some. A little tougher, but the tactic will produce.

This long pier has been a fall hotspot since I was a pup, and it should continue this month, if not right now, then soon.  Many an angler just walks out a short distance and drops a line, but the rule of thumb is that the further out you walk on this smooth topped concrete structure, the better fishing generally is.  The very best action is clear out at the end around the lighthouse, and that’s a long hike for anglers laden with rods, minnow buckets, maybe a cooler, and food.  But it’s usually worth it.  Try at least to reach territory around the blockhouse.  That’s often a pretty good spot.

Gear for the Huron Pier or any other is a spreader for most, but spreaders don’t work well here unless you’re fishing straight down.  Cast them out and the minnows are buried or half buried in Huron River mud, hard for perch to find.  A better rig is the standard two snelled No. 6 hooks above a one ounce sinker.  Fished fairly close to the pier they’ll be above the bottom and easily seen.  If possible, always take a long handled net on Huron Pier trips, and I mean LONG because it’s a fair distance down to the water.  Steelhead come upstream here each fall and winter, and last October I hooked two in one day on shiner minnows, but without a net had no chance to land them.

There are other piers that often produce perch, and one is the Catawba State Park pier on the northwest corner of Catawba Island.  It’s a short pier, but has the advantage of plenty of parking, restrooms, and a play area for kids.  You might also give thought to Mazurik and Dempsey Access, both of which lie near Marblehead and have lots of parking, restrooms, and are handicap accessible.

Pier fishing is always an on again-off again proposition, but boat fishing is close to sure fire if you follow the rules.  Right now, perch are hitting around the northern cans of the Camp Perry firing range, between Green and Rattlesnake islands, between Gull and Kelleys Island shoals, and off Cedar Point with some taken near the Marblehead lighthouse.  All you’ll need is a boat large enough to handle big water, and some good friend is likely to have one.

There are two ways to go when you’re fishing with friends on a boat, and one is to simply motor out and head for a pack of anchored craft.  They’ll be perch fishing and if they’re catching fish, probably you will, too.  A better way is to cruise a likely area with or without anchored boats, and use a fish locator to find a school below.  Anchor and work it until the fish move on, then up anchor and search out another school.  Sitting in one spot all day taking only an occasional perch is not a smart move..  I was up to the lake a few weeks ago, fishing just south of Kelleys Island.  We found a nice school, and filled our 150 fish limit in just over an hour, catching many doubles and even triples.  It can happen if you hunt them.

Yet another way to catch Erie perch is on a headboat, and many headboats are turning to perch since walleye fishing is so slow.  There are head boats scattered all over western Lake Erie, though they’re heavily concentrated near Port Clinton, and these boats offer plenty of elbow room most days and comfortable fishing usually under an overhead awning.  They might or might not provide bait for your $25 – 35 ticket, but they’ll usually provide fish since their captains are out daily and know where the schools are holding.  For a list of headboats, call the Ottawa County Visitors Bureau at 1-800-441-1271.  Then head north to search out some good eating.

Because muskies are cold blooded, which means their metabolism varies with water temperature. That water is hot right now, but cooling, so not only are muskies feeding heavily to maintain body functions and grow, but they’ve an extra incentive to put on fat for the coming winter. In short, some big fish are out there prowling and hungry, and right now is a great time to catch a truly large and hard fighting lunker.

There are a number of lakes that hold nice muskellunge, but according to the Ohio Huskie Muskie Club, a top lake in past years has been our own Clear Fork Reservoir. Many years Clear Fork has produced more Huskie Muskies, Honorable Mentions, and fish under 30 inches than its close competitor, Leesville Lake. What’s even more important is that nearly all of those fish were returned to the water, and are waiting again to slash into your bait.

Tactics for catching the local whoppers hasn’t varied much over the past 20 years. I do my Clear Fork fishing with a sturdy seven foot Black Beauty rod, an open faced reel filled with 20 pound test line, and lures that range from Bagley Monster Shads, usually in blue and silver, to WiggleWarts, HotnTots, and various stick baits. And while I far prefer to cast for my fish, I’ll be the first to admit that trolling produces more strikes, this for a simple reason: your offerings are in the water and at proper depth all of the time.

Casters have their lure high, low, or out of the water too often, which cuts their odds. Lots of local anglers fish alone, which is fine, but those who troll have better luck working with a partner. That allows four rods, and the smart ones will have two well back and just above or below the thermocline, another lure wiggling closer, and the fourth not far behind the prop wash. They’ll change lures every half hour or so too, and vary depths a little to cover all bases. With luck, sooner or later a rod will buck and a minature torpedo take off or hit the air currents. That’s when it’s all worth while.

Since I often fish alone, I like to mix and match my fishing tactics. I’ll troll with two rods as long as I can stand it, following “the route.” The route starts at the first island east of the marina, crosses over to pass down the north side, crosses over again not far from the dam and up the south side to the first island. Since most fish are in deeper water this time of year, some anglers skip the first island and concentrate their trolling between the last island and the dam.

When I can’t stand trolling anymore, I like to stop at the spring, which lies along the north shore about two thirds of the way between a bay leading to the Boy Scout Camp and the dam, and cast until my blood starts circulating again. The water is cooler here, and nice muskies often stack up in the invigorating water.

I like to stop at an underwater island even closer to the dam too, and cast for a while. That island has turned up many a good fish. Here’s a final thought: consider doing some fishing at night. A friend of mine likes to fish Leesville Lake, and spends his day loafing in the campground and taking long naps. Come dark he’s out there trolling and casting, often using splashy top water baits for the latter. “I’ve caught as high as nine fish over a long weekend at night.” he said.

Several years ago a friend of mine went scuba diving in a campground lake, and was amazed.  He found a stump bed well offshore that had a school of crappie hanging among the stubs.  “Some of those fish were 12 or 13 inches.” he said.  “and no one knew they were there.”  Then there was another friend who was fishing off Kelleys Shoals in Lake Erie, caught little, and put on a tank and face mask to scuba a little bay along Kelleys Island.  He hoped to find a few anchors and maybe some snagged fishing lures, but what turned up was much better.

“The bottom of that cove was paved with fish,” he said.  “I don’t know why they were there, but there were dozens, maybe hundreds of nice walleye and smallmouth bass.  I got back in the boat and limited out on both with not another boat within half a mile.”

 Those are typical experiences among outdoorsmen who’ve taken to snorkeling and scuba diving, an activity that’s slowly growing around the area and state.  Most of us have sat in a boat on some lake or river and wondered just what was down there.  This sport offers an opportunity to find out, and not only see where fish are swimming, but find some interesting things on the bottom.

Scuba diving is a fun sport, but it’s much more than a matter of buying a tank and basic gear and splashing over the side of a boat.  Like anything else, there’s an element of danger, whether you dive freshwater or salt, and you’ll need some basic training.  Luckily, there are plenty of places to get it. 

There’s an organization called Ohio Scuba with qualified instructors that has offices within a 20 mile radius of Centerville, Wilmington, Columbus, and over 20 other cities around the state.  Visit Ohio Scuba and the web should turn up one nearby that will teach you the basics and offer certification with instruction in a handy swimming pool, then hands-on diving at a nearby lake or quarry. 

You might look into the Ohio Council of Skin & Scuba Divers, too.  Secretary Vivan Duff is based at New Holland, Ohio, and can be contacted for more information.  And once you’ve learned this fascinating sport, there are plenty of places to try your luck.

The Division of Wildlife allows scuba and skin diving at 29 of its lakes, including clear water Dow Lake just outside of Athens where you’re likely to see rainbow trout as well as bass, catfish, and crappie.  There are private places to dive too, like Twin Quarries near Circleville, two 10 acre nearly transparent quarries where, according to their website, you can take courses in anything from basic open water diving to wreck diving.  Call them at (740) 474-9530.  And Gilboa Quarry in northwestern Ohio not only has trout but paddlefish waiting to be watched.  Their number is (419) 456-3300.

In fact, if you check out Ohio scuba diving on the web, you’ll not only find instructors and places to dive, but new and used equipment, charters to Lake Erie for wreck diving (that can be exciting), and even a magazine called Scuba Diving Magazine.

Here’s a final thought.  I love to snorkel in salt water, and I’ve watched beautiful fish and coral reef denizens from Hawaii to Bonaire and Aruba.  It’s a wonderful experience to swim among teeming schools of brightly colored yellowtails, parrotfish, and angels.  And even more fun if you can don tanks and face masks, and go right to the bottom to swim for hours among them.  That alone is reason enough to learn scuba diving.

Bob Calala and his two brothers Lewis and David, have been doing extremely well on their liquid acres, and their annual income comes from raising crayfish and shrimp. The trio has a farm just north of New London, Ohio on State Route 60, and most of that farm is taken up with farm ponds of up to several acres. “My dad started the business in 1963, raising bass and bluegill for stocking with us boys to help.” Bob said. “But since stocking is usually a one shot deal, we started looking elsewhere, and crayfish filled the bill.”

They picked a species of craw that was easy going, non-aggressive, and amenable to pond life, stocking an average of 200 – 300 adults per acre. They tried for a good balance to make ideal growth, keeping close track of populations. Since crayfish are omnivores, willing to eat either vegetation or meat, the brothers supplemented as needed with alfalfa hay and sometimes with shrimp food. They did well.

Because there’s a major market for soft shelled crayfish, which are used as bait for many kinds of game fish. A couple of their workers soon learned to pick out the soft shelled ones, individuals who had recently shed their outer shell and hadn’t yet grown a new one, and these were sold to wholesalers, who in turn sold them to bait dealers.

Hard shelled types found a fair market too, and these were also netted out in two man seines and sold to wholesalers. “If there’s one thing I’ve long learned,” Bob said, “it’s that there’s never enough bait, always a shortage sooner or later and somewhere or other. We’re selling millions of craws these days, and we sell them in several states. One of our best areas is right here in northcentral and northern Ohio.” Incidentally, the crayfish are very edible, and can be used as they are in Louisiana and elsewhere for boiled craws, crayfish gumbo, and other dishes. The tails are white after boiling and go well with a tangy cocktail sauce.

Shrimp didn’t enter the picture until just a few years ago. The Division of Wildlife (DOW) prohibited shrimp farming because they feared that like any other exotic (carp, English sparrows, round gobies, zebra mussels, etc.) they might escape ponds and infiltrate lakes and rivers elsewhere. But the DOW found out that (1) they die at 55 degree temperatures or less, and (2) they have to make a transition to saltwater and back to fresh before they can breed. No problem there.

The brothers decided on Malaysian prawns, a marvelously tasty crustacean, and stocked their ponds with juveniles from Texas and Kentucky. But that wasn’t really satisfactory, so the brothers decided to build their own hatchery and raise juveniles for personal stocking and sale. “They turned out to be phenomenal growers,” Bob said, “faster than anything I’ve ever heard of. We stock them on June 1 at 0.5 grams and by mid-September when we harvest them, they’ve often reached a quarter pound and up to 12 inches in length!”

Their basic stocking ratio is around 30,000 shrimp per acre and they’ll eat about $5,000 in shrimp food. What are the finances here? According to Calala, “We sold a man with a new pond 31,000 juveniles at 8 cents each ($2500), and he spent another $2,500 on feed. Then sold them for $6-12 per pound. That’s a good profit.”

It goes without saying that a pond must be empty of fish and anything else that will eat shrimp, since these are “swimming porkchops.” And he sells only live shrimp when harvest time rolls around. “I don’t do anything about the selling.” Bob said. “I just put an ad in a few local papers, give readers the date and place, and tell them to bring a cooler and ice. They buy them right off the pond bank.”

Bob Calala, incidentally, is President of the Ohio Aquaculture Association, and is more than knowledgeable about aquaculture. “Did you know that oil is the No. 1 U.S. import, and seafood No. 2?” he said. “And of the seafood, shrimp is No. 1. There’s a big demand for shrimp as food and soon for live bait. We raised 300,000 shrimp this year, and next year it’ll be a half million.”

