1/4, Hot Bite on the Ohio River

Saturday Russ and I hit the Ohio River in search of anything that was willing to bite. We brought ultralight spinning combos, medium heavy catfish gear, bass rods, and as much tackle as we could get into our milk crates. If something was feeding we were certainly going to try and catch it. Our last trip to the Ohio River was rather disappointing. That trip Russ caught small channel cat, I on the other hand didn't catch a single fish. This time around I was going to do everything I could to ensure that we were going to catch fish.

Friday morning I tried to encourage a few other kayak anglers into hitting the water with Russ and I, but everyone else seemed to have plans. One friend told me that he had heard that the spot where Russ and I were going to fish had been lousy for the last few weeks. I jokingly made the remark that all we needed was chicken livers and live bait. "Real Fisherman don't use chicken livers, nightcrawlers, etc...".  Atleast that's a running joke that I make all the time when I'm fishing with Russ. He always seems to have a dozen night crawlers or other form of live bait with him even when we go bass fishing. I like to give him a little grief about it from time to time, but the sad fact is that he can go to any body of water catch fish in just about any condition. There has been more than one time when he's caught the only fish of the trip.

As the day progressed I kept thinking about how bad our last trip to the Ohio River was. I sat around thinking about every bait I could throw, what colors to use, what rod to use, where to fish, etc. After a while I broke down and decided to head to our local Walmart and pick up a few supplies for a secret bait concoction.

I'm not real fond of chicken livers for multiple reasons: first off they are messy, secondly they are hard to keep on a hook when casting, they stink, get picked apart by little fish, etc. Even though I don't like chicken livers, the fish seem to love the bloody gooey mess. One trick I have found to be quite effective was to use shrimp to soak up the blood of the chicken liver and then use shrimp as bait. I would bait up with a chicken liver and then wait for the fish to find it, which in most instances resulted in a few bounces of my rod and then me reeling in an empty hook. Once the scent was in the water, I would switch to the shrimp that had soaked in the liver blood. It was a lot harder for the fish to clean off of the hook, and was a lot easier to handle.  Less goo, less mess.

The picture above shows the supplies needed for the secret concoction, a bag of large shrimp ( cooked or uncooked), chicken livers, and zip lock bags. I divided the shrimp evenly among two ziplock bags, I then dumped one tub of chicken livers into the bag with the shrimp. I then placed the ziplock bag into another bag, a fail safe in case the first bag leaks....did I mention chicken liver stinks and is messy? Once the shrimp and liver are mixed I placed the ziplock bags in the fridge to soak over night.

With my stash of "cheater" bait I felt confident that we were going to catch fish Saturday morning, even if the fish weren't willing to hit my lures. I rigged up my rods and then went to bed for the night.

Saturday morning I woke up and met Russ at a local gas station, we quickly loaded up his kayak onto my trailer and hit the road. We arrived at our destination at around 11am and started loading gear into our kayaks for the long drag through the field, woods, and then down hill to a small tributary of the Ohio River. Along the way I stopped to take a few pictures. The snow made life a lot easier.

 Russ and I battled the muddy banks as we launched our kayaks, slipping and sliding into the water. Luckily we each managed to stay dry, however, our boots and now our kayaks were full of mud. We paddled upstream and quickly dropped anchor at a known hot spot. I had already given Russ his bag of shrimp and liver so he tossed a rod out with a piece of shrimp. I too tossed a piece of shrimp out and set the rod in a rod holder, on my other rod I worked a flitterbait along the banks. It didn't take long for the fish to show up.

Russ had caught the first fish of the trip, a nice channel cat. We took a few pictures and released it back into the water. Less than 20 minutes later, Russ had hooked and landed another fish. This time around he had fooled a small hybrid striped bass into taking his chicken liver flavored shrimp. At this point I had given up on the flitterbait, it was time to catch a fish and avoid getting shut out for a second time. We had a limited number of shrimp each, and it appeared that we may use them rather quickly......so I decided to tie on a 1/4oz jig and tight line small pieces of liver on my bass rod. I figured this way I would save my shrimp for later and I could keep myself entertained while I waited for a larger fish to swim by my my other rod. Needless to say I kept myself entertained. I landed nearly a dozen fish in a little over an hour, including a blue catfish, 3 small channel catfish, and a half dozen small hybrid striped bass. Here's a look at a few of my smaller fish....oh yeah and a picture of Russ looking particularly happy about his first channel cat of the year. (The fish had flopped away from him during his pose for a photo so he pulled it up by its tail and gave the largest smile he could possibly muster.....I thought it was too good not to post.)

