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My drives south on Route 7 enroute to the Ohio River are always in inky blackness, which is appropriate considering the great mysteries that await when I reach my destination.
I love getting up before dawn to go fishing for smallmouth bass on the Ohio River, but not because it is the greatest fishery. In fact, many in the bass world consider our Ohio River a joke in terms of its fish population.
But it's not a laughingstock, in my opinion. For precisely the reasons that others disdain the Ohio, I love it. It is not an easy fishery. The river rarely fishes the same two times in a row. The river holds more mysteries than the public library.
So I drove south last Sunday through Columbiana County, past Rogers, past Beaver Local Schools, past Calcutta to the outskirts of East Liverpool where the first gray light revealed the river shimmering in the distance under a veil of fog.
I was ready for another challenge to unlock the day's best approach to hooking and battling smallmouth bass. The river bass are difficult to locate and tease into striking, and even when one is hooked, getting it in the boat is still a 50-50 proposition.
Ohio River smallmouth are tough as nails, always hungry and wake up with an attitude.
River smallies don't follow the same lifestyle as their fat cousins in Lake Erie or even their brethren in Milton, Berlin and Shenango.
They live in an environment that is far from perfect, considering the ebb and flow of the current and more than a century's worth of industrial and municipal discharges.
The river is dynamic. Some days the current is ripping; other days it is slack. But always it is the most significant influence on the behavior and location of the smallmouth bass.
Current was negligible last Sunday. That can be a good thing because it means any moving water that I do find is far more likely to hold active fish than the miles and miles of slack water.
I set out to find locations where the current ran directly against obstacles. The Ohio has many such spots - steel walls, barges and tie-offs, boulders, shoals, bridge piers and tree trunks and stumps.
My first stop was at a current-washed gravel and sand shoal. I worked a small popper across the point of the shoal and a spunky smallie slurped the lure. It was sub-keeper size, but it was valuable in jump-starting the morning. Every bite is a clue about what I need to do next to catch another fish.
The popper produced for two hours last Sunday. I mixed it up between the topwater plug and a small crankbait. Interestingly, the clear water enabled me to see the crankbait in 6
feet of water, and I was able to observe smallies attacking. They zoomed up out of the depths and swiped at the bait, but most missed.
Crankbaits are good for birddogging, but if the fish aren't getting the hooks, it's time for another tactic. Sunday's choice was a four-inch finesse worm, green pumpkin with a chartreuse tail.
The little worm was like candy Sunday. Several fish topping two pounds ate the bait before a two-and-a-half-pounder slammed it in the current washing hard against a coffer.
As the smallmouth fought to shake the hook, I noticed a fish approximately the same size trying to eat the tail of the worm sticking from the hooked bass' mouth - a sure sign of the smallmouths' competitive nature.
Always a mystery, the Ohio once again was entertaining. I caught enough fish to be satisfied. I learned more about the river and its bass. I found the challenge I was hoping to find and figured out how to solve it.
Jack Wollitz's book, "The Common Angler," explores the fun stuff that makes fishing a passion for so many people. He appreciates emails from readers. Send a note to jackbbaass@gmail.com.