Experience and research pays off in the end

We are blessed with several excellent fishing lakes right here in Morning Journal country and I have tried most of them with a decent amount of success. You can do the same.

But I think the best way to have success is to pick a lake and learn it. Each lake has its own idiosyncrasies and once you learn them your fishing will improve.

I didn't even realize I was learning a body of water back when I was about 10 years old. Most of my fishing was in an abandoned strip mine pond below the East Palestine reservoir.

I doubt many of today's parents would allow a kid to climb around old strip pits, but mine handled it pretty well. Dad even seined some small fish from a creek to help stock the little pond. I don't know if we kids were tougher back then, but it seems the parents were.

Even that small pond demanded some study, although our basic technique was just to remember where we caught a fish. Although looking back I realize that we were actually fishing structure even if we had no idea what structure was. There was one spot that formed an underwater shelf.

Another good spot was where some shale had slid into the water to form a tiny reef. An old sunken homemade raft was always a place to pick up bluegills. Does that sound a lot like your favorite lake?

Most every fishing article I read advises me to fish the weed line, but the last two lakes that have taken up most of my fishing time are practically devoid of weeds. Take Atwood Lake for instance. We once owned a cottage there and despite spending a lot of time fishing I seldom hooked a weed from this 1,500-acre lake. But after a couple years I began to have some success.

My method was to study the contour maps published by the ODNR and note the location of structure. Keep in mind that the term "structure" does not always mean underwater brush or logs. Structure can also mean a break in the contour of the lake's bottom.

There was a sunken island in Atwood that often held fish. Here was where saugeyes came to feed, and if you were there when they fed you caught fish. Unfortunately, this fact was not much of a secret and the sunken island was often surrounded by other fishing boats. Not to be discouraged I located another spot where a bar curved out from shallow water to deep water. It often paid off for me.

Now that I live on Lake Tomahawk I find the same predicament. Finding a weed causes about as much excitement as finding a Sasquatch track. Actually finding Sasquatch might be more of a possibility.

I can find no contour map of the lake's bottom, but modern technology comes to the rescue. My boat has sonar and I can cruise the lake picking out drop offs and other breaks in the lake's bottom.

For years I have carried marker buoys to mark structure while I fish, but the problem was that when I left that spot I had to pick up the buoys. That meant trying to remember the same spot the next time out. Once again technology rides to the rescue. My Humminbird sonar has a built-in global positioning system (GPS). Now I just press "Mark" on my sonar unit and a couple of satellites will guide me back to the hot spot. Ain't science wonderful?

If you plan to spend a lot of time on a lake that is new to you, take time to just cruise around while you monitor your sonar. It might be a good idea to leave the fishing tackle at home and just concentrate on learning what lies beneath the surface of the lake. It will pay off in future fishing success.

The one thing science cannot control is you. The only way to really learn a lake is to spend time fishing and cruising that lake. I personally plead guilty to spending too much time landlocked and I promise to change that.

From now on I put some of my non-fishing commitments on the back burner and go fish. I hope you will do the same.