Sean Stone

Author:
Sean Stone

Location:
 Southern Ohio

Education:
 Peebles High School, Miami University of Ohio Graduate of 2012: Bachelors Degrees in Envrionmental Science and Geography

Work:
Wastewater Treatment Plant Operator in Peebles, Ohio

Fishing Career:

  I spent much of my childhood on the banks of local lakes fishing for carp and catfish. I guess its what most people would have called our "family night out." We'd grab a few nightcrawlers, box of wheaties, and a bottle of vanilla extract. (Some of you carp guys will get that one.)We'd spend the evening and most of the night on the bank waiting for action. Some nights were better than others, and to be honest at that point in my career carp were my favorite species to target. No other fish grew as large and were as numerous as carp.  On occasion I would get the opportunity to fish my great grandparents pond for bass and bluegill. Those adventures were your typical red and white bobber and night crawler trips. Bluegill were numerous during these trips and the potential of hooking a good bass (at the time a 2lb bass was a monster) was fairly high. 

When I turned 16 and got my first car my fishing style changed tremendously. At that point my fishing became pretty experimental. One day I would fish a creek for smallmouth, the next I would fish for largemouth in a state forest pond, and on the weekend we would fish for catfish at the local lake. I still had no idea what I was doing, but I was having fun doing it. Between 17 and 18 I spent a lot of time on the water chasing the largest species of fish I could, which meant going back to the banks of local lakes and rivers. I would sit all evening with a couple rods out, waiting for a large catfish or carp to swim by. This is where I started to grow as an angler.  Instead of doing what we did as a family during my childhood, I ventured out of my comfort zone and started experimenting with baits, rigs, equipment, etc.  It was this experimentation that took my fishing level beyond what I had learned as a child. At the age of 17 I met Amanda which changed fishing as I knew it. Fishing had went from an "I" sport to a "Us" sport.

Once I hit 19 and started college my fishing became pretty limited to the weekends. However, my college experience was really crucial to how I would continue my fishing career. The study habits that I developed in college carried over into my hobbies. Long nights spent doing research papers had finally served some purpose. I bought nearly every publication of In-Fisherman, Ohio Game and Fish, etc. and spent countless hours on the internet researching each species of fish. I studied life cycles, habitat preference, local fishing reports, distribution ranges, etc. It gave me a broad understanding as to how fish behave, and to some extent allowed me to make educated guesses as to where I could find them. I started to develop a pattern of fishing preference. I would target crappie in the spring during their spawn, after that I would focus on pre spawn largemouth and catfish, during the heat of summer we focused on carp and smallmouth, and in the fall we reverted back to largemouth bass, catfish, and then crappie in that order. It kept us on decent fishing year round and allowed us to hone our skills for each species. The excessive writing that I had done in college had given me a foundation to build upon and share my passion for fishing with others. A friend and I created a blog and my passion seemed to show through my writings.

At the age of 22 I got my first boat, a 14 foot aluminum jon boat. Being able to get to places that other people on the bank couldn't, had a tremendous impact on our fishing. We caught more and larger fish than we had ever in the past. At this point carp took a back seat, bass and crappie would steal the show during the day and catfish would rule the night.

Since catfishing was primarily a night event, and 50 percent of the weekends were night it was safe to say that we spent most of our time chasing catfish during this time frame. It was a very steep learning curve but we managed to find a few nice cats along the way.

In the beginning of 2013, 23 years of age, I had gotten pretty tired of fishing out of a jon boat. Most trips were spent with 3 people cramped in a small 14' boat, which was way over its maximum weight capacity. When it came to bass fishing, I always got the short end of the stick. Being the third person in the boat meant that I had to fish behind the other two. I tried everything I could to overcome the pressure of fishing spots after they had seen 2 baits already. I experimented with baits, but once I found a pattern it seemed that the anglers in the front of the boat quickly caught on. Soon enough I was fishing third, behind two people throwing the same baits I was. After a year and a half of doing this I was ready for a change. This is where I shifted my attention to kayaks. Getting a larger boat was an option at this point, but it didn't eliminate my problem while bass fishing. I ended up selling my jon boat in the spring of 2013 and buying three kayaks. It opened up nearly 200 miles of streams and rivers that we couldn't fish with the jon boat. It allowed me to fish separately from the group and introduced me to a style of fishing that I had yet to experience. Kayaks have been a great way to get into spots that are rarely pressured, so our fishing success increased. The jon boat took us away from heavy hit bank spots which increased catch rates, kayaks took us even further away from pressured water. Kayaking in the last year has really changed our style of fishing. We started the year in March fishing for crappie. From there we focused 80 percent of our fishing efforts on bass, partially because we got involved with Buckeye Kayak Fishing Trail's tournament series. Although we had deep roots in catfishing, we only spent a little over a dozen trips specifically fishing for cats. Kayaking this year has really opened up smallmouth fishing for us. Before this year, most of our smallmouth fishing was done withing a quarter mile of heavily pressured public access points. Kayaking and Buckeye Kayak Fishing Trial has opened up a lot of opportunities for us, including this blog.  I am pretty excited to be apart of it and I'm anxious to see where we go from here.