One sunny morning more than a few years ago on Lake Milton, I spotted a surface commotion that begged for investigation.

As the Bass Cat glided toward the splashes and ripples, I recognized the source of the fuss. It was a 6-inch smallmouth bass with a 5-inch yellow perch in its mouth.

The bass and the perch were in a predicament. The smallie obviously bit off more than it could swallow, and the perch was too far into the bass’s mouth to wiggle free. It was a stalemate in the truest sense of the word. Both fish were doomed to die that day, either from exhaustion resulting from their struggle or in the stomach of an osprey that no doubt would find the two-for-one meal opportunity and swoop in.

I intervened, however, and separated the fish, then tossed them both into Milton with parting words, “Today is your lucky day. You get a second chance.”

Milton, like the little smallmouth bass and yellow perch, today lives on thanks to a benevolent second chance. We who fish there are the ultimate beneficiaries.

Dammed in 1917, Milton was the first and thus the oldest reservoir in the Mahoning River drainage. It was built to tame the river from its tendency to flood, to supply water to thirsty Youngstowners, and to cool the Mahoning Valley’s steelmaking furnaces and mills.

Milton performed admirably for nearly 30 years before it was joined by Berlin and Mosquito lakes in the 1940s. West Branch joined the family in the 1960s as Milton continued to serve its primary water management duties and grow healthy populations of walleyes, crappies, perch, muskies and bass.

By the mid-1980s, however, Milton showed signs of its age. The 2,800-foot dam was deemed dangerous. The City of Youngstown decided it could not afford the millions of dollars necessary to repair the dam, so to prevent the possibility of a catastrophic break, Milton was drained down to its original Mahoning River channel.

With the water went the fishing opportunities enjoyed annually by thousands of Northeast Ohio anglers. Memories of summer weekends and fun fishing faded as the lake shrank and its mud bottom hardened.

But all was not lost. Milton got a second chance. The state of Ohio stepped in to pay for dam repairs and establish Lake Milton State Park, thus clearing the way for refilling the 1,600-acre impoundment. The dam gates were closed and the water rose to inundate hundreds of acres of young locust trees and terrestrial grasses, creating a fertile “soup” that sustained the food base for newly stocked largemouth and smallmouth bass and muskies.

By the close of the 1980s, Milton again was a hot-spot for fishing, especially for the bass that grew fat and happy in the cover-laden reservoir. Bass anglers enjoyed 50-fish days and muskie chasers flocked to the lake in search of monster catches.

The fishing was hot for years. In fact, the first fish to come aboard my newly acquired Ranger boat in 1995 was a 42-inch muskie. In the ensuing years, I enjoyed bountiful days with main lake and up-the-river smallmouth bass, hefty catches of largemouths off the points from Mahoning Avenue north to the dam, and wrestling matches with cattail bass plucked in the ponds off the river channel south of Ellsworth Road.

I returned to Milton often in May and June this year to test my finesse tactics with the burgeoning bass population around the numerous boat docks.

The results were great, proving that Milton has not missed its opportunity to produce thanks to gaining its second chance.

Jack Wollitz this fall continues to chronicle the back stories of popular fishing destinations near Youngstown and Warren. Contact him at jackbbaass@gmail.com.