Top Left: Channel Catfish, Top Right: Hybrid Striped Bass, Bottom Left: Blue Catfish, Bottom Right: Happy, Happy, Happy.

Among all of the small fish I finally found my first decent channel cat of the evening, a 21" catfish on shrimp.

After a few minutes without bites Russ decided that he wanted to venture out into the Ohio River to see if we could find a few larger fish. We each had over a dozen fish on the trip and a channel catfish over 20", so even if the rest of the evening failed to yield another fish we'd be happy. We made the paddle down stream and out into the river. I tied the flitterbait back on my bass rod and began working current breaks and ledges. As we rounded the bend I noticed that the banks were lined with blue herons, which meant that the shad had to be pretty close to the banks. I started casting at the herons, hoping that I would find something that was chasing the shad to the banks. On one cast I hooked into something that felt rather odd. I was reeling at a slow and steady pace when my line went slack, I set the hook into something solid and it began to move off very erratically. It wasn't the back and forth line ripping runs of a hybrid striper, or the constant rolling of a channel cat. It almost felt as if I had snagged into the side of a fish, but after a few seconds my line went slack again. I examined my flitterbait for scales, but it was clean. I shrugged it off and made another cast. I started the slow and steady retrieve when I felt a thump and watched as my line went slack. I turned the handle on my reel a few times to take up slack and set the hook. This time it felt like a fish that was hooked correctly, and after a few quick burst from side to side I was sure it was a hybrid striped bass. After a few slips of drag and a few laps around my kayak I brought the hybrid to the surface, it went 17.75"......good enough for a picture. I placed the hybrid in the bottom of my kayak and paddled up to Russ. We then paddled to the nearest bank and took a few pics.

Russ and I then proceeded to drift with the current and cast toward the banks, once we got away from the herons we would then paddle back upstream and work back downstream. We made two more passes but failed to catch another fish, the herons on the other hand were devouring the shad. 

After a half an hour we decided to head back into the tributary and work a few fallen trees that we had seen on our way out into the river. I set up on the upstream side of the first tree and Russ anchored 50 yards downstream of me. Within 30 minutes of dropping my anchor I had landed 3 additional small channel cats. I had ran out of shrimp at this point and was down to chicken livers. I started threading whole chicken livers onto my 6/0 circle hook and tossing it out near the fallen trees.  I set my rod down in a rod holder and went to retie a 1/4oz jig on my bass rod. Before I could even thread the braid through the eye of my jig, the rod in the rod holder started to bounce. I thought for sure I was going to get cleaned by a small fish so I went back to tying my jig on. The rod the bounced a little harder, which peaked my interest. I quit tying my jig and watched the rod intently. Maybe this wasn't a small fish after all. The rod tip then began to bend slowly toward the water and then the circle hook found its place into the corner of a fishes mouth. The rod now had a significant bend to it. And then fish finally realized it was hooked and it went nuts. I grabbed the rod and began applying pressure. After a short battle I landed another good channel cat just over 23".

Russ made the paddle up to me and snapped a few pictures. I continued to throw chicken livers out as the sun began to set. As the sun set over the hills the temperature plummeted. The action had slowed down and Russ had given up on his spot. He pulled anchor and started heading my way. After a brief conversation we decided to just call it quits for an evening. We had at the most 30 minutes of daylight, and our drag back to the car was at least 15 minutes.

We paddled back and proceeded to drag our kayaks up through the woods and then through the field. The snow had all but melted making the uphill journey much more difficult that we were prepared for. We quickly loaded our gear up, scraped mud out of our kayaks, and hit the road. All in all we had one heck of a trip for January in Ohio.