Ohio trip

[stk44]

My Wife, Daughter, and I are staying in the Port Clinton, OH area for a week. I managed to bring a couple of rods with me and some tackle and the fishing seems to be good so far. If you have any suggestions on areas I could access from shore (no kayak with me) please let me know... especially if there is a shot at large SM from shore...

 

Yesterday I caught a few LM from the portage river skipping docks and managed one nice 3.5 lb fish.

 

Today we went to east harbor state park and I tried middle and east harbors of Lake Erie. I saw a field of lily pads on the lake which always makes me smile.

 

I anticipated fishing for SM without doing much research of the area, so the only semi- acceptable rod I had was my MF Ltb w/ 12 lb flouro. I started with a weightless 4"senko just to start catching some fish, I had one big strike off the bat and then got wrapped up in the pads. Then I started fishing the points of lilly pad weedlines and after the senko would hit bottom, I would give it a few pops and then work it like a jerkbait back to shore. 

After a three jerk pause cadence, I landed my first bass- a goofy looking little 12 incher. I tried the senko for another 10 minutes then switched to a 5" soft jerkbait. This was definitely the ticket... in 1.5 hours, the 3-jerk pause picked up and became constant jerks with a fractional pause to land another dozen average sized fish. 

The sun was now starting to set and I saw baitfish flickering out of the water. I worked the soft plastic jerkbait like a topwater on points and pockets in the weedline. I caught several more fish by doing this. The 12 lb flouro held up in the pads, and the MF LTB was stout enough to muscle them out. I ended my short fishing trip with about 2 dozen fish caught in total. 

 

I didnt catch anything worth bragging about, but it sure is nice to occasionally figure out what the fish want... I'm here for a few more days, so hopefully I have a couple more chances to get on some good fish and fish a couple new spots. 

 

* sorry for the sideways pictures, not sure how to rotate them while posting with my iPhone. 

[jbw252]

Good outing in "new to you" waters.  Congrats on working out what those fishes wanted.  WTG.

[stk44]

9 hours ago, jbw252 said:

Good outing in "new to you" waters.  Congrats on working out what those fishes wanted.  WTG.

 

Thanks. There are so many places to fish up here, (although "this is not a fishing trip") that it almost gets overwhelming. I'm definitely going to make an actual fishing trip out of this one day soon. 

[stk44]

Docks were the name of the game today at the portage river. I tried my luck while my daughter took her nap. I lost count after the first dozen fish. 

 

There are rock piles A few feet off the docks that I tried fishing a spinner bait over. I quickly switched to my old faithful squarebill, the one with the cracked lip ( sorry@J Francho.) 

I started catching some bass immediately. I tweaked the line tie to the right to run under the docks. Now I was catching 2 lb fish. I realized that the bite was better around docks with adjacent jet ski launches and rocks. Wherever the wind was blowing, the fish were in that corner of the dock with a jet ski ramp. 

 

Best of the day was 3 lbs but these are much bigger than the river LM that I'm used to. 

 

Here are some pics of the day: