The Blade, Toledo, Ohio, Steve Pollick Column: It’s Walleye Time
By Steve Pollick, The Blade, Toledo, Ohio
Mar. 27–Operation Overboard, a state boating accident-prevention campaign aimed at avoiding just what it hints at — going overboard — kicked off yesterday, just in time for walleye fishing season.
While jig-and-minnow season is just getting under way along the western Lake Erie shoreline, fishing activity is getting hectic and growing daily on the Maumee and Sandusky rivers, where the action is as high as the streams right now.
Sam DeWalt, supervisor of the Ohio Division of Watercraft office at Maumee Bay State Park, said that his officers will be highly visible at launch ramps along the popular fishing zones in the Maumee-Perrysburg area and in downtown Fremont.
Watercraft officers will be conducting safety checks of watercraft and making sure that boats are not overloaded.
Overloading and failure to have and use life jackets is high on the list of potential trouble. Watercraft authorities note that the leading cause of death from accidents involving boats less than 18 feet long is drowning because of capsizing/swamping and failure to wear life jackets.
Speaking of swamping, here is a tip that is so obvious it should not have to be repeated, but one which some greenhorns apparently never think about: If you are anchoring the boat to fish in river current, put out the anchor from the bow, which is designed to take waves and current. Do not anchor from the stern, which typically has the least freeboard and is most susceptible to swamping.
Breakup and heavy ice and a large snowmelt, followed by too-generous, periodic rains in the upper watersheds have kept both the Maumee and Sandusky rivers running high and muddy much of this spring, and best walleye angling success has come from the high-water access sites.
That translates into lots of anglers using small boats to gain access to the fish, and large numbers of wading anglers crowded in tight quarters because of limited river access.
The watercraft division also has some special advice for anglers who are wading the high, fast streams:
— Wear a life jacket or float-coat. The river bottom is slippery, the current is fast, and it is too easy to get distracted and otherwise lose your balance. Flotation is your life-saving ace-in-the-hole.
— Be dressed properly for the water temperature, which can be much colder than the air temperature. Layers including wool, synthetic fleece or polypropylene can help retain body heat even when wet.
— Wear a cinch-belt around your chest waders, to help prevent them from filling with water in a spill. Water in the waders, at more than eight pounds a gallon, can make it a struggle to slog ashore.
— Carry a walking stick or wading staff for a “third leg” for extra balance in the strong spring currents. Or strap on a pair of crampons or cleats for better traction.
— Let someone ashore know your destination on the stream and expected departure and return times.
Yesterday the Maumee was running about 50 degrees, which is relatively warm for the time of year, but still very cold in terms of causing hypothermia.
Total immersion in cold water also can be physically painful, disorienting and lead to panic. In water 40 to 50 degrees you can become exhausted from the cold in 30 to 60 minutes and die within one to three hours.
Cold water chills the body 25 times more rapidly than air, and any water 59 degrees or less will trigger a physical response to cold water that can include an uncontrollable gasping reflex, plus dramatic increase in heart rate and blood pressure, opening the possibility to cardiac arrest. A victim also could hyperventilate, finding it difficult to get air into the lungs.
If springtime stream safety has gotten your serious attention, so should the fishing action.
Both the Maumee and Sandusky are high and muddy, but that has not stopped the fish from moving upstream. If anything, it has caused a terrific surge.
“There are a ton of fish in the river — more fish than we’ve ever had,” summed river-veteran Gary Lowry, propietor at Maumee Tackle in Maumee.
“They’re in really heavy,” added Bernie Whittt at Angler Supply in downtown Fremont.
No doubt one of the big factors in the heavy runs is the super year-class of 2003, which this year for the first time is seeing a major run of spawning ’03 females to go with the ’03 males, or jacks, which started running last year. Lowry is urging anglers to release female fish and keep only males, except perhaps for wall-mount-size females, which may get 10 to 14 pounds.
The winner in Lowry’s first-week jacks-only contest was Gary Shaver of Waterville, with a male walleye weighing 7.23 pounds. He took the fish on a 3/8-ounce leadhead jig and three-inch chartreuse tail while fishing the channel on the north side of Blue Grass Island at Side Cut Metropark.
Scott Carpenter, a Toledo Metroparks spokesman, said that the parks are running a weekend walleye contest and posting photographs on the Web site, www.metroparkstoledo.com. The first winner landed a limit entry of weighing 31.7 pounds, including a 28-incher, Carpenter said.
Angler success has been good to excellent, with some anglers taking 20 legally hooked [in the mouth] fish on Sunday — keeping only the limit of four, of course, and immediately releasing the rest. It is lawful to release live fish from a lip-hook stringer, in effect sorting for size. But release a dead fish and you may be talking to the judge about wanton waste.
On the Maumee the high-water fishing sites all are best, including the foot of White Street, the Towpath and the lower end of Bluegrass Island on the Maumee side and Orleans Park, Fort Meigs on the Perrysburg side.
Best results seem to be coming from floating jigheads in pink, white, chartreuse or black, rigged Carolina-style on 18 to 30-inch leaders and tipped with Berkley Power Baits in such color-schemes as Christmas Lights, Sunkist and fire tiger.
On the Sandusky at Fremont, best action was coming from around the Miles Newton Bridge, which is the upstream bridge.
Upriver on the Maumee, anglers finally are getting into crappies, using bobbers and minnows, said Chris Martin at River Lures in Grand Rapids. One angler he met had taken 58 crappies, and another 16.
On western Lake Erie, jig-and-minnow fishing was spotty over the weekend with most activity around the reefs off Davis-Besse, according to Rick Ferguson at Al Szuch Live Bait in Jerusalem Township. The inshore water still is dirty and some ice floes remain.
Rick Catley at Rickard’s Bait on Catawba Island east of Port Clinton said that anglers also were doing very well off the Catawba Cliffs areas, north of Catawba Island State Park ramp. But they were using ice-fishing methods — vertical jigging with Swedish Pimples and Jigging Rapalas tipped with emerald shiners.
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Volunteers are needed to help move a section of the Buckeye Trail to an off-road location along the Miami and Erie Canal towpath east of Napoleon, beginning Saturday through April 5.
The work is part of a continuing effort to clear the towpath and convert it to a walking-biking-hiking trail. Individuals or groups can work from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. the first four days and 8 a.m. to noon the final day, beginning at Vorick Park, across from the Henry County Hospital. For details and to sign up call Greg Wisniewski at 419-599-7106 after 5 p.m.
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A public memorial service for the late Harold F. Mayfield, world-renowned Toledo naturalist and ornithologist who died Jan. 27 at age 95, is set for Saturday at 3 p.m. in the lodge at Oak Openings Preserve Metropark.
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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