Photos by ERIC SHARP/Detroit Free Press
Terry Ball of Patalaska, Ohio, plays a walleye in the muddy waters of the Maumee, which has one of the best walleye runs on the Great Lakes.
Anglers spread out along the shoreline of the Maumee River during the annual walleye run. The river is muddy and four feet above normal, but anglers are catching fish on ball-headed jigs with plastic bright colored tails.
Walleyes flood the Maumee
Muddy conditions will improve soon
BY ERIC SHARP • FREE PRESS OUTDOORS WRITER • April 3, 2008
Muddy conditions will improve soon
BY ERIC SHARP • FREE PRESS OUTDOORS WRITER • April 3, 2008
MAUMEE, Ohio -- The pioneers had an apt description for many of the rivers they encountered on the trip west: Too thick to drink, too thin to plow.
That description would fit half of the rivers in the Midwest after days of alternate rain, snow and melting, including the Maumee, which the sign on the Highway 20 Bridge identified as an "Ohio Scenic River."
If "scenic" includes a color somewhere between café au lait and tan shoe polish, then this stream fit. Not only was the water a color that the word "muddy" was invented to describe, it was several feet above its banks and flowing hard enough that a boat trying to make its way upstream threw up a brown geyser with its propeller.
Knee deep on the river's southern bank just upstream from the bridge, Henry Humphrey of Toledo cast a jig upstream and let the current sweep it down.
"The walleyes are in here, but it's real hard to catch them in these conditions," he said. "We've snagged a couple, but we haven't caught any legal ones yet.
"We need a couple of days without rain for the water to drop to more fishable levels. ... Once it drops a couple of feet, the fishing should be great."
The Maumee is Ohio's best spring walleye stream, with hundreds of thousands of fish beginning to arrive from Lake Erie in late February or early March to spawn on its gravel shoals. The Maumee run usually starts a couple of weeks before the walleyes get active in the Detroit River, and unlike the Detroit River, which requires a boat to fish effectively, most of the fish taken in the Maumee are caught by wading anglers.
The run usually lasts through May and sometimes into early June, although by the end of April most of the females have spawned and dropped back into Lake Erie, and the fish left in the river are mostly smaller males.
There are numerous public access sites along the river, but because of the high water, about four feet above summer normal, most of them are not accessible, including the most popular, Bluegrass Island.
That's why a long line of anglers were standing waist deep in the waters off Orleans park on the south side of the Highway 20 Bridge, casting to fish in the deeper, faster water 20 yards out.
Terry Ball of Pataskala, Ohio, had driven 2 1/2 hours to fish the Maumee, He said it was his third trip this year.,"When they really start running, we'll get a motel room and fish for a couple of days," he said.
Ball whipped up his rod tip, set the hook on a fish and reeled in a 4-pound male, which he released.
"It was hooked on the outside of the mouth," he said. "The barb was on the inside, but the hook went in from the outside in. That's not legal here, and they really enforce it. It's not worth getting a ticket over."
Most of the fishermen were using ball-headed jigs with plastic tails. Red and orange seemed to be the most popular tail colors, but some people were catching fish on dark colors.
"I like dark colors when the water is as muddy as this. I think it makes a little better silhouette for the fish to pick up," said Oliver Calvert of Dayton, Ohio. "I got two on a brown jig and one on a red one, so maybe it really doesn't make much difference."
Two Michigan anglers, Jim Mansfield of Lansing and Chuck Weston of Midland, came wading out of the river with stringers of walleyes, all 3-6 pounds.
"We've been coming here in the spring for five years. We used to fish the Detroit River, but it gets so crowded it's a real pain," Weston said. "Here, if you fish from Tuesday to Thursday during work hours, there's usually plenty of room, and I like wading."
Information about fishing the Maumee, Ohio licenses and local regulations is available at Maumee Tackle, 104 W. Wayne St., about three blocks from the bridge. Nonresident licenses (cash only) cost $11 for one day, $19 for three days and $40 annually.
Many Michigan anglers buy annual licenses because they also fish the Ohio waters of Lake Erie.
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