But that’s not so for avid Mansfield, Ohio-area fisherman  Shawn Woerlein, and his friends among the Carp Anglers Group (cagstaff@carpanglersgroup.com), a national organization with a local membership that’s steadily increasing, and where Shawn served as Ohio Chairman in 2005.  “I just like to carp fish.” Shawn said, “and I rarely fish for anything else.  They’re an untouched fishery in the U.S.  which is geared for bass fishing with big tournaments, crappie events, etc.  And you can carp fish in almost any lake and catch some.”

Shawn had other reasons for seeking carp.  He noted that a four pound carp could beat the socks off a four pound largemouth, fighting-wise, and that they were a super kids fish, one that was plentiful, fast biting, and hard scrapping on light tackle.  “Kids love them.”  He has a point.  The first big fish I ever caught was a seven pound carp taken in the Big Scioto River, and I nearly wet my six year old pants before I finally landed the fish.  What a thrill!

Woerlein doesn’t just head for some local lake or river and toss in a worm, though the method will catch you carp.  He knows that in Great Britain carp are the No. 1 game fish, and Brits have developed some excellent techniques for taking the big ones, so he follows closely their methods.  For example, he uses a 3 way swivel on lines end with 8-10 pound mono and a No. 4 or 6 hook on one eyelet, and a half to one ounce sinker on the other attached by a rubber band.  If a fish breaks free, which big ones sometimes do, they’ll only have to contend with the hook, since the sinker quickly breaks off.

Bait?  He follows British tactics on that, too.  His favorite is “boilies”, round doughballs  which he buys from RoyalBaits.com in Georgia or from WackerBaits.com in Chicago.  “I probably have 300 pounds of boilies at the house” he said, and I have them in every flavor from mulberry to tiger nut and strawberry jam to pineapple/banana.”  He also experiments with making his own doughballs and boilies, using corn flour and Bisquick mixed with water to make a thick dough, then adding anything from vanilla to grape jam for flavoring.  Rolled into balls they become doughballs, dropped into boiling water to harden, and they become boilies.

He rarely uses nightcrawlers since they attract mostly smaller fish, but is willing to turn to canned sweet corn when nothing else is working.  Carp love sweet corn.  Shawn believes in baiting too, to attract lots of carp, and routinely will buy a bag of shelled field corn, boil it soft, then shoot slingshot loads of corn into an area he’s fishing “to get their heads down.”

If you’re wondering what this carp hunters largest fish so far is, it’s a 27 pounder caught at East Harbor State Park.  East Harbor is a great place for carp fishermen, so good that his group, which meets and fishes each month, once took over 800 pounds of fish there.  He likes northcentral Ohio lakes, too, his favorite being Charles Mill which has great numbers of fish, including many mirror carp.  Shawn recommends fishing an area across the bay from the marina or an area due south of the marina that’s shallow and mud bottomed.  “But you can catch some almost anywhere.” he said.

Does this angler eat his catch?  Never.  He returns every fish taken, but said he’d heard that smoked carp were good.  He’s right, especially when the fish are just 1-4 pounds, no larger.  But carp can be eaten fried too, again young fish that are filleted and the “mud streak” or lateral line removed.  I can personally testify that taken from clean waters  they’re as tasty as white bass and white perch, though not nearly as good as an 18 inch walleye or yellow perch.  Catch a few this summer and give them a try.  You might be surprised.

Punderson is in northeastern Ohio, specifically in Geauga County off State Route 87.  It’s a unique spot with a lodge like no other, residing on land originally bought by the Lemuel Punderson family.  The lodge is an English Tudor-style house built in 1929 on a hill overlooking the lake and with its 31 guest rooms, dining and meeting rooms and outdoor and indoor swimming pool is far different from any other state park lodge.  An estimated 500,000 people visit pretty little Punderson Lake with its 741 acres of surrounding state park, and while the total area is small, they find plenty to do.

Fishing, for example, is as unusual as the Tudor lodge.  The lake is deep and clear, up to 75 feet in mid-lake, and while it has good action for largemouth bass, and fair numbers of panfish and cats, the big attraction here is golden trout, some of which run to several pounds.  The lake is stocked yearly with these pretty color phases of a rainbow trout, and territory near the marina is a hotspot for those fishing deep with waxworms, corn, cheese, worms, and salmon eggs.  They’re caught through the winter ice too, on much the same offerings.  Largemouth bass are taken mostly in spring and early summer by anglers fishing the shoreline with crankbaits and spinnerbaits.

Boaters who simply want to explore like this little lake with its scenic coves and clear water, and spend pleasant hours probing its shallow areas  There’s a small marina concession with rental boats in season on the north  end of the lake, along with a launch ramp for those who bring their own craft.  Electric motors only are permitted, and many use no motors at all, launching canoes and kayaks to paddle and explore the area.

Those who choose not to enjoy Punderson’s unusual lodge will still find plenty of facilities.  For example there are 26 cottages that sleep six persons each.  Each has two bedrooms, a bath with shower, complete kitchens, and a dining area.  Campers enjoy the 196 site campground built on a former Indian village, with shower houses, flush toilets, electricity, and pet camping.  There are also five full hookups that have water and sewer service.  And if none of these please you, there are plenty of motels and B & B’s within reasonable driving distance.  Hard to go wrong on accommodations.

 Other things to do?  Those who like to hammer a golf ball will find a championship 18 hole public golf course waiting to test their skill.  Reservations are advisable, especially on weekends, and if something is forgotten, the pro shop should have any necessary merchandise, and even a snack bar.

Outdoor types will like the 14 miles of hiking trails, most of it a 10 mile network on the west side of the park. A nice short trail, the Erie Trail, begins at the campground and continues as a 1.5 mile loop that winds around little Stump Lake, while the Iroquois Trail follows the shoreline from the marina to the lodge.  Hikers who tread softly and slow will often see whitetail deer, squirrels, rabbits, beaver, shorebirds and waterfowl on early morning and late evening hikes.  They’ll see some interesting plants too, especially in spring, plants like wild geranium, blue-eyed grass, and pennywort among many others.

Another unusual offering of Punderson State Park is a wide range of winter activities.  Since it’s located in the heart of Ohio’s snow belt, the area has everything from a lighted sled hill to snowmobile trails.  There are cross country ski trails too, well groomed, and those who have no skis can rent some at the Sports Chalet.  A prime place to visit, take the kids, ski, ice skate, and ice fish, then hurry back to the lodge for hot chocolate and a crackling fire. 

 There’s more to do around this lively county.  Boaters might visit the Geauga County Historical Museum in Burton, and nearby Century Village, a reconstruction of an 1800′s village typical of those once scattered through the Western Reserve region.  Short day trips to Nelson-Kennedy Ledges and Tinker’s Creek state parks can be fun, too.  Both offer good day-use facilities, including picnic areas and hiking trails.  And don’t forget Kirkland Village, which showcases life in the 1860′s.

Visitors who need information will find plenty.  For specific questions, try the park office at (440) 564-2279.  For lodge and cottage reservations, call (440) 282-7275, and for even more answers, try 1-800-BUCKEYE or OhioTourism.com.  Then plan a trip to an unusual lake.

These days excellent catches are being made at big lakes like Charles Mill, Pleasant Hill, Delaware, and such traditional hotspots as Indian and Buckeye lakes.  They’re searching hard for food in smaller lakes too, like Knox and Spencer, and in rivers from the Muskingum to Huron.  In fact, almost anywhere you go is catfish territory this month, and many a local angler will find a likely lake or river, throw in a bait or two and catch some.  Hopefully.

But if you’re looking for a stringer full of fat catfish, there are ways to do it, and one fine way is to fish funnels.  Channel cats (and shovelheads, too) traditionally start migrating to their feeding grounds in late evening.  They favor fairly shallow water with a mix of mud, gravel, and/or rock bottom where they can seek minnows, aquatic insects, crayfish, and other tasty morsels.  Then at or before daylight, depending on feeding success, they’ll head back to their deeper water layup spots for the day. 

One classic example of a funnel is at Charles Mill Lake where cats swim under the Route 430 bridge, coming from all directions, then head north to spread out and feed.  That bridge sees a lot of catfish moving through a narrow area or funnel and produces excellent fishing.  Back before Lake Erie channel cats got a bad report card for their PCB’s, I loved to fish a boat channel that went from the main lake into East Harbor.  Cats moved along that narrow channel nightly and I could easily catch a dozen or so fine keepers. 

You can find other funnels in many Ohio lakes, just looking at a map for narrow, restricted areas into wide feeding grounds.  Then setting up for business before twilight.  Rivers are a little tougher, but not much, and top places to fish the larger ones is just below their river dams.  Bait fish from shad to minnows tumble through the gates, stunned and easy pickings for waiting catfish, and if there are no dams in smaller rivers, try the bottoms of riffles just above deep pools.

How to catch them is easy, too.  Many an area angler will simply head for a likely spot, rig up two No. 4 snelled hooks above a one ounce sinker, bait with night crawlers and toss it out.  They catch fish, too.  But cats feed at night mostly by smell, and scent washes off a crawler fairly fast.  It’s better to use shrimp which holds its odor much longer, or even better, take along a small hand seine, catch some shad, and cut them in pieces for cut bait.  There are lots of prepared baits too, available in sporting goods stores, with a rich, fishy odor, and these work fine.

Few catfish hunters indeed fish with bait below a float, but sometimes a bobber works better than a bottom rig.  Especially, where the bottom is soft mud or has lots of vegetation.  A float will not only keep your offering above such concealing bottoms, but move it around to cover more territory.  Here’s a final thought that will up your catch.  Tie a long line to a can of fish base catfood or jack mackerel, punch in lots of holes, and toss it out.  Then fish just down current.  I’ve done this a number of times and seldom failed to haul home a heavy stringer.

I rarely go with plans to catch as many fish as possible, but I did on my last pond bass trip, because the question arose “How many bass can I catch in exactly two hours?”  And since the results might interest many readers who also like to fish farm ponds, this is what happened.

First of all, I chose an old pond that had been around for at least 20 years, meaning some lunker largemouths should be swimming in its waters.  It was a woodland pond with acres of trees and grass around that kept it from going murky in heavy rains, and the shoreline had a few cattails, some overhanging willows, scattered weed beds, and both deep and shallow areas.  Ideal.

I’d picked a perfect morning too, clear and cool with fluffy cumulus clouds sailing across a blue sky.  Birds were singing in trees nearby, and an old bullfrog who’d escaped the raccoons so far was booming from beneath overhanging shoreline brush.  Since early morning fishing is usually best I arrived at 6:45 a.m. and found the 3/4 acre pond polished silver without a ripple.  It was too much to resist.  There was no chance because the pond was “dead” without a single bluegill breaking the surface and no bass boiling around the weeds chasing down breakfast, but I still opened with a surface bait, a Pop-R, hoping to find a bass on the surface willing to explode like a depth charge below my offering.  No takers.

Then I got serious, clipping on a half ounce pearl grey Roostertail spinner with pure white tail, a lure that I dearly love for pond fishing because its lead body casts like a bullet, it has great eye appeal, and by varying retrieve speed I can fish it deeper or shallow as I wish.  The Roostertail accounted for six bass as I worked around the shore, ranging from six inches up to a pound and a half.  That was a good start.

I’ve caught hundreds of largemouths on this little spinner, but rarely a big one except in early spring when fish are looking for small morsels, so my second choice was a chartreuse spinnerbait.  That lure produced three more bass and two lost fish that ranged up to nearly three pounds.  A black and grey sinking Rapala was next, turning up a single bass and one more lost, then a blue and silver RattlTrap hit the water and accounted for another.  By that time I’d circled the pond several times and covered the water thoroughly, probably hooking most of the bass that were interested in feeding, and time was running out.  But I’d caught no real whoppers, and believed I knew why.

