The Blade, Toledo, Ohio, Steve Pollick Column: Summer Fishing Rife With Other Rewards

By Steve Pollick, The Blade, Toledo, Ohio

Aug. 17–The post-dawn air had that slightly sultry feel like it does in mid-August, the early morning moistness confined by the foot-soaking dew in the tall grass down by the Maumee River.

A veritable city of small spiderwebs had emerged at ground level overnight, clustered all around the bases of the tall, prairie grasses. Each web was dappled with droplets.

Little swirls of foggy mist rose from the river current, which was running a mite faster than normal for late summer, thanks to recent drought-dampening rains. It was doing a slow trot rather than foot-dragging.

A beat-up bald eagle flapped overhead, its molting feathers hardly the dressing of a national symbol. A few swallows swooped and nipped insects and the odd cardinal still sounded off.

It was summer stream smallmouth time for Eric Kraus and me, and the setting on the mighty Maumee was from an angler’s dream. If you don’t take it all in, think only of the catch, you’re missing something big.

Now if the fish would just cooperate a little. We weren’t asking for much, just enough fine, feisty smallies to break up a morning’s conversation.

We waded summer-style, old sneakers and quick-dry shorts. The current was warmish, mellow, not quite bath water but surely not the dangerous frigid of April walleye-run waters. A light spinning outfit, six-pound line, a fanny pack filled with 2 1/2-inch tubes in assorted darkish patterns. All we needed, and we were ready for whatever.

Though smallmouths were the target, who is to tell a bulldog of a channel catfish that it is not allowed into the party? Kraus and buddies have picked up resident summer walleye as well from time to time, and occasionally gar, which seem to be nature’s long, skinny cross between northern pike and alligators. You never know.

You step carefully, as always, sort of sliding your feet along the bottom and letting your soles signal the disposition of your next step. The river above Maumee-Perrysburg is full of cobbles and bumps and ledges, ones that will bump your submerged shins when you slide into them or shock you when they suddenly fall off from ankle-deep to thigh deep. An outbreak of slimy moss in patches of the rock bottom doesn’t help footing, either. Like I said, carefully.

“That little riffle there,” said Kraus, pointing 50 yards ahead as we moseyed along. “There’s a run in there when the water was low, it was loaded. A high school friend of mine and I took 45 bass out of it in one evening.

“They were feeding on shad. It was like taking candy from a baby.”

The angler, a river rat since youth, fishing and hunting ducks, went on to say that most of the bass were 10 to 14 inchers, though their evening’s creel included “some beauties” in the 17 and 18-inch class. Not that any of the bass were in mortal danger that evening, or any other time, with these anglers. They carefully, gently release all their bass. Good example.

Well, in the case of the low-water bass haven, that was then. Our morning was now, this week. The river is up about 18 inches over normal-time-of-year flow by Eric’s eye, and he lives on the river and watches it every day.

“It’s really not late summer water right now,” he said. “It’s more like late May.” At times we waded thigh deep.

“Now they’re scattered more,” said Kraus, who is founder and editor of The Nature Resource, a budding all-outdoors-Ohio Web site, www.thenaturalresource.com.

“They just get so concentrated when the water’s low. Like my brother, Phil, said a few weeks ago when they were so concentrated, a trained monkey could have caught them.”

This morning the fish weren’t exactly making monkeys of us, trained or otherwise. At first I found the current a bit too much for a small watermelon 1/16-ounce Texas-rigged tube that proved so dangerous earlier in smaller streams. Kraus was connecting with fair regularity with a 3 1/2-inch tube and 3/32-ounce jighead.

Funny, when I switched to a 1/8-ounce rig, it hung up too much. Kraus said it is amazing but true that just 1/32 of an ounce can make a difference. Ciphering the changing current can be that precise — too light and you stay above the strike zone, too heavy and you eat rocks all morning.

So, this stream thing means a bit of adjusting and adapting, just like most fishing. Just the right amount of lead in the tube or the jig spells the difference between proper presentation and just a casting exercise. Reading the water and knowing where the fish hold in each scenario also can mean catching or watching. “The difference of a foot [of current depth] can make all the difference,” emphasized Kraus.

He favors fishing early and late. “First light and last light are the most consistent,” Kraus noted. “The fish are most active and feeding then. But there are plenty of people who go in high sun because the fish then are concentrated in deep pools.”

The Maumee, as fine a stream as it is, is not the only one in the region where such an experience can be repeated. The Sandusky, Portage, Huron, Vermilion, St. Joseph, and Auglaize rivers in northwest Ohio, to name a few, and upper River Raisin in southeast Michigan also produce fine smallmouth. Many larger creeks also will provide.

Whenever you go, though, you can’t miss. The soothing stream, a buddy for company, and maybe the finest warm-water species that swims. It’s not too far from heaven.

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The Michigan Division of the $8.8 million Wal-Mart Bass Fishing League will hold the fourth of five 2007 events on the Detroit River Aug. 25 at Trenton, Mich.

Up to 200 boaters and 200 co-anglers can participate for a $45,000 cash pot, including up to $6,000 for top boater and $3,000 for top co-angler. The event will be run from Elizabeth Park Marina. Call FLWOutdoors to register at 270-252-1000, or visit on-line FLWoutdoors.com.

In related news, Bryan Coates, of Amherst, Ohio, won the Wal-Mart league’s Buckeye Division event last weekend on Sandusky Bay with a five-bass catch weighed at 21 pounds, 6 ounces. He took his fish on a Berkley Gulp Minnow on a drop-shot rig, winning $2,912. Jared Rhode, of Port Clinton, took fourth with five fish at 19-1 to win $799.

Steve Pollick is The Blade’s outdoor writer E-mail him at spollick@theblade.com Read more Steve Pollick columns at www.toledoblade.com/pollick

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Copyright (c) 2007, The Blade, Toledo, Ohio

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