[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
Collecting East Fork Lake and the hdwtr of Little Mimai
I spent a couple of hours rod and reeling in the East Fork
Reservoir today. The very first fish I caught, and on my first cast was
a magnificent Longear. Only a few minutes later I caught a
magnificent orangespotted male. I fished for about two hours and caught
four orangespotted sunfish, 3 longears, about 10 bluegills, and well
over ten fish that were either green sunfish or hybrids. I even caught
two crayfish that wouldn't let go of the bait. One of the bluegills
appeared to be a hybrid too having way too much yellow orange
in the throat area.
The orangespotted are beautiful but do have some anchor worms. Any idea
why I only caught males??? There was a point where I saw two males
posturing for each other while a female looked on ...all of this in about
a foot of water. I am sure if I could have seined for them or used a
trap rather than the barbaric hook and bait method I would have caught
quite a few more and not injured any.
I saw some riffles just a short distance downstream from the dam....
about a half mile anyway...it looked like prime darter habitat.... there
were darters there, I caught only rainbows and greensided....its odd
that the other common species weren't there. Usually I would expect to
catch some green, fantails, and maybe even an orangethroat or
two...though I rarely catch rainbows and orangethroats together, and
maybe even a logperch or two. Even the species I caught were scarce.
I have collected in other localities in southern Ohio where each dip of
the dipnet would have as many as a dozen darters at a time...in an hour
of dipnetting I only came up with a dozen darters all but two of them
green banded.
It was great being out and getting my feet wet....