Ohio River Fishing Alive and Well!
Last of Summer Fishing on the Ohio River
by Robb Hoff
September 14, 2012
The quest for more Ohio River smallmouth bass lured me to the water again today for a couple hours in the afternoon before the first of the fall chill swept into the river valley.
I changed my tack a bit in trying to target smallmouth over the hybrid striped bass that are abundant in the section of the river where I fish. Not that I changed lure choice, though, because the hybrids are hitting far too good to try to ignore entirely and I've had success catching smallmouth with some size on the Rapala Shad Rap I've been using almost exclusively.
I concentrated on a shallow that I don't normally fish because there's usually no need to hoof it that far downriver before finding schools of fish busting through swarms of shad. Another reason I don't normally fish this particular shallow is that normally extends out much farther than it does now with the water level so unusually low.
But it was well worth the walk and the wade to get there this time. I actually caught a couple hybrid stripers that were larger than the smallmouth I caught at the spot, but the smallmouth was majestic, shooting every bit of three feet out of the water about 10 feet away from me. The trout-like acrobatics of the smallmouth are their own reward.