It’s likely that the old mossbacks were hiding in the ponds deepest part, and I simply couldn’t reach them.  A plastic worm wouldn’t work on the green slime (filamentous algae) covered bottom, and deep running crankbaits fouled before they ran far.  A big live minnow fished below a bobber would likely have worked, but I had none.  Still, when I quit at exactly 8:45 a.m. I’d caught 11 bass in various sizes, lost a total of five, and had three missed strikes, for a total of 19 interested fish.  And caught three lunker bluegills on the Roostertail to sweeten the morning.

A good day, all in all, one you can easily duplicate, since Ohio and surrounding States have plenty of farm ponds.  Pick a nice morning, go early, and switch offerings when one wears out its welcome.  A dozen hard fighters or more make pond fishing worth a modest drive and a couple of hours casting.

But it’s settling down now, and the cool water fishing season is upon us. A good time to catch some prime opal eyes, but those who stick to spring tactics are going to find filling a ticket difficult. Is there a productive way to catch autumn walleyes? Casting Erie Dearies? Using live bait? Bumping the bottom with weighted crankbaits?

These will all work to some extent, but the classic way to catch fish now is by trolling. It’s a simple fact that casters have their offerings in the fish zone for only a few turns of the reel if they let the lure down for a certain count, then start reeling. Trollers have their offerings in the fish zone ALL the time, and since they’re moving steadily, chances of running into a pod of feeding fish are high.

You’ll need some basic gear: downriggers, planer boards, and lots of spoons in various colors and crankbaits that can be used either flatline or on the riggers. Cruise a chosen area until blips on the fish finder show they’re at 15 feet or 20 or maybe right above the bottom, then set lines at various distances behind the boat and at depths that will cover the fish zone. Then you troll. It doesn’t matter too much if winds are out of the east, or there’s a dead flat calm, or storms are moving in. Sooner or later, if you keep changing baits, varying speeds and depths you’ll hit a pod of hungry walleyes, and take some keepers.

Trolling is as close to a sure thing as you’re likely to find on Lake Erie. But some people don’t like this sport, considering it comparable to watching grass grow and paint dry even when they’re hitting, and demand to cast for their catch. That’s okay, too, if you follow another set of simple rules. One rule is that fishing will be best off the bow of the boat or the stern, with less action along the sides. And the tactic of choice is to “fish the swing.” That means you set up for a drift over fish you’ve seen on the locator, drift downwind, assuming winds are good, and cast at an angle to the drift, letting your lure settle to bottom. When you pick up and start reeling, the boat’s steady movement will cause your lure to come in at an arc, instead of straight. I don’t know why, but walleye seem to love a lure that curves instead of swimming straight, a phenomenon that’s well known to charter boat captains and veteran anglers.

Here’s another thought. Walleye are naturally night feeders, as witness their opal colored eyes that let them see well in moon and starlight, and while they might be deep and well offshore during the day, they’ll often move in to within a few hundred yards of shore (even less) at night, and forage for emerald shiners, crayfish, and insects.

Last fall, I went out with two friends, and we trolled until about midnight with spoons and crankbaits. All three of us filled our limit with good fish, culling to sort out the best. Night fishing is something to remember. Finally, if you get truly desperate, throw the rule book away and go to Plan B. Remember that the walleye population probably sees dozens of weight forward spinners every day, and at least as many spoons and crankbaits. If they’ve truly got lockjaw, turn to vertical jigging of leadhead jigs and twistertails holding an emerald shiner. Try bumping the bottom with nightcrawlers. Or spoon jigging. Or working slowly with an old Flatfish, or using live minnows that are lip hooked and dropped slowly into the fish zone. Sometimes something weird will work just because it looks like an easy meal and is something they haven’t seen lately. Like the old man said “Whatever it takes to catch the coon.”

All of these places have sharks, sometimes more than you might think, great whites, maybe tiger sharks, porbeagles, sand sharks, black and white tips, bull sharks, and hammerheads, all of which occasionally attack man, but should you worry?  Studies show that chances of dying of bee stings are substantially greater than being hit by a shark.  In fact, in 2005, 20 million people went swimming in saltwater, and only around a dozen were attacked, which is odds of less than one in a million.   But if you’re nervous, there are things you can do before stroking saltwater that will reduce your chances even further.

According to statistics and such authorities as the official Shark Attack File, the pattern that is most consistent is a relationship between fishing and shark attacks.  Sharks feed heavily on fish, and their excellent senses are well attuned to vibrations from struggling fish, fish blood in the water, and flashes of silver.  According to that file in 2005, 95 victims were fighting hooked fish when attacked (a boy who lost a leg was fishing), 62 were netting fish, and a further 44 were near netters.  At least 190 more were spear fishing, and a further 107 were bitten when spear fishermen were nearby.  The obvious moral here is to keep away from such activities, and stay far down beach from fishing piers.

Wearing bathing suits that aren’t flashy and bright is wise too, with the ocean colors of blue and green being best and bright yellow and orange the worst.  Avoiding deep water can also help, because while sharks will come right into the surf and often do, they have a preference for greater depths when loafing or cruising.  And don’t swim at night.  Studies indicate that many species come into very shallow water, even canals and up rivers, after dark to search for food.  Anyone skinny dipping then is asking for it.

Always avoid murky or muddy water because sharks can’t see you well, and a flashing white arm can be mistaken for a fish.  River tributaries will often spread muddy water into ocean surf, and bring dead fish and other morsels of food into salt water. Sharks like such places.  The same holds true for bright jewelry, gold and silver bracelets and necklaces which can trigger a bite before the shark knows he’s made a mistake. In fact, many of the 2009 attacks were reported in areas where bait fish were present.

Swimming with cuts or other injuries is always dangerous, and swimming near floating objects or using surf boards, inner tubes, and other floating devices is chancy.  Sharks just can’t resist investigating floating things as more than one surfer has found to his dismay.  Remember the little boy on the floating rubber raft in Jaws?  Finally, do your best to swim smoothly and easily instead of fast and splashy.  Women swim that way without trying, while men tend to chop the water and splash, sending out vibrations that might resemble an injured fish.  That’s why about eight out of ten shark attacks on swimmers are against men.

Keep the above facts in mind and follow them, but then go ahead and swim to your hearts content.  I’ve swam plenty in salt water, gone skin and scuba diving while sharks were close at hand, and had some magic hours in beautiful coral reefs.  Don’t miss the fun because you’re worried about sharks.  Getting bit just isn’t likely to happen.

The first outing was with 6 year old Theodore, who absolutely loves to fish and gets little chance to do so where he lives. He was asking when we could go almost before his bags were unpacked, so the next day I put together a rod with a thin pencil float, a splitshot, an ice spoon in green and yellow, and a box of waxworms, and we hit a local farm pond that I knew was full of good sized bluegills.

He was a fast learner and it didn’t take him long to understand just what to do when the float went under. He learned how to bait his hook too, and how to unhook his catch with careful coaching, and spent time on every fish admiring its colors, holding it, and receiving accolades from mother and grandpa on the size of each and the skill of his rod handling. We kept two to take home and fillet so he could eat his catch.

The next day I took out 8 year old Atticus, and since he was a little older I decided to start him with a white Roostertail spinner and try for bass. He wasn’t quite ready for lure fishing, so we quickly switched to the float and waxworm combination again and he had a great time catching the ever present bluegills. By the time we got home both young men were already asking “When can we go again?”

This youthful pair loves fishing and my own son and daughter still enjoy the sport too, but they’re not avid anglers because it’s simply fun, they all like it because I planned each trip like General Patton going after Rommel. I’ve seen so many young fishermen spoiled for their sport because their dad did everything wrong and made their outings a trial instead of a memory maker. Like the guy two years ago who fished a pond I was working. He gave his young son a piece of junk with a float half the size of a baseball, then hurried to the far end of the pond to bass fish. The kid made a few casts, tangled his line, and finally sat down disconsolate while his dad blithely cast away. That’s not how you build a fishing partner.

I took Theodore and Atticus to a carefully selected pond, rather than a large lake, one that I knew had lots of bluegills. Bluegills are a kids fish, prone to hit quick and fight hard. Take a youngster after bass or walleye or muskies before they’re ready, and they’re going to get bored very quickly. The pond was carefully manicured too, with mowed grass around its edges instead of brush and trees to hang up casts, briers to scratch, and mosquitoes to bite. I didn’t fish at all, but remained close to coach the young nimrod, repair any tangles, take initial fish off the hook, and rebait until they learned to do it themselves. They were complimented on each catch and their mother joined in with plenty of admiration and congratulation. If they wanted to wade in the water and get a little muddy, that was fine, and if they wanted to walk a little and look for frogs and small fish, that was fine, too. Most important, I kept the outing short, quitting for the morning when they were still eager and having a good time. Sitting in a hot sun for long hours isn’t the way to build good memories. Had I planned to stay longer, I’d have had soft drinks and sandwiches in the nearby car for a little picnic, but it wasn’t necessary this time, and I made sure to take a couple home so grandma could admire them too, then fry the fillets into an instant snack.

It sums up to the simple fact that youngsters MUST have fun on those early trips. Fish for bluegills and nothing else, let them enjoy the pond, do no fishing yourself, and keep it short. That’s the way to build a fishing companion who’ll still enjoy going out with dad or grandpa when your hair has gone to white. It’s worth any trouble it takes.

The standard way to catch these high leaping fighters is to work along the shoreline of one lake or another casting at every stump, fallen log, and rock you can find.  Most use pig and jig combinations or plastic worms fished slowly, and they catch fish.  But since bass move into such spots around twilight and most leave in fairly early morning hours, your best catch will be from grey daylight on to maybe eight or nine a.m. depending on clear skies or overcast.  A few will remain in prime cover, usually wood, but action definitely slacks off as morning progresses.

 So, without writing or reading a book, there’s one technique that will keep you catching more or less all day long, and that’s fishing docks.  Too many bass hunters ignore the docks and doggedly keep casting shorelines, but I met a man this spring who’s become a real believer.

“A friend of mine and I went up to East Harbor” he said “and spent about six hours casting docks.  We just moved from one dock and pier to another, flipping dark plastic worms as far back underneath them as we could, and simply slayed the fish!  We caught three good ones from beneath one dock alone, and I don’t know how many we caught that morning.  It was a great day.”

There’s good reason why largemouths like docks.  They’re dark and shadowy, which bass like, and they make fine ambush spots for passing bluegills, crappie, small perch, and other morsels of swimming food.  All they need do is lie there and wait.  I’ve known this for a fair number of years, too.  A big private lake that I fished many a time had a good number of docks and I often cast beneath them with a small white jig for crappies.  The jigs produced bass too, enough that I switched to plastic worms and made some serious hauls of fish that occasionally passed four pounds.  It’s something to keep in mind if your shoreline casting is slacking off.

I’ll add one more simple fact for hungry bass fishermen when the shoreline doesn’t produce, and that’s to go to the weed beds.  Many casters don’t like them because they’re tough to fish, but bass set up ambushes in the green stuff for the same reason they lurk under docks, it’s good cover.  Sometimes they’ll burrow into the grass, then turn around and wait for lunch with just their nose and eyes showing, and sometimes they’ll hide along a corridor or against an open spot in the grass or wait beneath lilypads and clumps of spadderdock, but they’re still not hard to catch.

If the weeds are heavy, try casting with an unweighted plastic worm, making it splash as much as possible.  Weedless spoons work too, especially with porkrind trailers, and if the weeds aren’t thick, try spinnerbaits which are at least semi-weedless.  But do make sure the beds are close to deep water and not far back along a shallow flat.  Bass like the weeds, but when their bellies are full, most return to deep water to lay up for the day.  They won’t make a long swim to find home territory again.

“How did you do on walleye at Fremont yesterday?”  “I got one jack, that’s all.  A couple of guys snagging did better.  I think a game warden caught one of them.’  That’s a typical story for Sandusky River walleye fishermen.  One or two fish, rarely more, and a long day spent tossing doll flies with twister tails or maribou.  It doesn’t have to be that way.

