The Blade, Toledo, Ohio, Steve Pollick Column: Plan B Works Beautifully; Frisch Proves You Can Catch Bullheads – Without Hooks
By Steve Pollick, The Blade, Toledo, Ohio
Aug. 31–MONTGOMERY, Mich. — Having a Plan B in your tackle box always is a good idea when you hit the road on a fishing trip, as veteran angler Tom Frisch knows too well.
And Plan B is just what the 77-year-old North Toledo outdoorsman had in mind after surveying a beautiful little private lake in Hillsdale County where lunker largemouth bass are known to lurk.
It was the bigmouths and big crappies and bluegills that had drawn us to an evening’s fishing. It was to be something to pass the time while we waited on our turtle traps. We had set them earlier in the afternoon, baited with fresh-frozen carp heads, and had to wait till morning to check them. That’s another story.
In any case, Frisch was a mite down turned in the corners of the mouth at bass and panfish prospects. Like so many bodies of water in the region, the little lake had been railroaded by the recent train of heavy rains. It was more than three feet above normal from collected runoff, and super muddy.
“It’s really a difficult lake to fish,” he said. “There are so many fallen trees laying around. It’s got lots of lily pads and water lotus, too.”
No wonder it harbors big bass and crappies and such.
“It’s always been a bit muddy,” Tom allowed, scanning the shoreline, “but you usually have a foot and a half or more visibility. But this….”
The water looked thick enough to make mudpies.
Suddenly the senior angler brightened.
“We’re going to do something tonight I haven’t done in 70 years. We’re going to go bullheading with no hooks.” Eh?
Shrugging an OK, I dutifully followed him to a freshly storm-downed tree, where we hacked off four switches, each four to five feet long. Then we rooted around in the bottoms of tackle boxes and around the campsite for heavy string or leftover line to tie onto the homemade poles. Frisch tries to avoid using monofilament, which tends to be stiff, preferring old-fashioned “black” line that is limp and does not tip off the fish with resistance.
We fished some uncooked beef stew from the cooler and securely tied on chunks of meat to the makeshift lines. That was it. No hooks.
“My uncle took me out there on the boat,” Frisch recalled of his boyhood summers. He spent evenings fishing with his uncle, L.B. Smalley, on his farm near Six Lakes, southwest of Mount Pleasant in west-central lower Michigan.
“I had a willow stick. They make the best poles. They’re good and limber and strong.”
As for targeting bullheads with his uncle, Frisch noted, “They were a choice fish.”
Our own fly-by-night fishing sticks were not willow, but they still were green enough to be flexible. They would have to do.
In early evening we tried to entice the bass and panfish anyway, using the usual array of gear and lures. But the fish still were inactive, still sorting out the shock of the days of heavy rainstorms. A couple of crappies came to boat, and we saw a few carp rolling on the surface like they do in summer heat. But no lunker bass.
Once it grew dark, Frisch announced it was time. Using his old electric trolling motor, we churned slowly across the 15 acres of water in the leaky old johnboat to shallows alongside clusters of lily pads still submerged by floodwater.
“Conditions aren’t ideal, but we’ll try anyway,” Frisch said.
Well, maybe the water was not right and the fish inactive.
But how can you complain about spending a solitary late summer’s night on a beautiful small lake, listening to an after-dark serenade of katydids, crickets and bullfrogs? Or watching the moonlit shimmering wake of a muskrat as it silently paddles past? Or taking in a lungful of earthy, warm, moist night air?
A waxing harvest moon, still several days from full, played tag with scudding clouds, and “heat lightning” flashed regularly in the northwest. (There’s no such thing as heat lightning. That is a just a folk term for indistinct lightning so far beyond the horizon you cannot hear the thunder. That all arrived, with more rain, about two hours later.)
“I bought my first flyrod when I was 14,” Frisch said as we waited on the bullhead. Our fishing sticks were laid across the gunnels, meat-chunks dangling below. The old fisherman said they would thump and bounce when a bullhead tried to grab and swallow the stew.
“I didn’t even have a reel for it,” the older man added, reminiscing on the flyrod. “I would just wind the line around the bottom until I needed more.”
In short, he was using his first flyrod for little more than a glorified cane pole, which itself is not much more than a glorified switch, like the humble ones we had cut for tonight.
Presently my “rod” started thumping. Remembering there was no hook to set, I gingerly lifted it, felt the fish mouthing the chunk of meat. As instructed, I started the fish up toward the boat in one fluid motion.
A miss — the fish let go just as I pulled it from the water.
“That happens,” Frisch consoled. “Drop it right back down. He’ll be right back.”
He was. A few minutes later, more thumping. This time I actually could feel that the fish had a solid lock on the bait. A steady sweep of the switch and I lofted the bullhead into the boat.
I was overjoyed. As it flopped around I could not stop chuckling at catching a scrappy little brown catfish with no hook, just like Frisch the boy so many years and memories ago.
“You just did something that hasn’t been done in 70 years,” said Frisch, totally into the moment. “When it’s hot, when conditions are right, it’s a ball. You can catch 100, 140 bullhead in two, three hours.
“You get three guys in the boat, each with two poles, and you’ve got fish in the boat, flying over the boat, dropping in the water. It’s a circus.”
Circus indeed. I felt as happy as a kid just back from seeing the circus. I let the little bullhead go, this time.
But I know what to do next evening that the bass are not playing. I’ll cut myself a switch, find some string, and hope I brought along some chunks of meat.
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Lake Erie report — Walleye action has been decent in several areas of the western basin, area bait shops said.
“Try three miles east of C-Can [off Camp Perry], on up to the Canadian line,” said Rick Catley at Rickard’s Bait on Catawba Island peninsula. “Everything’s been on the bottom.”
Drifting and casting worm harnesses, or trolling worm harnesses, all have been productive, Catley said.
For yellow perch in that area, he suggests a half mile west of either Green or Rattlesnake island. Size is average but limits are being taken.
Closer to Toledo, walleye action has been good north of the chart area marked Gravel Pit, east of the Toledo Ship Channel east to Camp Perry’s A-Can, and off Crane Creek, said Rick Ferguson at Al Szuch Live Bait on Corduroy Road.
“The problem is, no bait,” he said, referring to tight supplies of shiner minnows for perch fishing because of federal live bait-transport restrictions connected to VHS. That is viral hemorrhagic septicemia, a fatal fish disease which broke out last summer.
More promising perch news comes from the central basin, where the annual Lake County PerchFest is set for Sept. 7 to 9. Headquarters for the event is Fairport Harbor Lakefront Park.
Perch meals, entertainment, a fishing contest and fireworks are among the attractions. For other details call the Lake County Visitors Bureau, 1-800-368-LAKE, or visit on line at www.perchfest.net.
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Kristin Sanford, resident researcher at Ohio State University’s Stone Laboratory at Put-in-Bay, is set to reappear on the Discovery Channel’s Dirty Jobs television program on Monday at 9 p.m. as part of the show’s “150th Dirty Jobs Extravanganza.”
Stanford’s work on the federally threatened, state-endangered Lake Erie water snake previously was featured on the show’s second season premier and has been voted one of the top 10 episodes. For details on her work, visit on-line at www.respectthesnake.com.
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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