Dick Martin’s Great Outdoors: Ohio River offers alternative for Erie anglers | Mansfield News Journal

By DICK MARTIN • News Journal • May 24, 2009

Lake Erie is one of the finest fishing holes in the country. Yet even the finest can become a little routine if it’s visited too often. Outdoorsmen looking for something different should try the Ohio River. One can spend a couple of days but not a lot of money, and have some excellent action on multiple fish species.

I’ve fished the river around Marietta several times and had success that ranged from good to great.

On one trip, I fished out of a bass boat with a friend working mostly upriver from the town, and found the fishing far different from Lake Erie. We hit a back water laden with stumps and stickups first and hammered the crappie with small jigs and twistertails. That was fun.

Then we worked the shoreline and mouths of small tributaries with spinnerbaits, plastic worms and crankbaits to catch a fine mixed bag of largemouth bass, smallmouths, and spotted bass. This is one of the few places around where you can catch all three.

That same trip and the next one also yielded some good white bass and wipers. The wipers are a cross between white and striped bass stocked by the Division of Wildlife. Like many hybrids, they grow fast and are vicious fighters. They will reach 15 pounds and hooking one is like being attached to a freight train. Bass tournament anglers who fish the Ohio hate wipers because they’re tackle busters and take time away from bass, but lots of others don’t mind them a bit.  Cli8ck link below for full story!

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