Walleye are just beginning to move into the Sandusky River, and a few jacks have reached the traditional fishing grounds at Fremont.  In coming weeks, the trickle will rise to a flood, and the smaller males will be joined by much larger females, fish reaching 10 pounds, even more.  These fish feed little on their spawning runs, but they do feed.  It’s just that you won’t fish them the same in a slightly murky river as you might on a Lake Erie reef.

Anglers in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota have evolved a method of fishing for spawning river walleyes that isn’t sure fire (nothing is), but works fairly well if you have the gear to do it right.  The method demands a small boat that can be launched along the shore or from ramps at such places as The Tacklebox on East State Street in Fremont.  Plus an electric trolling motor and very small jigs that should range from 1/8 to 1/16 ounce.

It’s wise to bait the jigs with a tiny ball of Berkley Power Bait, or a small piece of worm, or half a minnow, or at least spray them with a good fish scented spray.  Then edge out into mid-stream and start drifting downriver, going just as fast as the current, no faster.  A bit of wood tossed over the side helps – just keep your craft even with that piece of wood.

Then lower the baited jig to bottom, reel up a turn, and drift along working it gently up and down.  Going with the current allows you to cover ground and such slow movement keeps the jig where it belongs.  Most spawning walleye aren’t interested in a big mouthfull, but they’ll sometimes take these minatures, sucking them in gently, rather than hitting hard.  So, strike at any touch of resistance.  After drifting downstream a distance, move back up, position 10 feet to one side or another of your initial drift, and drift down again.

Anglers who lack a boat and motor, should at least use the smallest jig that will reach bottom, and add some scent, bait, or Berkley Power Bait.  If other anglers are thin enough around you, try covering water close to shore as well as tossing it well out, again reeling slowly so that the doll fly bumps bottom occasionally.

Don’t forget live bait.  If action is poor on jigs, switch to bottom fishing with a slip sinker, a foot of line behind and a small hook baited with a nightcrawler or minnow.  It’s still wise to change baits occasionally, and maybe give them an occasional spray of fishy scent, but you can catch walleye this way.  They’ll come slow, but in the meantime it’s fun to watch the other fishermen, enjoy the sight of a wildlife officer hauling away some snagger, breathe fresh air, and note the occasional Canada geese flying by.  After a few hours of tossing jigs, that can be a blessed relief.

Make sure the river is fairly clean before you plan a trip to the downtown Fremont area by calling first such places as The Tacklebox at (419) 334-4643 and ask for river conditions.  Don’t be afraid to switch lure colors occasionally either, and make sure you read the Fishing Regulations, which has a section devoted to the Sandusky, Maumee, and Portage Rivers with special regulations for the spring run.  Then make your offering taste and smell good, keep it on the bottom and moving slowly, and as small as possible.  You should at least do better than “I got one jack, that’s all.”

It’s been a slow winter for steelhead fishermen.  Some fish have been caught in Lake Erie tributaries, but floods and other rigorous winter problems have slowed action to almost nothing for weeks at a time.  Now. there’s good news.  As of last weekend rivers from Conneaut Creek to the Rocky River and Grand were low and fishing extremely well, and while rains during the early week might have changed that picture temporarily, the trend through the rest of March and into the end of spawning runs in April is for fishing to be good and water conditions decent to ideal.

That suits me fine.  I’ve slammed hooks into steelhead from October through much of April, but long years have shown that some of the winters best fishing starts right now.  These big trout will spawn whenever, but they seem to get most serious at this time of year, moving up onto shallow riffles where they’re easily visible, and splashing noisily as males compete for females.  They’re hungry too, especially after weeks or even months in the rivers because there are very few crayfish, minnows, and insects to be found in icy water.  So, anything edible is likely to draw more than usual attention.

 If you’re interested in catching something that might weigh 10 pounds or better, leaps high, and runs with line sizzling frenzy, the first thing you’d best do before making a long drive is to call first and check on water conditions.  Low, clear water is good because of high visibility, water just coming down from a high with its light green color is better, and muddy water?  You’d best stay home.

So, call The Grand River Tackle Shop at (440) 352-7222 and ask about the fishing.  They have guides for hire, incidentally, and last week two sports caught 25 fish off Route 84 at the Grand.  Try the D & W Sports Shop too, at (440) 354-8473, and you might check The Division of Wildlife’s (888) HOOKFISH and (800) WILDLIFE.

Once conditions are right, you’ll need bait and right now the best is spawn sacs.  In fact, I’ve caught more big steelies on spawn, than on most other offerings put together.  Some anglers who  visit the rivers often make their own using steelhead spawn cut up, placed in tiny mesh sacs, and frozen to be thawed as needed.  Or sucker spawn or salmon eggs.  If you’ve none of these, plan to stop at one of the local bait shops up there like, again, the Grand River Tackle Shop, and buy some.

Actually catching steelhead isn’t hard at all.  You might try drifting spawn below a float and splitshot across pools and riffles, especially where you can see the fish.  Keep the spawn just above bottom.  In deeper water, skip the float, but add enough shot to keep it down there.  Try a float and a small jig baited with maggots too, something in black, purple, white, chartreuse, or yellow.  As the water warms a little, you can have success on big minnows drifted down to holding fish or nightcrawlers, and dropping a madly gyrating small crankbait down to fish on a riffle or pool with good water movement will sometimes drive them nuts!

Where to fish is your own choice, and it’s important to make sure you’re not trespassing on private property.  But in general the Vermillion River, which has a modest run is best upriver to Brimingham, and the Rocky River with its plentiful public access is productive up to the nature center.  Try the Chagrin from the soccer fields to Todd Field, and the Grand River up to Harpersfield Dam.  Don’t neglect Mill, Pair, and Arcola Creek since these small waters clear first after rains.  Or Conneaut Creek, my own favorite, up to the State Line.  The Huron River always has a few too, though access is very limited for non-boaters.

It’s a good time of year and some nice pods of fish are waiting.  Better weather, hopefully lower water, and a hard fighting fish make even long drives worth the trouble.

It’s been a long and unusually hard winter, but spring is coming and soon crocus will be in full bloom, the trees greening up, and waters in area lakes warming steadily.  Fishing will pick up too, as various species begin to feed up for spring spawning, so it’s time to check the crystal ball and find out if action on local lakes will be good this year, or mediocre or poor.  Take Charles Mill Lake, for example.

 This 1,350 acre lake with its 10 hp limit just might be the best hotspot for long miles around, and according to the Division of Wildlife its largemouth bass population is excellent.  Fish caught will routinely range from 12 to 19 inches with a few going a good deal larger, and come spring one of the best spots to take some will be around the marina peninsula and along riprap near the dam.

The saugeye population here is only average, though there are fish to 24 inches, and most are caught below the dam, though some hit between the marina and the narrows into the main lake.  Channel cats?  Charles Mill has always been a top rated channel cat lake with fish to 25 inches plus ready to hit shrimp and cutbait, and they’re found all over the lake.  There are whopper flathead catfish here too, that reach four feet long, especially in the western basin.  Large live minnows are the best bait for these behemoths.

Then there are hybrid striped bass (wipers) that have been heavily stocked.  They’re vicious fighters that reach 22 inches, even more, and are caught yearly by trolling, jigging weighted minnows, or bottom fishing with chicken livers and nightcrawlers.  Finally, come crappie, a favorite fish here, with good populations of both black and white crappie.  They’ll soon be waiting around shoreline brush and downed trees in the marina basin.

Clear Fork Reservoir with its 1,012 acres and 10 mph speed limit is best known as a muskie lake, and it should be since Clear Fork is rated one of the best lakes in the state for these big fish with lunkers reaching 45 inches, even more.  But this spring it will have, as always, a good population of black and white crappie, many of which will be caught near the road bridge on the west end.  There are fair numbers of channel cats too, that are often picked up off the picnic areas.

The lake isn’t fished too hard for largemouth bass, but it should be since the shoreline brush, quick dropoffs, and weed beds here hold fish that reach to 21 inches or more.  The fifth largest bass ever caught in a fishing tournament (5 lbs, 14 oz) was caught at Clear Fork.  And don’t forget white bass, which provide a lot of fun for anglers who find a school swimming in east end waters.

Pleasant Hill Lake has a wide variety of fish, but saugeye rank high in this clear, cool water hotspot. There’s an excellent population of these tasty critters that average about 14 inches, routinely reach 25 inches, and sometimes tip the scales at eight to ten pounds.  Anglers here like to night fish for saugeye, or troll and drift for them off the swimming beach and near the lodge using Lindy rigs and nightcrawlers or bottom bumping crankbaits.

The lake is nearly unique in our area in that it holds a good population of smallmouth bass as well as largemouths.  The smallmouths like rocky shores in the lower end of the lake near the dam, and favor rock bumping jigs with bait, small plastic worms, and fast diving crankbaits.  Largemouths are found in the more shallow and weedy upper end and as always, favor spinnerbaits, pig and jig combinations, and plastic worms.  Anglers find some good channel cats too, many off the launch ramp, and occasional schools of white bass.  These run up the Clear Fork tributary each spring.

Little Knox Lake is a diamond among pearls with a VERY strong population of largemouth bass.  It has an 18 inch length limit, so most of the fish caught will be members of the “munch bunch”, smaller individuals that are still lots of fun to catch, but some dandies turn up, too.  Knox is considered one of the top five bass tournament lakes in the state.  And should be.  Otherwise, visiting anglers will find a fine population of channel cats that reach 10 pounds, and a small population of  black crappies.

Finally, comes almost unknown Kokosing Lake, a 149 acre lake in the Kokosing Wildlife Area not far from Knox that has a fair population of bass and crappie, and good numbers of channel cats.  Five bodies of water, all different, with plenty of waiting fish.  And spring is coming.

For those who like fine and comfortable living, there are 46 cottages which are designated as Wildlife, Iron Furnace, and Forest cottages.  The latter two are finished in native hardwood, have wood burning fireplaces, and names like Buckeye, Black Oak, and Basswood, all named after the locally milled wood used to finish their interiors.   Boaters who want to bring LOTS of friends might want to rent rustic Laurel Lodge, a group lodge with eight sleeping rooms, a large kitchen, and a sitting/dining area with a huge stone fireplace. 

Those who like their lodging more rustic should enjoy the nice 219 site campground.  It’s a pretty place for tent campers, and for boaters who haul RV vehicles, there are 46 sites with electric hookups.  It’s a cozy campground with heated showerhouses, pit latrines, waste disposal, and laundry facilites.  Maybe best of all for those who like to travel with Rover, pets are permitted.  And if you’d like to try camping and have no equipment, the park provides three Rent-A-Camp units, a camper-cabin, and a Rent-A-Teepee.

There’s plenty to do around this rural lake.  Boaters with their own craft can roam the fishhook-shaped lake using electric motors only, and explore its bays and backwaters while keeping an eye open for the plentiful beaver here, their lodges, and shore cuttings.  If you don’t bring a boat, canoes, kayaks, and row boats can be rented.  For casual use, don’t miss the swimming beach and picnic areas, nice places for a lazy afternoon.

Fishing is good, too, so don’t forget a rod and tackle box.  Largemouth bass average 1 – 3 pounds, but occasionally reach a whopping eight, and locals like to use large live minnows below a float along the banks or work shoreline cover with plastic worms and spinnerbaits. Channel cats might reach a very serious 20 pounds, and are caught on shrimp and cutbait near the dam all summer, and there are some dandy bluegill and redear sunfish.  Bait is available  at the beach concession and there’s a fairly primitive launch ramp off Route 278.

