SPORTS

Outdoors: Too much rain? Try fishing the reservoir

Dick Martin
Outdoors

The weather can get a little violent in Ohio during the summer months. Heavy thunderstorms come and go, sometimes causing flooding that turns area rivers and streams into nightmares and lakes into brown chocolate.

When you’re standing in your backyard holding a fishing rod with no place to go, there’s always one place worth trying, and that’s to any handy upground reservoir. It can rain fire and salt and these hotspots will be clear and clean. And usually full of fish — if you know how to catch them.

First, keep one thought in mind. Reservoir fish spend most of their time in deeper water, coming shallow near dark to forage around the riprap and cruise the shoreline looking for dinner.

They may stay there all night and still be close to dry land at daylight, but then they make a slow, gradual migration back to deeper water for the day. So, if you’re going to fish them from shore, it’s a good idea to be there at first gray light or just before dark.

I’ve fished a good many upgrounds in my time, and when I was shore fishing my battle plan was to get there as soon as I could see, and parallel cast the shoreline with one of my favorite pearl gray 3/8 ounce Roostertail spinners.

If the reservoir held smallmouth bass I could almost count on catching some this way, taking fish sometimes only 10 feet or so from the bank. Largemouth bass would hit too, and on rare occasion I might even take a foraging walleye.

As it got a little later I’d switch to a deep diving crankbait and cast further out to pick up more fish, and later yet I’d switch to a jig with a bit of worm or small minnow and let it drop to bottom for a slow retrieve.

After that I’d go home. It was always a little spooky walking the shoreline on rocks that might turn under your foot and give a nasty fall, and I did it very carefully. You should, too.

Another alternative was to find a good spot and fish live bait, usually minnows if I was interested in perch and nightcrawlers for anything else. The rigs should be standard two No. 6 snelled hooks above a half ounce or ounce sinker, but instead of tossing them out and waiting all morning for a bite, you’d best move them every half hour or so.

Fish those two rods in a fan pattern, closer at daylight and further out as the morning progresses. Perch particularly move in loose schools and if you shift your fishing spots occasionally you’re much more likely to find a school.

For channel cats use the same rig at night and again either fish them fairly close or toss one rig well out and the other farther in. Raw shrimp is a very good bait for night-time channels and chicken livers or prepared and commercial baits work, too.

Odor is important to night foraging cats, and your offerings should have some. But again, cast in different directions every half hour or so and cover the territory out front thoroughly.

Boat fishermen will always outfish shore sitters simply because they can cover so much more territory. My favorite technique for upground boat fishing is to use nightcrawlers and a Lindy rig, a truly lethal fish finder.

A Lindy is simply a slip sinker above a swivel with about two feet of line below and a No. 6 or 4 hook on lines end. You can buy them or make your own, but the little rigs will hold a head hooked nightcrawler and be dropped to bottom or at least close enough to bump mud occasionally.

The Lindy is fished with an open bail and a high rod tip and when a strike comes, you’ll drop the tip, let line slip for a count of 10 while the fish eats your worm, then tighten up and strike.

It’s a fun way to fish with time for anticipation, and it will produce some dandy catches of everything from walleye and perch to bass and channel cats. In fact, I’ve taken all four in one day on Lindy’s.

A final alternative for boat fishermen is to cast the shoreline with spinners and crankbaits early and late or even after dark. But remember to move from shallow to deep or vice versa as you fish dawn or dusk.

They’re good places, these upgrounds, and offer good fishing when lakes and rivers look like coffee with cream. Give them a try this summer.