Youngstown and Warren have many distinguishing features and successes that add up to differentiate our corner of the world in a uniquely satisfactory way.

From GF desks, Sheet & Tube steel and Lordstown Chevies to Penguin football, Brier Hill pizza and Mill Creek Metroparks, the Mahoning Valley is unique in our nation, our world and, most of all, our people.

To be a Mahoning Valley native really is a pride point. We are special in a way that nobody from elsewhere can claim. We have our own pizza, our own dialect, and our own gritty determination about hard work and fair play.

I think, therefore, that it stands to reason that we also must have a Mahoning Valley fishing persona. I have selected from among the myriad of attributes I’ve seen over the years among Youngstown and Warren folks, who spend more than a little of their free time fishing, and I’ve developed a composite profile of the “Mahoning Valley angler.”

He is a male, 50 years old and has been fishing since he was 6 years old. I have designated our Mahoning Valley angler as male because I see more men fishing than women. There are lots of women who fish, but the men outnumber them here.

Our Mahoning Valley-trademarked fisherman learned to love the sport from his father and grandfather. They took him fishing in their 14-foot aluminum boat they dragged on a Tee Nee trailer to Mosquito Lake on weekends and worked in an occasional trip to Pymatuning when time permitted.

The composite Valley angler — let’s call him MVA — loves walleye fishing first and foremost. Dad and Grandpa taught him to drift fish with jigs tipped with half of a nightcrawler on breezy April and May days at Mosquito, often limiting on walleyes off the “Red Barn” and “Cemetery” landmarks.

MVA likes to start his walleye fishing right after ice-out at Mosquito. He rigs a spinning rod with 10-pound-test line and an eighth-ounce jig sweetened with a minnow, which he casts and drags from the dam or causeway.

He also enjoys a trip or two to bag a bunch of crappies from the willows in May at Mosquito, West Branch, Pymatuning and Berlin.

With all those walleye and crappie fillets, MVA loves to feed his family and friends with fish fries where nobody goes home hungry. He’s Crisco-fried more fish than he can possibly count.

Our MVA also squeezes in a walleye charter every year when the word is out that the summer walleye bite is running hot on Lake Erie. He’ll hire a skipper to work the western basin island-region reefs and flats or an Ashtabula captain to drag the depths for smelt-fattened ‘eyes.

He wears a faded Cleveland Indians hat, cutoff jeans and aviator sunglasses to shade his eyes from Ohio’s spring and summer sun.

He is truly fortunate to have a cornucopia of fishing waters within an hour of home — Lake Erie, Mosquito, Berlin, Shenango, Pymatuning, Milton, West Branch, Berlin, Ohio River, Mahoning River and more serving up walleyes, perch, crappies, largemouth and smallmouth bass, sunfish, trout, muskies, northern pike, catfish and even sheepshead.

But it is the walleye that is the focus of the Mahoning Valley angler and he’s among the best in the world at catching them.

Jack Wollitz’s book, “The Common Angler,” seeks to answer the “why” behind our passion for fishing. He appreciates emails from readers. Send a note to jackbbaass@gmail.com.