Boaters who like to hike and see wildlife will find 17 miles of hiking trails around the lake and nearby woodlands, and in the adjacent state forest, a 21 mile backpack trail and primitive campsites is available.  The trails range from easy and pleasant like the Hebron Hollow Trail (1.5 miles) and the Peninsula Trail (3 miles) to the more challenging Zaleski Backpack Trail (a 23.5 mile loop).  Wildlife is plentiful in this second growth forest with whitetail deer, wild turkey, and squirrels waiting in the oak and hickory woodlands, and rabbits and meadow birds in occasional openings and meadows.

The whole area is steeped in history, much of it based on iron furnaces and coal which is why the area has second growth timber, rather than huge old trees that several men couldn’t surround.  The Hope Furnace was built here over 100 years ago to process iron ore extracted from the region’s sandstone bedrock, and hundreds of men worked to cut wood, work furnaces, and extract iron, much of which went for cannon to protect the Union Army. 

There are other places to see nearby, like Hocking Hills with its Old Man’s Cave, Marietta with riverboats and historic museums, Lake Alma State Park, and lots of little towns and villages with antique shops and country stores.  For detailed information on Lake Hope, call (740) 596-5253 or visit Lake Hope State Park on the web.  It’s a good place with lots to offer.

There’s very little question that yellow perch are Lake Erie’s favorite fish on the table.  Crisp, brown fillets touched with tartar sauce disappear from plates like magic when they appear, leaving smiles of appreciation, and one of the prime times to take some is in early April.  Action should improve throughout April, remain steady well into September, and peak again come October and into November.  With the Big Lake’s perch population very good to excellent, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t head forth and catch a limit of these pretty and good eating fish.  It’s definitely not a difficult business.

Soon after ice goes off on Lake Erie and temperatures rise a few crucial degrees, perch begin to move close to shore from their winter deep water retreats.  The females are swollen with eggs now, and the males burdened with twin sacs of milt.  Both are there to gather in large schools and drop their spawn to ensure the next generation, and while some may be only six or seven inches long, a surprising number will be chunky ten to fourteen inchers.  It’s the years best chance to catch big perch and plenty of them, either off a boat or along a handy fishing pier or breakwall.

It takes a lot of energy to maintain those eggs and milt, so fish feed avidly before spawning, during the process, and even more so afterwards to rebuilt energy lost in egg producton.  A magic combination, if you can handle the weather, and warm clothing, a heavy hat and gloves, and plenty of hot coffee can make comfortable even rugged days.

To catch perch requires an ordinary spinning rod or two, a bucket of shiners, and a two or three hook rig.  Some anglers use spreaders, which is basically a wire arm with hooks dangling below each end, and a sinker in the middle.  They’ll drop the spreader to bottom, reel up a few turns, and wait for a bite when boat fishing, and routinely try the same rig even when shore fishing.

It works just fine when perch are plentiful and hungry, biting hard, but boat anglers will find those free swinging arms less sensitive to gentle taps, and shore anglers will find their offerings lying in the mud where fish often can’t see them.  A better choice is two No. 6 snelled hooks on their short side lines above a sinker.  The lines hang almost straight down making even a gentle bite register nicely, and the sinker on lines end keeps anglers in proper contact with bottom even on a wildly swinging boat.  Such “crappie rigs” can often double your catch.

The right rig is important, but there are other factors that can improve a catch.  These early spring perch will bite all day, but as a rule of thumb the best action usually comes just after dawn and in late evening.  Many a time I’ve reached a pier or breakwall or dropped an anchor when it was just cracking dawn, caught fish hand over fist until 9-10 a.m., then had action slack off just as late rising anglers were arriving.

Always use two rods too, especially if you’re shore fishing, and cast one out while keeping the other near shore.  Perch travel in loose schools, roaming along the bottom and seeking food from minnows to bottom insects and little crayfish, and they might be close or 50 yards out.  By fishing two different distances, you can cover the area, and when bites on one rod become frequent, move the other to the same spot.

Use a little patience too, because those schools mean feast or famine.  When a school comes by, they’ll hit hot and heavy, and when it passes, action can slack off to nothing for minutes or even an hour or so.  So, boat anglers have a choice.  If they’re catching fish, just stay put and haul them in.  But if fishing thins, you’d best lift anchor and move until the fish locator finds another school.  Staying put is a bad business for boat anglers when nothing is going on.

Good places to fish?  April perch are found from Toledo to Conneaut, and any breakwall or pier is likely to yield a catch, but one usually top spot is the Huron Pier in downtown Huron, especially for those who walk clear out to the end.  Boat anglers will find good action off Marblehead, near Starve Island, around Kelleys Island, just off the Lorain pier, and parts east.

It’s a simple business.  Dress warm, carry the right gear, have patience, and move as necessary.  An easy formula for a skillet of prime eating.

Back when I was a youngster of ten or twelve, I spent a lot of time roaming the hills of southern Ohio with a cluster of boon companions. We had no televisions or computers then, so we made our own fun, and to forestall dangerous snakes, bears, alligators, and tigers, went heavily armed with slingshots. These were hand made with Y shaped branches from a hickory limb dried and peeled, strips of rubber from an old inner tube, and a leather tongue from an ancient shoe. Without bragging, we were deadly with those primitive weapons, simply because we practiced all day long, usually shooting smooth creek stones.

When I reached 14 I bought a single shot .22 rifle with paper route money, and became equally deadly with that, often shooting up a box of long or long rifles a day for days at a time. Again, practice makes near perfect. It’s a good lesson, and hunters who are feeling the effects of cabin fever and staring out the window at snow, chill rain, and sleet might take advantage of those rare sunny days to do some practice, too.

Groundhog season is coming soon, in fact the boars are already moving, and this second worst month of the year (February’s first), is prime time to head out with the chuck gun and do some shooting. Or improve that rusty eye with a round of trap at some local club, or go out with a friend and a hand trap for some REALLY challenging practice. That’s nearly as good as sporting clays. And on some truly nasty day when you’re biting your fingernails, get out the family artillery and go to work.

Each year about this time I take an hour or two to carefully clean and oil my own hunting guns, and leave them softly glowing for the next hunt. Far better than reaching for the squirrel gun only to find its barrel coated with rust. Fishermen can make good use of a few of these bad weather days too, following the old Boy Scout maximum “Be Prepared.” March is a good time to break out long unused rods, and either cut off the first 20 feet of monofilament with its frays and nicks, or completely replace the line with something new that’s untouched by the sun. Reels? Check them out, oil the lot into smoothness, removing any sand and grit, and make them ready for that first four pound bass of spring.

Typically, my tackle boxes are a mess at years end. I have one for bass, another for walleye, etc. as you probably do, and they’re in bad shape. Maybe some melted plastic worms in one tray from a hot days fishing last summer, maybe some smelly real worms in the bottom of one box or another. So, you remove most of the gear, eliminate junk, put the lot into order, and take some more time to carefully sharpen the hook of each crankbait and spinnerbait. It’s time well spent when a walleye bites gently, and is still hooked.

Outdoorsmen good with their hands can make some useful things this month, and save substantial money by purchasing molds from Cabela’s, L.L. Bean, Bass Pro Shops, or wherever. I’ve done this more than once, gathering up old tire weights from a local repair shop, and melting them down in a pan on a Coleman two burner stove. It’s vital to do this in a well ventilated place because lead fumes aren’t good, but I’ve spent some profitable hours making a several year supply of lead fishing sinkers and enough .45 caliber rifle balls to keep my muzzleloader firing for several seasons. Once I ordered a jig mold and jig hooks, and made a rather vast quantity of jigs, painting their heads, and adding twister or grub tails for walleye and saugeye. I still have some left. It’s a bad month and there’ll be more bad weather, but cleaning up your gear beats watching tv and swirling snow. Now’s the time to do it.

The shank of winter is a hard time for most outdoorsmen.  Hunting is essentially over, river and stream fishing is scarce, and the outdoor shows are few and far between.  So, what can you do over the next weeks before the weather breaks and lawn grass starts to green up?  You head for a favorite farm pond and catch a mess of ice water bluegills. 

If there’s good ice, head for that pond.  If it’s thin, go anyway, and if there’s no ice at all, don’t change your plans.  Bluegills (and bass) will bite all 12 months of each year, and ice or a lack of it makes no difference at all.  But there’s one thing to keep in mind at this time of year when it comes time to search for a loose school or concentration of panfish.  It’s been a long winter and many ponds have been snow covered at least off and on for weeks.  When sunlight doesn’t penetrate, the algae and other small plants can’t make oxygen, so oxygen levels in the pond diminish. 

If the pond is weedy, it’s worse, because winter dead plants are attacked by decay bacteria and use up even more oxygen.  The bottom line is that too often the deepest part of a pond becomes oxygen deficient, and fish have to move up to above the thermocline or into shallower parts of the little lake.  Which means in turn that the fish you were catching in the deepest part early in the winter are now probably elsewhere.

So, if you find good ice cover, start as usual.  Bore a couple of holes in the ponds deepest part, bait up a couple of spoons or tiny jigs with waxworms, and try your luck.  But adjust one rod to work its offering just above bottom and the other rod to fish several feet up.  If nothing happens in a half hour, move to the mid-part of the pond, maybe where water is just 5-6 feet deep and try again, and if the bobber doesn’t start bouncing, move a little shallower yet.

I  remember one winter when snow stayed long and good ice, too, and I must have drilled 20 holes with my auger on that first of March day before I found fish.  It was a weedy lake and oxygen was so low, the fish had gathered in just two feet of water near shore.  I sat there on my little stool and actually watched big bluegill suck in my waxworms.  That was a red letter trip. 

What about ice too thin to walk on?  Several years ago I visited a pond that had only an inch or so of ice, but also had a nice iron 10 foot pram sitting on shore.  I was pretty desperate, and also prepared with 50 feet of sturdy rope which I tied alternately to a shoreline tree and the stern of the boat.    The time was just this season of year and I was desperate enough to use the oars to break that thin ice and safely paddle out 30 feet or so.  Then I cleared a fishing space, caught at least 30 nice bluegill and two bass, fished in comfort, and finally roped my way back to shore.  The rope probably wasn’t necessary, but it did make for a fast trip to dry land.

No ice at all?  Do just the same, using the same rigs and bait with longer rods.  If they’re still deep, you might want to use a slip floater on one rod, or a floating Lindy rig with sinker.  Then on the other fish as usual, starting about five feet down and setting the float gradually shallower.  Bites can be slow and deliberate in ice water, but they’ll come eventually as you find the concentrations, and you should go home with a bucket full of the years best eating.

Here’s a final thought.  Once again, largemouth bass will bite as well in cold water as in warm, though you should use smaller offerings.  I rarely keep summer bass caught in farm ponds, but I’ve taken as high as eight, some of them dandies, on winter trips, and kept just one or two in the 1 1/2 pound range because they’re almost as good as bluegills then.  Use slightly larger ice spoons, something 3/4 to one inch long in the usual bright colors of red, yellow, and chartreuse, bait with a couple of waxworms instead of one, and jig gently here and there.  The fight of even a four pound bass will be sluggish indeed, but right now it’s the only game in town.

 The idea is so long standing that once upon a time Sports Afield Magazine published a chart of the tables each two months, showing the two “highs” in each 24 hours when animals and fish were most likely to be active, and the two “lows” when it was hardly worth going out.  As a zoologist with a masters degree from Ohio State as well as a hunter and fisherman I was once very interested in the solunar periods, enough that I ran a few brief and simple studies and their result came close to making a believer out of me.

One that I remember well came on an early October squirrel hunt.  It was a perfect morning, cool, crisp, and sunny with almost no wind, the kind of morning when squirrels are out early and feeding.  It was a good woods too, one I’ve hunted a number of times and always found plenty of bushytails.  But this morning the woods was dead, with hardly a bird call, and nothing moving.  I quit around 10:30 a.m., went home and called a friend who was hunting that morning, too.

“Did you get any this morning?” I asked.  “Didn’t see a single thing.” he replied.  “I stuck it out until about 10:30, then quit.”  Another friend had a different story.  “I didn’t see a thing until about 11:30 a.m., then suddenly they were all over the place.  I got four.”  The table said the solunar period would peak around 11:30.

