Outdoors
Jim Robey
Some days during the summer it seems too hot to fish.
How about putting on light clothes, wearing a straw hat to shade your face and going fishing?
The fishing may be better than you think. Jim Carr of Washington Twp. and I found that to be true on a hot day at C.J. Brown Reservoir near Springfield.
C.J., as in Clarence Brown, the Congressman for whom the lake is named, is a flood-control reservoir stocked yearly with fingerling-size walleyes. Catching those fish after they have grown to legal size (15 inches) can be a challenge.
The lure of trolling
One of the most popular ways to fish is by slowly trolling with deep-running lures.
A day I remember well is when Carr and I caught many walleyes that were larger than the 15-inch minimum.
But lakes change. Trolling hasn’t been nearly as effective the past few years.
During a recent trip, Carr and I had no success with trolling. We fished around the pilings instead. Through the years I have fished around these pilings without much success. But my opinion of them was elevated when Carr and I returned to the structures.
Fishing the depths
Fishing an incorrect depth may have been the reason fish were not caught on previous trips, but that was not the problem last week.
Because it was a hot day, we thought the fish would be in deep water. We set our lines to present our bait (minnows) just off the bottom. It worked.
We caught crappies that ranged in size from too small to keep to “wow, that’s a good one.”
One of these groups of pilings is close to the Bird Road boat launching ramp. It’s been reported that this is a good place to fish. Carr and I can say the same for the second group of pilings. That is where we did most of our fishing.
Contact Jim Robey at Dayton Daily News, 1611 S. Main St., Dayton, OH 45409.
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