Wollitz: Rust along the river
Her question was the perfect set-up.
“What are those rusty things?” wife Barb asked as she checked my cell phone photos of fish I caught during a recent fishing trip.
My answer to her is another explanation of why I so thoroughly appreciate each and every outing on the Ohio River’s New Cumberland Pool.
The “rusty things” are the backdrop of almost every photograph I shoot on the Ohio. One can hardly point a camera on the river without a rusty thing prominent in the frame – barges, walls, pilings, docks, conveyors, breakwaters and other steel structures oxidized to the familiar burnt red patina that lends itself to a sometimes derogatory nickname.
Many call our home region the Rust Belt. It’s an apt term for a place where steel, coal, blood, sweat and tears built the infrastructure of America, and the cars, trucks, railroads, ships and barges that transported the people, raw materials and manufactured products to build our country.
The Ohio River is the critical artery of our Rust Belt, delivering the lifeblood energy essential for our region, nation and world. It also is home to a thriving population of popular game fish and one of my all-time favorite fishing venues.
Barb’s question really gets to the essence of the Ohio River. Those “rusty things” not only stand for commerce, they are home to beautiful smallmouth bass, walleyes and the baitfish that sustain them.
Anglers are drawn to the rusty things like deer are to clover.
My phone is full of pictures of me and fishing friends grinning while gripping the jaws of bronzebacks and snaggle-tooth walleyes.
It is not a coincidence that a rusty red barge or some other steel structure often is the backdrop. They are the hunting grounds for the predator fish – bass and walleyes – that seek to pick off shad and other baitfish buffeted by the current of the Ohio River.
Fed by runoff from the farms and towns of Mahoning, Trumbull and Columbiana counties, the hills and dales Western Pennsylvania, and the highlands of West Virginia, the Ohio River flows forcefully through the Montgomery Lock and Dam below Beaver Falls, Pa., to the New Cumberland Lock and Dam at Stratton, Ohio. My favorite stretches run from East Liverpool upriver 10 miles to the upper dam.
Smallmouth are suckers for small plastic baits drifting into their sightlines. They are visual feeders and can easily see natural-appearing lures. Now lined throughout the New Cumberland pool by hydrilla, milfoil and eelgrass, the river runs vodka clear these days. Ned rigged three-inch stick worms are my favorite smallmouth offerings. Walleye like them, too.
I toss them not only into the eddies behind the current breaks, but directly into the steel and concrete structures where the current hits head-on where smallies and walleyes hold when they are actively feeding.
Topwater buzzbaits, walking baits and poppers also work great on Ohio River bass, as do shallow- and deep-running crankbaits mimicking shad.
Natural colors work well, but I also like to jazz up my offerings with a bit of chartreuse. It seems to trigger bites, especially from sharp-eyed bronzebacks.
Regardless of the lures they choose, anglers will boost their chances of catching Ohio River’s bass and walleyes by throwing them at the rusty stuff.
Jack Wollitz has written this fishing column weekly since 1988. He also is the author of “The Common Angler,” published in 2021. Contact him at jackbbaass@gmail.com.