On another trip I was ice fishing an area lake, checked the table and saw that the high would come around 10 a.m.  I usually have best luck on any brand of fishing in the two hours after dawn, but not this morning.  Then suddenly around 9:30 they started to bite and continued on until 11 before they shut off.  In another simple little study I watched my bird feeder and noticed that bird number seemed to increase around the highs and diminish drastically during the lows.

Did it always work?  No, it didn’t, and I finally decided that if  all factors were stable, no storms moving in, no low pressure fronts, etc. that there might be something to solunar tables.  Now, it appears I was wrong and seemingly so were many thousands of others and the inventors of the tables.

In the last October issue of Petersen’s Hunting, an article discussed in part the tables and told of a study conducted at an Illinois wildlife refuge.  The two researchers used consistent methods to study free ranging deer, songbirds, and semi-captive cottontail rabbits to see if there was any correlation between the sun/moon cycles and wildlife activity.  The pair used tower blinds in high deer density areas and binoculars to map deer activity over a nine week period. 

The rabbits, kept in a 3 acre enclosure,  were monitored every hour using neck collars, and songbirds were checked at a feeding station.  Their conclusion, after months of analysis and observation, was that there were no distinct or predictable patterns in wildlife activity during various phases of the moon. They did note that further study may be indicated, but decided that the tables were not an accurate or consistent predictor of wildlife activity.

So, there you have it.  Fishing and hunting trips should be decided by when you can go and if the weather is right, rather than the sun and moon.  I’m still wondering about those squirrels and even why my dog gets suddenly active and starts playing with his chew toys at certain times of day.  But science triumphs.  Or does it?

 This below dam sport has been slow most days, because of heavy rains and snow runoff that caused maximum water to be released from the various lakes.  You won’t catch much when the water is boiling past and coffee brown.  But the weather has got to stabilize soon, and eventually, maybe right now, the tailwaters will slow and turn a nice green color.  That’s saugeye time, and action should be unusually good, since the high water means few have been caught so far this winter.

 Everybody has their own favorite method for fishing these below dam fish, and mine is to take a half inch ice spoon in bright red, yellow, or chartreuse, head hook a minnow to it, add a splitshot about six inches above and a float above that, then cast and let the minnow drift downstream.  Since saugeye are bottom feeders and like to lie in depressions or behind rocks that break the current, you need to have that minnow within six inches of bottom.

So, my first move is to add a sinker to the bare ice spoon, cast out, adjust the float and adjust again until it’s riding about six inches below the surface.  Then I remove the sinker, add a minnow, and get serious.  I’m often amazed at watching other saugeye fishermen.  I’ve seen anglers stand on a rock and cast like a metronome to exactly the same place, usually within a few yards of the far shore.  It’s a lot smarter to cast near that shore, then to mid-stream, then up some and down some, and cover every bit of water, moving 20 feet occasionally to reach new territory.

And I like to have a second rod with a float, spoon, and minnow, working back and forth in the eddies right near my feet.  Territory close to where an angler is standing is usually ignored, and that can be a mistake.  Another choice that I make sometimes, and other fishermen a lot, is to use bright colored jigs with twister tails, sometimes one, sometimes with a second on a short side line above.  That can be effective too, used with or without a float, but always better with a bit of worm, a small minnow, or some Berkley Power Bait for extra allure.

Time is always important for this tailwater fishing.  Saugeye move at night and move best when there’s some water release, and they’ll usually be waiting at crack of dawn.  You should be, too.  Head for the dam at 10 a.m. and you’ll likely find the cream well skimmed before you arrive.

 Where to fish?  There are lots of good places within a modest drive.  Two of the best saugeye hotspots in the state are O’Shaughnessy and Griggs Reservoirs near Columbus, and Delaware and Deer Creek are just as good.  If trying to choose, keep in mind that the second pair were built by the Army Corps of Engineers and have good accomodations for fishermen.  The first pair are city reservoirs and have a decent situation for fishermen, but not great. 

Alum Creek and Hoover Reservoir are worth a look too, and you might try your luck below the Muskingum River dams or below Ohio River dams like the one near Wheelersburg.  I’ve caught some dandy saugeye there.  Whatever your choice, tailwater fishing is nearly the only game in town. And given proper water, it’s a good game indeed.

Ice fishing has been a tough proposition on Lake Erie this winter.  Ice was slow in coming, though there were 8 to 10 inches finally last weekend, and water under the ice was muddy, thanks to floods that swelled tributaries and pumped millions of gallons of silt filled water into the lake.  But it’s reasonably clear now, and Erie ice guides have started taking out clients, while other ice fishermen are boring holes in their own favorite spots.  If you’re looking for some fresh fish, the question now is where to go?

The Bass Islands have been a traditional winter hotspot for many years with most anglers flying over, hiring a guide, and being transported to shanties off Rattlesnake Island.  But that’s getting to be an expensive business.  Guides charge about $100 a day, which isn’t bad for the service they provide, but Griffing and Dairy Air have gradually raised their rates over the past few years to $70 and $72 respectively for a round trip flight.  A lot of money in total for a day of fishing that might produce anything from a limit catch to goose eggs.

So, it’s worth pointing out that there are mainland guides too, that don’t require a plane ride, who are fishing in areas from Kelleys Island to Camp Perry.  Two of those guides are Eric Loeckel and Dave Matta.  (I’ve yet to meet or fish with either, but I talked to Eric by phone last week, and he was optimistic about the fishing.

“I’m taking people to an area seven miles offshore near Kelleys Island.” he said, “Picking them up at Mazurick near Marblehead for the trip out, and we’ve been catching fish.  We’re getting a lot of throwbacks right now, fish of less than 15 inches, but some decent keepers too.  They’re hitting the usual things, Swedish Pimples, jigging Rapalas, etc. in about 30 feet of water.”  There are other ice guides, and you can find information on these by calling Wildlife District Two at (419) 424-5000.

Anglers who don’t want to pay at all for their pleasure still have some choices for a fair catch.  According to recent reports Battery Park in downtown Sandusky has been producing some decent action on both yellow perch and crappie.  You’ll need to do some prospecting here to find fish, but some of the crappie particularly are running to good sizes.

Another traditional winter spot is Old Bay Bridge which parallels Route 2 where it crosses Sandusky Bay.  To reach it, you’ll cross the Bay on Route 2, then take the first exit, swing back and drive onto the bridge.  There’s plenty of parking and best fishing is near the cut.  If the Bridge has a problem, it’s that most of the perch are going to be small, but when I was there last week anglers were culling some keepers and finding them just a short walk from the parking lot.

A final choice for Erie fishing is working the marinas.  You’ll need permission, and frankly it’s a hit or miss proposition.  I try them every winter and have had some excellent days using minnows on one rod and waxworms on another to take perch, crappie, and bluegill.  But I’ve had some losers too, including last week when I worked a favorite marina and didn’t get a single bite.

The fish come and go in most marinas, and if you find one with a good population, you’ll still need to keep a few points in mind.  One is that when you bore a hole in the average 4-5 feet of marina water every fish below is going to flee, and it’ll take some time before they return.  Some anglers counter this by boring four or five holes near marina pilings here and there, then walk from one to another.  A second top tactic is to fish with three or four friends scattered around the marina, and concentrate near whoever is finding some.

Here’s a final thought.  It’s been fairly warm this past week and ice might be thin in some places.  Always fish with friends, and always check the ice before you walk more than a few feet.  Winter swims are no fun.

Every year it happens.  Like the inexorable ticking of a clock, the days grow longer, two minutes by two minutes.  And as they do, Lake Erie walleye eggs and milt begin to mature and hormones trigger off behavior patterns that have changed little over thousands of years. 

The fish begin staging south of Green Island, north of such reefs as Clinton and Cone, between North Bass and Niagara, and off the tip of Catawba Island, all deep water spots.  Then the huge, loose schools and smaller pods begin a slow, measured movement toward the western end of the lake. 

Some of those schools head toward reefs like Toussaint and Niagara, others favor flats, beach areas, and rockpiles, and more seek out the Sandusky and Maumee rivers, but they all move and as they do, offer opportunities for the first serious walleye catches of the year.  And some of the fish caught will be BIG ones.

It’s tough fishing.  Some years the ice lingers long, and anglers will often perform the dangerous trick of walking their boat over thin ice to open water.  Other years the ice leaves early, and launch ramps in western Lake Erie are free and ready for use.  Whatever the weather, once boats can be launched, it’s going to be cold.  Lake water won’t be much above 33 degrees, snow and high winds are always possible, and ice chunks will be floating here and there.  Which means anglers had best dress warmly and carry plenty of hot coffee.  But the fish have no choice and will move, whatever the weather.  All that’s necessary is to find and then catch them.

The finding most days isn’t difficult.  At the beginning of the migration, look for them in the deep water spots listed above.  As it progresses, they’ll move into shallower water and schools will swim west, many of them passing the tip of Catawba Island.  They might be a half mile offshore, or a mile or several, and depending on when you’re able to go, most could be north of the island, or west and south.

So, one good tactic is to launch at Catawba Island State Park and head a mile or two due west.  Then anchor if necessary, or drift if winds are gentle and drifting is possible.  With a fish locator, pinpointing schools and pods is easy, but lacking this basic gear most anglers anchor and fish one spot for 15 minutes then move and move again.  Drifters just keep going, maybe working deeper or more shallow on each drift.

Anglers will basically be using ice fishing techniques at this time of year, and that means jigging just off bottom with spoons and jigs.  Good choices are Swedish Pimples, jigging Rapalas, Snakey Spoons, Hopkins Spoons, and Crocodiles.  Those who prefer straight jigs should try those with twister tails, soft flaring maribou, or tinsel tails.  Either way, it’s best to bait all three hooks of spoons or the single hook of jigs with emerald shiners.  The minnows bouncing up and down add both eye appeal and flavor to any lure.

Keep in mind that early fish are very cold and therefore very sluggish.  A fast moving jig won’t attract them, so keep it slow and make jigs easy up and down, rather than fast and jerky.  Strikes might be serious hits, but much more often they’ll be gentle tugs or maybe just a touch of extra weight on the line as a fish clamps down.  So, use a sensitive rod, 6-10 pound test line, and take action at any difference in the lure.

Once actual spawning begins, many fishermen head for various flats and work off the beach areas, rock piles, and near such reefs as Niagara, Toussaint, Crib and Locust Point Reef.  Jigging spoons and Rapalas might still work, but better choices are bottom bumpers and very small spinners like the May fly types with nightcrawlers.  Whatever your choice, remember to keep offerings near bottom, move shallow and deep until you find some willing to feed, and keep it slow.  Tough fishing, but a 10 pounder is worth some effort.

Seems like every bass fisherman has his or her own personal favorite fishing lures, and most use them through thick and thin.  Too often, it’s thin.  I know some anglers who stick strictly to pig and jig combinations and put a plastic worm on the other rod.  Both are good offerings, but they don’t always work.  Others are crankbait fanatics or they reach for a spinnerbait two thirds of the time.

Their tackleboxes bulge with forgotten lures that might not get wet from season to season, and on any trip odds that they’ll reach for the same two or three lures are mighty high.  Unfortunately, I’m little different most days.  I have my favorites too, and use them so frequently that I’ve more than once gone bassing with my “tackle box” stuck in a front shirt pocket.  It’s a mistake and every once in a while I re-learn the fact.

Take a bassing trip made last summer, for example.  I hit a small northcentral Ohio lake and spent two hours wading along the shoreline with standard gear for a single short strike.  I tried this and that with no success, and was thinking about quitting when I noticed a small black Sonic in one of the trays.  I know Sonics are good baits, but I hardly ever use them, and darned if I know why.

I was desperate, so I clipped it on.  In four casts I had a good strike and fought a nice bass to a standstill.  Another dozen or so casts and I had another strike.  That vibrating little bait was pulling them out of dense weed cover and right up off the bottom, and I finished with four fish caught and released, plus several more strikes that either flipped off or missed the hook.

