1/18, Ohio River "DinkFest"

The last two weeks of weather here in Ohio has been pretty unstable to say the least. The week before last we had a cold front blow in sub zero temperatures and a little snow. This was southern Ohio's first real deep freeze, afterwards most of the lakes created enough ice for "safe" ice fishing conditions. I believe they had a window of two days (Thursday January 9th, and Friday January 10th) to fish before the weather turned and melted away the ice. Saturday the 11th was a huge disappointment for me, air temperatures reached the mid 50's but there was still enough ice on the water to make it impossible to break through with a kayak. Since the weather was so nice and most everything was froze up, I assumed that the warm water discharge would be loaded with those anglers trying to fight off cabin fever. I didn't want to have to dodge sinkers and baits in a kayak so I decided to stay home last weekend.

The following week, last week, was pretty stable for 4 or 5 days with air temperatures in the mid 30's during the day and low 20's at night. The ice machine was fired back up and the lakes were beginning to regain the ice they had lost during the warm up the previous weekend. Of course as soon as this weekend rolled around, those highs in the mid 30's had disappeared. Saturday, my day off, was forecasted to have a high of 24 degrees, winds of 15-20 miles per hour, and wind chills that made the air temperature feel like it was in the low teens. Already upset from the previous weekend, I had determined that the cold wasn't going to stop me from fishing. Friday night I told everyone that I was going to take the kayak down to the river, my little brother chimed in and said he'd go if no one else was going with me. Jake, my brother, was a less than average swimmer so I started to rethink my decision of taking the kayaks out. Swimming in 60-70 degree water is a whole different story when its below freezing out. I told him maybe we should just go down and bank fish instead. At that point Amanda jumped in and said she'd go if we bank fished. So it was set, we were going down to the warm water discharge to fish from the bank.

We loaded up the car and hit the river, along the way we stopped at walmart to pick up liver and shrimp in case the bite was slow. (This happened to be both a good and bad idea....both the shrimp and the liver were frozen solid, with air temperatures in the mid teens we struggled to thaw them out enough to use. However, we did need them.) We got to the warm water discharge around 11:30am and began scouting for spots to bank fish. The river was up what looked to be 1-2 feet, which eliminated most accessible spots. We walked around for a few minutes and came upon a good looking point out in front of one of the discharge locations. Jake and Amanda were both happy with the location so we started fishing. As mentioned before, both the liver and shrimp were frozen solid so we dug out a small hole in the mud near the edge of the water and set our bait in it to thaw out. We then proceeded to cast flitterbaits out into the discharge. It didn't take long to run into problems. Of course we had our typical ice build up on our eyes and a little ice on the guide on our reels. However, at one point my braid started to freeze up on my spool. I would cast and my bait would go about 20 feet and then come to a complete stop. Each time this happened I had to blow warm air onto my spool and recast. After 45 minutes of this I was ready to set a rod out with liver or shrimp and warm my hands in my pockets.

Jake and Amanda also had the same idea. We went down to the water and began opening the bait containers......everything was still frozen solid. Jake and I hooked the shrimp one time through and then casted it out. Amanda on the other hand, had grabbed a shrimp and put it in her mouth to thaw it out. After a few seconds she could thread her hook through the shrimp, making it harder for fish to steal off of her hook. We each casted a rod out and put it in a rod holder. We then waited for a bite. Jake was the first one to land a fish, after a half dozen bites and failed hook ups.

He baited back up and casted his rod out. Within seconds of the bait hitting the water his rod began to bounce in his rod holder. He had found where the fish were sitting in the current. His rod bounced for about thirty seconds, nothing major enough for him to set the hook on so he left it alone. He left his rod alone for another five minutes before reeling it in and checking his bait. He had gotten cleaned. By this time, Amanda had casted out into the range of Jakes rod. It didn't take long for her to find the fish either. He rod bounced hard once and then continued to bounce erratically. A small channel cat had managed to get her circle hook into its mouth and had hooked itself. Amanda had finally got on the board with her first fish of the day.

They continued to cast out into the current and get bites. Most of the time they got cleaned and they had to rebait. This went on for the next two hours; rebait, cast, watch the rod tip bounce for 5 minutes, miss a fish, repeat, maybe even catch 1 fish every 20 minutes, etc. In the mean time I was struggling to find the bites that they were. I was down the bank a little fishing where the current from the discharge was slamming into and eroding the bank. I figured that there had to be a deeper hole around here somewhere and maybe the bigger fish were in the deeper hole. Well that was my plan anyway. I sat in my spot while Amanda and Jake went back and forth catching fish.

Eventually I started casting my bait further and further out into the current in hopes that I would find something. After a half dozen casts I had my first bite, I had found a fish.....which happened to steal my bait. I quickly put on another shrimp and casted back into the same spot. After a few minutes the rod began to bounce, the circle hook had found its way into the mouth of a small hybrid striper.

We continued to fish for another 2 hours at this spot before we decided to move and see if we could find a few larger fish. We walked down the bank another 50 yards or so and set up on a small 4x15' beach. After 10 minutes we realized that we were into the dinkers again . We sat around, catching fish on and off,  for another hour and a half before deciding to call it quits. We didn't find any size, but the action was steady and everyone was pretty well entertained.