There are other lures that anglers seldom use, like Hula Poppers.  Ask any bass fisherman if these are good top water lures, and they’ll almost invariably say “You bet.”  Ask them if they have one or more of these old time lures in their tacklebox, and a modest number will say “Sure.”  Asks if they ever use it, and most will shuffle their feet and probably say “No.”  Top water baits have fallen out of favor, over taken by pig and jigs and plastic worms.  But on quiet mornings when fish are ringing the surface, they can work wonders.

There are lots of other good lures around from yesteryear that no one uses, most of them for no reason other than that better publicized baits have taken their place.  So, they rust in the tacklebox.  A prime example is the old time Flatfish, a wildly wobbling lure that’s lovely at slow speeds and has more action at a crawl than any other lure I’ve tried.  They’re dynamite for bass, again in smaller sizes, and very good for walleye, saugeye, and even big crappie.  But they’re not used.

One of the biggest bass that I caught in 2002 was on a Heddon River Runt Spook, and I’m betting you haven’t seen one of these baits for years, let alone bought one.  But they’re still mighty tasty to bass.  I’ve long had a theory that bass see the same lures, whatever’s currently popular, again and again.  Some have been caught two or three times on this or that, and even a fish can wise up and learn to ignore something that passes its nose day after day. 

These old time lures probably had the same problem, and fell out of fashion as catches dropped off.  But they haven’t been used for years now, and a whole new crop of bass will see them as something new and edible.  Maybe you should dig through the tacklebox this spring and try some of the old favorites.  They weren’t favorites for nothing.

I talked to a friend of mine recently who went to Pennsylvania this past fall to do some fishing.  The stream he worked was full of crayfish, and he happened to remember that Louisiana folk ate crayfish.  Were the northern variety edible, too?  He decided to find out.  So, this angler took time to catch a few, boiled the lot until they turned bright red, then shucked out the tails and removed each tail’s large vein.

The white chunks of meat that were left, he added to a recipe for crayfish gumbo, and guess what?  “They were really good.” he said.  “If you like shrimp or lobster, you’ll like crayfish.”  He didn’t tell me anything new.  I’ve eaten mounds of boiled crayfish in the south, and sampled a few up here.  They’re excellent, but few indeed have tried them.

Another friend who owns a 200 acre farm watched a flock of English sparrows pecking around his barnyard one day, and decided to catch some.  “They eat seeds and insects just like chickens do.”  he told me later.  “I figured they’d taste the same.”  So, he used an ordinary box trap to catch a dozen, removed the breasts only, and broiled them under bacon strips with a touch of butter.  “It took the whole dozen to make a meal.” he reminisced, “but the darn things were delicious, just like little quail.”

 The list of things we don’t eat and probably should, given today’s meat prices, goes on and on.  There’s many a trapper around the area who gets a few dozen muskrats each year.  The skins are sold, the carcass discarded or fed to hounds, but I remember talking to a wildlife officer who went undercover to a muskrat dinner.  “I had to buy one, since I was there” he said, “but I didn’t plan to eat it.  Know what, though.  It tasted just like tame rabbit, and after I’d polished one off, I had another!”

Have you ever tried young baked groundhog?  I have, and the flavor is reminiscent of good, juicy pork.  It’s even better when surrounded by potatoes, carrots, and onions.  What about sheepshead in the 1-3 pound class?  A swimming partner mentioned once that when he was a kid his whole family would travel to Lake Erie to catch sheepshead and other species.  “My mother deep fat fried the fillets and I thought they tasted just fine.”  I’ve tried them too, and he’s right.  One friend of mine grew up eating carp of up to four pounds caught in clean streams and rivers.  His whole family thought they were first class, because no one had ever told them carp were inedible. 

I can add some plants to the animal list.  If you’ve never taken the time to shell out the rich nuts of a shagbark hickory and add them to home-made fudge, you’ve never tasted real fudge.  Or made a trip to gather black walnuts instead of the insipid English walnuts we traditionally use in cooking.  It all takes time and trouble, and a little extra work, and I’ll admit these foods don’t come nice and neat in clear plastic and styrofoam containers.  But the price is right and the flavor great.  If you’ve the nerve to taste them.

It’s been a tough winter for below the dam saugeye anglers.  Heavy snow, ice storms, and far too much rain have seen tailwaters below Charles Mill and Pleasant Hill lakes bank full and muddy far more often than not.  But that’s got to change eventually, and the heavy rains might actually have been beneficial, since few saugeye were caught and that means lots are going to be waiting soon below those dams.  Also, saugeye have a tendency to wash through the gates from the lake above since they’re attracted to moving water, and these will stack up below both lakes, too.

So, once the weather calms down, fishing should be unusually good.  Most of the anglers who fish below our two lakes follow a simple format.  They tie on a jig and start casting, angling upstream and reeling slowly as the lure drifts past.  Most catch fish too, at least a few.  Some double their chances by adding a second jig with twister tail on a short side line above, and adding a minnow or some Berkley power bait to both hooks.  They catch fish too, though both techniques will bring a lot of bottom snag-ups and lost lures.  Still, jigs are cheap and are often made at home making them even cheaper.

One of my own favorite techniques, since saugeye like to lie with their bellies almost brushing bottom, is to rig up a thin pencil bobber with splitshot and No. 4 or 6 hook, put a sinker on the hook and cast out several times adjusting the float until the sinker pulls it only a few inches below the surface.  Then I remove the sinker, add a minnow or colorful jig with minnow, and start casting.  The float keeps the jig just above hook snagging bottom, but still in visual range of waiting saugeye. 

It definitely works, especially if anglers using this rig make casts close, to mid-stream, and to near the other shore, covering as much water as possible.  It doesn’t hurt to move up near the dam to start, then drop down 30 feet for more casting, and another 30 feet, and another.  Cover every bit of water possible, and you’ll increase your chances.

 Picking your time is a wise move, too.  Since saugeye migrate upstream at night, be there at first light or even before to seek hungry fish before other anglers arrive.  And hitting either spot just a couple of days after a goodly slug of water was released is smart, too.  The sudden rise of water will stimulate downstream fish to move up to the dam.

 If you tire of fishing the same two tailwaters, remember that there are some excellent hotspots just a modest drive away.  O’Shaughnessy and Griggs reservoirs near Columbus are two of the best tailwater fisheries in the state, and Delaware and Deer Creek are just as good.  The latter two are Army Corps developed tailwaters and can handle lots of fishermen, while the first two are owned by the city of Columbus and are less developed for fishing.

Alum Creek and Hoover are worth checking too, and you might like to drive a little further and take a look at tailwaters below some of the Muskingum River dams.  Here’s a final thought for hard fishing saugeye hunters.  Indian Lake and Buckeye Lake were No. 1 and 2 in the state for Fish Ohio saugeyes last year, so if cold weather continues and the ice becomes good on both lakes you might consider driving down with an ice auger and a couple of short rods.   And maybe driving home with a couple of real lunkers. 

Good ice has been slow in coming to area farm ponds this winter.  Snow and rain, freezes and thaws, but if that safe 4-5 inches of clear ice hasn’t arrived yet, it surely will soon, and when it comes, a small, but growing fraternity of ice walkers is going to be out there boring holes and hauling home some of the years best eating.

One of the best things about farm pond ice fishing is that it’s almost idiot proof.  You can be a local expert and catch fish or an absolute duffer who can hardly bait a hook and still catch fish.  Usually lots of them, because statistics show that fishing on frozen water is the absolute most productive way of taking pan and game fish. 

 So, how do you do it?  Remember that safety comes first, so you always fish with a partner or two and always bore a hole and check ice depth just a couple of feet off dry land.  There’s really no need to mention that you’ve got to stay warm, since chilled hands and frozen feet will drive you off the ice in a hurry.  Wear insulated boots, good thermal long johns, and carry a handwarmer or a source of heat, maybe a Coleman lantern or tiny propane stove.

Equipment is simple.  A couple of short ice rods available at almost any sporting goods store or section, a sturdy auger, some ice spoons, flies, and tiny jigs in various colors, and a container of waxworms will do the job nicely most times.  Place the lot in a five gallon plastic bucket, walk out to the deepest end of a pond that you know holds good bluegill and bass (usually near the dam), and bore two holes.

Next step is to let a pair of spoons, one on lines end and one on a short side line 6-8 inches above down to bottom, each with a waxworm, reel up a turn and adjust your float for that depth.  Add a splitshot if you wish to get the baits down quicker, use the smallest float that will hold the rig up, something around dime or nickel size, and start slow jigging.

You’ll jig one rod gently up and down just an inch or two, then let it rest while you jig the other rod.  Bites usually come at the rest as panfish swimming below are attracted to the movement, swim over, and suck the offering in.  That’s all it takes.  Deep water, ice spoons in white, red, yellow, and chartreuse, and jig just above the bottom.  It isn’t rocket science.

There are refinements, of course.  Like moving every  15 minutes or so if you’re catching nothing, until you find a cluster of hungry fish.  You might concentrate your fishing early and late, too.  I’ve taken pond fish at high noon and will again, but early and late always seems to be better.  Especially early when they’ve eaten little or nothing all night. And if you’re using several colors of spoons and catching all of your fish on white, for example, you might like to change other spoons to that color.

Most farm ponds have largemouth bass and you’ll catch these frequently on bluegill jigging spoons or flies, but if you ever get serious about catching bass, go to slightly larger spoons. maybe an inch long or so.  I’ve taken bass to four pounds plus through the ice, releasing most and sometimes keeping a couple in the 1  1/2 pound range, and even half frozen they’re a lively proposition on four pound test line.

Here’s a final thought.  As I’ve found out more than once, even basically dumb bluegills can wise up if you’re hitting the same pond hard again and again.  When that happens, give up the spoons they’ve been seeing repeatedly. 

Grant Milliron, who owns Milliron Recycling on Route 39 between Shelby and Mansfield, didn’t want a worthless pond.  Instead, he planned like a general to build a Perfect Farm Pond, one that would complement his dryland conservation efforts.  And he succeeded.  Grants first step was to contact the Soil Conservation Service in Richland County and ask what it would take to produce a perfect pond.  Their advice was as follows.

Ponds of any size frequently have problems with maintaining healthy fish populations, and one reason is that they seldom have much, if any, decent spawning territory for bass.  Bluegills can usually make out and bass can to a limited extent, but in a pure mud and clay bottom lake, which so many are, their success rate is less than ideal.

Grant solved that problem by putting in a shallow water spawning bed that took up one whole side of the pond.  He used pea gravel several inches deep for the bed and designed it so that it was nearly flat with a slight slant toward deeper water.  Smaller bass tend to spawn in shallower water while larger fish prefer slightly deeper nest sites.  His bed offered both.

 Then Milliron went one step further.  To protect small fish, both bass and bluegill, that roam over the beds looking for feed he added small triangles of four inch tile,  two below and one above, to provide an element of cover.  Bass would still be able to find plenty of bluegill fry and vice versa, but the tile would ensure that they didn’t overdo it.

Weeds are always a problem in ponds and there are few bodies of water that don’t have some, a lot, or too many.  Grants pond has few or none, except a few very small patches to provide cover and ambush sites.  First, he built the edges of his lake with a fairly steep slant, then covered that edge with sturdy black plastic, and over the plastic he placed a thick covering of limestone rocks.  There’s no place for weeds to gain a foothold, and that means no thick beds of cover to hide hordes of small bluegills.  The bass eat well, remaining panfish grow large in a hurry, and muskrats have no place to build their shoreline tunnels.

A recurring complaint of many fishermen is that farm ponds have bottoms smooth as a billard table.  There’s no cover, no place for bass to lie up and wait for food, no concentration points for fishermen.  So, this pond has several brushpiles weighted and tied down, and several trees tied together with stumps in shallow water and the tops in ten foot or better.  Added to a collection or two of Christmas trees weighted down with cinderblocks, and wherever bass decide to loaf, shallow, medium or deep, there’s prime hiding country for them.

The pond also has five holes cut into its bottom that deepen the pond two further feet, and these holes hold anything from large rocks for bass and bluegill lurking sites to tires tied together and weighted.  Almost unlimited cover.

To solve the problem of winter kill, which can happen sometimes when snow cover blocks sunlight for too long, this far thinking man purchased a small, inexpensive air compresser which sits in his basement.  A hose leads from the basement to the lake (underground), and whenever he decides the lake needs oxygenating, he simply turns on the compressor.  For an hour or 12, and as often as it needs it.

Finally, Grant was very careful to ensure that drainage would come from non-crop land since crop areas too often add unwanted nutrients to a lake causing algae blooms and bad smells.  And he’s given very careful thought and listened to good advice from the Division of Wildlife and county ag people before stocking his lake.  It now has bluegills and redear sunfish, largemouth bass, and some whopper channel cats all stocked originally in proper proportion.  Perfect lakes take some research and work, but they’re worth the trouble.  Especially, when you’re looking at a plate of crisp fried bluegills in palm-sized pieces.

Unless you’re into ice fishing or below the dams saugeye, steelhead fishing is the only game in town from December through March.  Luckily, it’s a very good game indeed.  The Ohio Division of Wildlife stocks many thousands of steelhead each year into Lake Erie tributaries, and these fish grow large feeding on gizzard shad, shiners, and other body building provender.  Those that aren’t caught or are caught and released live on to grow heavier each year, so it’s not unusual to sink a hook into 10 or 12 pound trout that produce an awesome and sometimes tackle destroying fight that will leave you shaken.

There are actually two ways to go for steelhead in Lake Erie tributaries from the Chagrin and Conneaut Creek to the Rocky River, Grand, Vermillion, Huron, and smaller streams like Arcola, Mills, and Paint.  One is to hit the larger rivers and patiently fish one section after another.  A favorite tactic for early fish is to check water depth by adding a sinker to your float rig and adjusting until you know the water is four feet deep or six or eight.  Then drift through pools and deep riffles with a float and small jig baited with maggots.

Steelhead will hit this rig just like bluegills sometimes, bouncing the float until you tighten line and strike.  Another popular rig is a spawn sac below a float or fished with a splitshot or two, just enough to keep it bouncing bottom occasionally.  I’ve caught more steelhead on spawn sacs than any other rig.  You can do the same with live minnows or nightcrawlers, or cast various kinds of hardware from spinners to crankbaits.

The second way is my personal favorite, and that’s to go after visible fish.  It’s not only great fun to cast to a steelie finning our there in a riffle, but productive in that you waste no time in barren territory.  You’ll need smaller streams for this, and my personal favorite has always been Conneaut Creek.  It takes fairly clear water and Polaroid glasses for this, so it’s wise to call first to such places as the Grand River Tackle Shop (440-352-7222) and check on water conditions before you go.

Last week, thanks to rains and snow runoff the Grand was high and nearly unfishable, but the smaller streams like Conneaut, the Chagrin, and Arcola were producing excellent results on spawn sacs with some heavy catches reported.  If you can see the fish, it’s easy to drift a spawn sac, jig and maggot rig, flies like purple Woolie Boogers, Egg Sucking Leeches, and Glo-bugs right past their nose.

They’re going to be hungry, since there’s not much food in a winter stream, and hits should be frequent.  I still remember one trip to Conneaut Creek when we found at least two dozen nice steelhead in a three foot deep pool, and another dozen or so just below a riffle there.  I destroyed a good fly reel that day, but didn’t mind a bit.

Another fun tactic in fairly clear water is to wade out upstream of visible fish and drift a really lively little lure like a blue and silver or orange Flatfish down to them.  The wildly wobbling little bait moving back and forth in front of their noses can drive them crazy.  It’s important to know fishable stretches of stream, so maps are worth having.  You can find some on the web by hitting Lake Erie steelhead maps, or by stopping at the Grand River Tackle Company, which lies near the Fairport Harbor Exit, north of Route 2 on Richmond Streetfor maps of the Grand River.

The GRTC also has guides, useful for an initial trip.  Up-to-date information is available too, by calling the Division of Wildlife’s toll-free number at 1-888-HOOKFISH and (800) WILDLIFE.  Find the right water and the right place, use the right gear and fish it right, and your reward could be a LOT of huge, glistening, high leaping fish.  Maybe winter isn’t all bad.

If that youngster is a serious or would-be fisherman, try making them a goody box or bag.  Several years ago I walked into a sporting goods store and simply started gathering.  I picked up hooks, sinkers, thin pencil floats, splitshot, swivels, and ice fishing spoons, along with a few spinners, crankbaits, fishing line in 10 pound test, long nosed pliers for removing hooks, and a nice little stringer for fish.  It didn’t cost much, but my nephew who’d received LOTS of sweaters, socks, new shirts, and other useful things kept coming back to that bag, and spent hours playing with its contents and arranging them in his tacklebox.

If the receipient is very young, you might try one of those combo rod and reel kits too, but not a piece of plastic junk that’ll fall apart in a few weeks.  Get something decent with line already on the closed face spool, and if the gift is for a husband or older angler, you might be ahead to buy a gift certificate, instead of serious tackle.  Older fishermen, like older hunters, know what they want and would rather buy it themselves.

 Then there are the nice little odds and ends, again available in sporting goods shops and major department stores.  What about a nice Rapala filleting knife, a hand warmer or two, Gortex gloves, a warm hat with imitation fur or wool on the inside ear flaps?  If ice fishing is a favorite sport, some sturdy insulated boots would be a good choice, or long john type underwear, or a short ice fishing rod, and maybe some little ice spoons in various colors.

Books are always good, to while away long winter months, and you’d be astonished at how many are out there waiting.  Check Amazon or your local book store, and you’ll find literally hundreds of books on bass fishing, hunting deer, waterfowl, panfish, crappie, walleye, camping, hiking, the list goes on forever.  Good reading and useful information.

If he or she is handy with their hands, think about a kit of some sort.  There are fly tying kits, kits that will turn into muzzleloader rifles or pistols like I received one Christmas.  There are some for making spinners and fishing lures, more for casting bullets or sinkers, kits for building and coloring jigs and bottom bouncers.  Again, useful pursuits for those long winter days, and come spring, plenty of new gear for hunting and fishing.

The Ohio Department of Natural Resources has their own wish list, and many of the offerings are good ones.  For example, there are Eagle Golf Cards for golfers, good at state park golf courses, and Cardinal Camper Club memberships good for 15 percent off camp fees at state parks.  There are resort lodge gift certificates at one of nine Ohio state parks for couples and families, nautical charts for boating on Lake Erie, an ODNR fishing map set that includes information on 72 Ohio lakes, books like Birds of Ohio and The Guide To Ohio State Parks.  Call 614-265-6513 for gift information and 614-265-6576 for fishing maps.

And don’t forget neat little items like walkie-talkies for conversation on hunting and fishing trips, dried foods like jerky and pemmican, sweat shirts that say “I’d Rather Be Fishing”, and plenty more.  The time is short, but there’s enough to buy some great things, and lack of knowledge won’t matter much for useful items like those above.

It’s a good time of year for area farming folk.  The crops have been harvested, the machinery repaired, and it’s time to sit back and rest or maybe take a little trip somewhere to get away from northern Ohio’s often bitter weather.  You might go to Florida, spend $150 a night for a little Mom and Pop motel room, and fight bumper to bumper traffic and high prices for everything.  Or you might go to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.

Myrtle Beach is an area favorite holiday destination.  People go in spring and fall for the great golfing at dozens of golf courses, and in summer with the kids to loaf along miles of smooth sand beach and watch the surf come rolling in.  But hardly anyone goes now, other than a very few who love to stay here for Christmas and maybe New Years, or maybe even spend a couple of months.  Those few have some good reasons.

Price is one.  I was down there over the first week of December, stayed in a beach front motel that had 15 floors, two pools, a lazy river, jacuzzi, nice restaurant, and bowling alley.  My wife and I had a suite with two large rooms, two tv’s, a full kitchen, large bath, and outside patio on the 15th floor.  It cost us $40 per night.  Had we wished to stay just across the street, but still on Ocean Boulevard, we could have gotten a room with cooking facilities for about $25 a night, less for a full week, and even less for a longer stay.  You’ll never find prices like that in Florida or even here in Ohio!

Weather?  It’s chancy in December and January like anywhere else.  You might get a two foot snowfall (unlikely) or you might get 70 degree temperatures or anything in-between.  But South Carolina is far south of northern Ohio, and odds are good you’ll find weather at least in the 50′s or 60′s, far better than here.  We consistently had 60 – 70 degree weather and enjoyed every minute of it.

One of the things I like best about early winter Myrtle Beach is that there’s nobody there, but almost everything is still open.  There are times when you could stand in the middle of the King’s Highway, fire a shotgun down its length, and hit nothing.  The 15 story motel we stayed at had about ten cars in its parking lot, and the shopping centers were almost empty.  My wife loved that.

She’d visit Barefoot At the Beach and browse through dozens of shops from The Endangered Species to Perfumania and California Leather to The Caddy Shack, and do it almost alone.  So few shoppers are here during the day that clerks rush to welcome you, and the same holds true at Barefoot Landing, the Wakomaw Pottery, and other major league shopping centers.  Real bargains often enough, some good sales, and plenty of shops for browsing.

Our Standard Operating Procedure most days was for her to drop me off at The Springmaid Pier where I’d fish for whiting, croaker, sea trout, spot, and the inevitable sand sharks and skates.  I’d usually arrive about two hours before high tide, stay until about two hours after, while she went shopping, then she’d pick me up and we’d travel to places we both like.

For example, we both love to visit Huntington Beach State Park just south of Myrtle Beach, and we try to do so at low tide.  It’s a wonderful place for outdoorsmen and nature lovers, a far ranging salt marsh with waving cord grass and that rich scent of mud, salt, and gently decaying vegetation.  There are sturdy piers that reach far out into the marsh, good places to stand and spend time watching the busy marsh life.

There are always dozens of little fiddler crabs, schools of minnows, lurking bluecrabs, and birds of many kinds.  Curlews will probe the crab holes and pull free their occupants, great blue herons and egrets seek the minnows, and small birds from sandpipers to Mother Careys Chickens hurry there and here seeking amphipods and other bits of nourishment.  A lovely place, and sunning alligators only make it better.

You might like to walk the beach too, almost alone, and pick up sea shells just above the surf.  Or watch brown pelicans pass above single file like little B-29′s, sea gulls, and shore birds, and sometimes a passing pod of dolphins.  Or just sit and watch the waves roar rhythmically and feel the stress wrinkles leave your face.

The food is marvelous.  Calabash restaurants are waiting with their 120 item seafood menus, great places to OD on crab legs and oysters.  And there are excellent Italian restaurants, Chinese restaurants, steak restaurants, and others like Hooters, the Hardrock Cafe, and The Key West Grill as well as little eating spots that offer meat loaf and grits.

Those that like country western music will enjoy the Dixie Stampede and the Carolina Opry, and most will like the Imax Theatre and the Ripley Aquarium, one of the best of its kind in the country.  Don’t forget the Brookgreen Gardens just south of town and little Georgetown yet further south with its wonderful waterfront and quaint little shops and restaurants.

You can drive to Myrtle Beach, chancing possible nasty weather in West Virginia or do as we do these days, fly down and get a rental car.  It’s 2 1/2 hours from here by plane, a day and a half by car, and if you tally up gas, wear and tear on your vehicle, meals, and a motel overnight, you’ll find the cost difference isn’t much.  We’d rather fly and arrive rested and ready to go.  Whatever your choice, check out Myrtle Beach on the web or just hop in the car and go.  It’s a good place to spend Christmas and New Years.